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1:46

(In »Everything is religion«)

The crucial point of having a god is that the god is said to reward loyalty and cooperation, while punishing selfishness and mendacity. An all-seeing god is particularly effective in such a context, since people cheat less when they feel that they are being watched. Common sacrifices and collective rites increase coherence, which creates the trust within the group that enables intimate and trusting cooperation outside the circle of family members. According to Haidt with support from Charles Darwin and the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, the main function of religion is that it produces groups whose coherence makes them function like organisms. The biologist David Sloan Wilson writes in his book Darwin’s Cathedral that religions primarily exist in order for it to be possible for people to accomplish together what they cannot accomplish on their own.