Ask Lemmygrad

I tend to view religion through a functionalist lens. Historically, religion served as a way to codify successful behaviors before we had the empirical tools to understand why those behaviors worked. Take the prohibition of pork in Abrahamic traditions for example. In the Bronze Age, there was no germ theory or concept of parasites like trichinosis. You could not explain to a population why eating undercooked pork might kill them, so the survival heuristic got wrapped in metaphysics. It became a rule not to eat it because it is forbidden by God rather than because of biology. It was an epistemological shortcut that encoded necessary knowledge into custom because the science was unavailable to explain the mechanism.

Beyond just physical survival, religion also serves a structural function by creating social cohesion. In feudal and capitalist structures, the economic engine does not inherently unite people. Capitalism in particular is fundamentally individualistic. It atomizes society by reducing the human experience to individual ambition and competition. The society risks fragmentation when the system atomizes people into isolated units. An external cohesive force becomes necessary to act as social glue for people to have a collective identity. Religion provides that superstructure by offering a common worldview and shared narrative that allows people to transcend the self. It acts as an artificial collective because the economic system refuses to provide a real one.

On the other hand, a socialist society does not require a crutch like religious to function. Socialism provides an inherent collective purpose that unites people toward a common goal. The idea of collective ownership and democratic control over the economy allows people to see themselves as part of a material whole. If a society is truly united by a common material goal, the external glue of religion becomes redundant. You no longer need a divine mandate to bind people together because the social relations of production are doing that work automatically. At the same time, material dialectics allow us to understand the world directly without needing to hide knowledge inside arcane traditions.