What good is religion?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/09/09/what-good-is-religion/By Sigfried Gold, Published: September 9 at 11:21 am
mage: Kevin Ambrose
The work of self-transformation can be done through psychotherapy, religious practice, reading self-help books, independent resolutions and intentions, consulting coaches, gurus, psychics, body healers, mind healers and faith healers of all stripes. People come to the work of self-transformation in moments of despair, moments of hope, after long reflection, through happenstance, and some, myself included, make the pursuit of self-transformation the central work and preoccupation of their lives.
By self-transformation I mean a somewhat ill-defined effort to be a better person, whatever that may mean to any individual. Education is transformational, but taking a course in engineering is not the kind of overall self-improvement I’m talking about. A course in literature, philosophy or music appreciation might, intentionally or unintentionally, lead to a more expansive sense of one’s humanity or purpose in life; so that kind of education might be included when we consider the set of tool available for self-transformation. Engaging in psychotherapy, listening to a sermon on forgiveness, or resolving to meditate daily are unambiguously acts of attempted self-transformation.
A few hundred years ago, religion had a monopoly on the self-transformation business. Self-transformation, moral improvement, efforts to get oneself or others to be morally better, have always been a central concern of religions (at least the ones sometimes referred to as Axial-Age religions), but seldom their sole concern. Religions also concern themselves with explaining cosmology, acquiring political and economic power, establishing and legislating social norms, killing or converting heathens. If religions stuck with helping people, non-coercively, in their attempts at self-transformation, they probably would not be ignored, hated or ridiculed as they are by growing numbers of the religiously disaffected.
Religions have certain advantages in the self-transformation arena that can’t be matched by secular forms of this work. One is the ideal–if not actual attitude–of religions towards money. Although the financial costs of religion can be quite high (giving away a tenth of one’s income is not uncommon), payment is generally voluntary; newcomers and poorer congregants can usually enjoy all the benefits of community, moral guidance and support, meaningful rituals, comfort in times of adversity, without having to pay more than they choose. Disingenuously or not, religions claim to be motivated by concerns beyond money, and obligate themselves to at least put on a show of providing services unattached to remuneration. For people outside the social welfare system, secular self-transformational help must be paid for. Much of the support in a religious community comes from other congregants rather than from paid clergy. As a special case, 12-step recovery fellowships, which include some of the largest organizations in the world, offer their members access to daily or hourly support, essentially for free, that could only be matched among secular service providers by extremely expensive in-patient treatment centers or psychiatry wards.
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I like this guy.
Moral Mondays runs off the world's oldest natural resource: human emotion. Martin Luther was a simple pious man as well and look what happened to protestantism. And that whole Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple thing didn't slow them down much. Like I said, sooner or later the same thing always happens. Hell, even Grandpa Dobri rides the bus now.
That's not to say all religion is bad or those who believe in it are fools. It's just that there has to be some sort of check on its ability to use emotion to motivate people. We have the solution to that problem. It's called liberal nationalism. The wall between the church and state has to be high and wide because there is no way the state can compete with promises of divinity and eternal life. We can't tell people what to believe because regulating religion is like regulating sex, people are going to do it no matter what. But if we focus the function of the state on the equitable distribution of resources, we have a common currency upon which to base equity. When religion gets involved, and sometimes when it doesn't, piety becomes currency with disastrous results.
Your rights stop at the other fellow's nose, no matter how you may feel about it.
"I don't see any other way to get these things, therefore we need religion." 
