Yes it is true religion was not use a method of control. Indeed it did cone from people trying to unexplained how this worked in the world around them, but they didn't technically apply god to what could not be explained, they apply answers based off perception, like believing the Sun circled the Earth because it appeared that. Another example is that ancient civilizations believed the Earth was flat because it appeared that. Eventually when they started doing math they started to not believe those answers to be true anymore.

The same idea can be applied to ancient Theism, which I believe evolved out of the idea that everything was alive. I think Theism occurred out of ancient groups trying to explain what is considered living and what is considered dead/not-living.

Very true and I agree with you completely about the origins of religion. But I think that you are constructing a strawman argument about the people who use the 'control' argument. Most of them do well understand the other roles of religion, especially at its origin and in early times, they are just using the word 'religion' shorthand to refer to modern organized religion alone.

You make some great points and it's perfectly valid to question these aspects of the divide. I even tend to agree but that has little, if any, effect on my view of the business. It is a wholesale con acting upon a regenative need that's no longer valid. Kind of like an old computer language taking up memory space in a laptop that never requires it. It diminishes performance but by so little nobody notices until they do. That's why we have a frontal lobe. This language has become problematic to our actual survival now, though. We have too many dark places with people who want to completely Lord over us, use us physically for whatever purpose they desire, who use this language as a police force. I think we are at that point of decision. Many more now see this than used to, and that's hopeful, but too many still think the language defines their very existence. Those who know the language is a remnant have good reason to be concerned.

Early religions were more about the calendar than control. If you start with sun and moon gods (yes I know that there were earlier tree, animals gods etc.) Then at 1st moon gods hold sway because knowing when the moon is up is important to hunter-gatherers.
Later when the grasses mutated and we got agriculture, then the sun god was supreme. At this time we had enough spare food to have kings, priests, and specialized workers. Then religion began to lay down laws for behavior. After all, priests would tell you when to plant and harvest. It would seem natural to accept their instructions on morals.
The dietary laws of Judaism make sense in a hot climate and who would want their woman sleeping with another guy? However, it is interesting to note that their calendar is lunar, not solar. To view the OT as total BS throws away a cronical of a people's transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural existence. Flawed as it may be.
Later on, those lunar gods come back into their own when trade becomes an important resource. Knowledge of tides was crucial to cultures like the Vikings.
When Christianity held sway in the middle ages. It was the church that gave us holidays and provided the only counter-balance to the powers of the state. Social control was certainly part of the growth of religion but not the whole story.

#1. Religion ... pure and faultless is this: to help widows and orphans in need and avoiding worldly corruption. James 1:27

#2. Religion a form of government of people that can cross "worldly " national borders, that is not passed on specifically by family traditions or genetic connection.

#3. Religion is what non-experiencing people refer to those that claim some God thingie interaction.

Completely agree. The concept of gods were invented to explain things people didn’t understand. It was later that some enterprising con artists figured out how to get rich and powers from it. Some specific religions WERE invented for money making (cough SCIENTOLOGY).

Religion is the tool that's used to control the masses. Religion is the opiate of the masses and has little to do with a god. This packaged system of beliefs has been well marketed and has controlled people for centuries because the very nature of it feeds on control.

"Hell" was invented by the Catholic church to control people with fear, a retired priest said.

[churchandstate.org.uk]

American Bishop explains how religion was "made up" and used to control people.

[collective-evolution.com]

The man and story behind Jesus Christ was a Roman hoax designed to control the people, a scholar has sensationally claimed. Christianity is a baseless religion that was designed by the Roman empire to justify slavery and pacify the citizens, according to controversial Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill.

[express.co.uk]

Nice one David. With you all the way. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the development of tribal groups, sociology and culture.

I’ll fight with on the battlements for that one!

Excellent presentation, David. Very well said.

