Religion, I beleive probably came into existence more for social instead of spiritual purposes. In acnient times, it probabaly was more to organize the society by advertising the supuernatual (spiritual) methods that caused ethical fear. Except for the fact that fundamental reasons for its creation may have changed, at least for the educated society, today also it continues to fulfill the social purpose. Human awareness has acheived a level where they accept the supreme power but the rules set in name of religion are more of a person or group's choice of picturing a religion and not directly from the creator.
Even with the subconscious awareness of the fact that the religious rules have mostly nothing to do with attachment with God, people continue to be part of a religion. Religion today in one way can be defined as a logical nation with no geographical boundary. Most activities in our daily lives doesn't reflect religious guidelines, but the feeling of religion gains strength and comes in foreground mostly when something happens against it. It becomes a kind of patriotism whenever there is some danger to it. Be it a riot, some media statement from a religious leader, a action of some film actor or some activity by a businessman, people all of a sudden would start defending the religion that they never followed and just carried from birth
as their last name. Although negative, it's a social cause as it makes you a person of one kind.
Religion is also a means to social networking these days. People would generally ask last names to confirm the religion and then try to find links. People from same religion tend to group together relatively easily. As it's said, it sometimes become a deciding factor in case of a tie.
Religious festivals at most places are celbrated in a very tradiitional way. Even though most people don't understand the significance of most rituals in religious festivals or even if they do their is no relevance to it, festivals are today good means to get families together once in a while. Another social contribution.
It also provide means to decrease the head count on face of earth. People can easily make issues out of how is the God worshipped in one religion and kill each other for these differences. God never told me the way of worship but I guess it was personally told to all those on the streets fighting over it. How does it matter if you worship a idol or you don't, whether one sect wear clothes and one doesn't, whether one just believe in God and one in messenger of God. Nobody knows nothing about what the reality is, but many don't miss the chance to fight over the issue that doesnt exist. That's somehow linked with frustration in roots.
I keep wondering how has any religion or its rules has helped any person acheive anything in life? As I see, it's just the faith that keeps a person going, be it in a stone, in a person, in a power or in it's self.