This is one of those big subjects. I agree that the notion of religion being deliberately created sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, to use that modern term, and doesn't convince. I agree that religion, specifically a god, is used to explain the gaps. But I've always felt that religion evolved to explain what couldn't then be understood, to pray to some protective force in a scary unpredictable world, and to deal with death: the curse of the knowledge of our own mortality. The fact that religions then become tools of the powerful to exercise control over the powerless is of course beyond doubt. We should consider all the contributing factors why religions exist. How else can we confront and neutralise it?

i sometimes get dissed for having reached the same conclusion. religion is evil, evil i tell you, and evil needs... a mastermind, right? so it seems some antitheists believe in a kind of devil lol. religions developed. they developed out of a need and outlived their need, yes thanks for abuse of religion by individuals, not always evil either, but with evil results for sure. yes, some pastors and televangelists and polticians and megalomaniacs and others use religion to control people. that doesn't mean that is why religion was "invented" or "created" or any other things. it's like that meme declaring that trump said, on people magazine, in 1998, that if he became a politician he would become a republican because republicans are stupid and gulliable. i am not quoting exactly but that was the gist of it -- except he never said it, at least not to people in 1998, and probably not in public, if he ever said it at all. is it the kind of thing he would think? insofar as he thinks, yeah. is it the kind of thing he would say? insofar as he is a blabbermouth with no impulse control, yeah. so people believe that meme. but it's a hoax. so does it also seem, on the surface of it, with religion being used to control people, that it must have been created to do so. but that too is false, and you said it better than i did, but i had to say this, too, because some folks get SO mad when you take away their devils.

g

Just because it pisses you off and bothers you, doesn't mean that what you think is true. Who cares about the purpose for the creation of religion, it may have been created to give easy answers to ignorance, or any other reason, what matters is what is it used for since the dawn of civilization to present day. And you would be either blind or naive to think that religions are not for control. Outcomes are the result of the creation, babies are all born innocent, what really matters is not why babies were created for, what matters is what did this baby became and its impact on society. And it bothers me too when anybody, theist or not, makes statements not well thought out, like yours.

Absolutely correct.

Some people believe that religion just evolved from worshiping nature, polytheism, then to monotheism . . . . I don't, I think it was helped along . . . . Monotheism has a bad influence, because it not only promotes a complete dictatorship by an imaginary being, but also promotes the idea of a central authority based on one individual, a cult of single-person authority which is almost inevitably carried over to government. There is a great deal of evidence that christianity was invented by the Flavians, and people do not invent things without motives.
.
Niccolo Machiavelli, (3 May 1469 - 21 June 1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer who wrote a small book titled, "The Prince", which is a compendium of advice to tyrants who rule nations . . . . . he saw religion as a tool of rulers to keep the general populace under control. In America, lots of people buy into it when politicians flaunt their "religiousness" . . . . I consider this to be the most revealing phrase in Machiavelli's whole book:
"Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite." - Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince)

No, there's not a "grand master" originator, it is a product of natural selection as much as evolved organisms are really. It has always been a useful fulcrum of control to authoritarians, though, and there have been grand master manipulators who have used it, from within and without and sometimes both.

Agency inference and confirmation bias make it attractive, though, that is the fundamental fact of life.

It was obviously not Created to control people, but to explain the scary unexplainable.
But that is what is has evolved into.

I agree with you.

An interesting take on the issue. It's an interesting conjecture to suppose religion was invented to control the masses. The question that comes to me is.... at what point did early humans go from simple personal or extended family explanations for the unknown, to a larger community level explantation?

At the family level, it was probably the head of the family or a surviving elder. Once it became community level I conjecture that it immediately needed to be a hierarchy and authority structure for it to accepted and passed on. Simply by the very nature of the hierarchy and authority systems, control follows. Perhaps at first by respect and fairly informal means (coercion, shaming, etc.). But as population groups got larger, almost certainly in order to be effective it became a religion. With religion comes control.

While religion may have started out as an "explanation", it didn't take long for
the more savvy to realize that it was a dandy way to control the masses.
As soon as the explanations started being replaced with science, it became
ALL about control.