Reply #71: Religion/ideology comes into play in all large societies

[Nikia]

We don't know about the religiousity of early humans, but their ethical values tended to be based on individual and group survival. Groups were small enough that everyone knew everyone and were often related by blood or marriage. Their survival was linked to others in the group. As a result, they tended to be very good to members in the group and neutral or hostile towards other groups. Their hostility often resulted in a need to aquire more resources in order to survive.
The same was true of societies that settled down when there were still few people banded together. The village supported other villagers. If the village needed more resources for survival, it was not unethical to raid another village. It would be unethical to steal from ones neighbor though because the groups survival was linked.
This behavior is true in modern hunter-gatherer socieities and other small groups regardless of religious beliefs, although modern missionaries have often successfully taught that murdering, stealing, and raping ones neighboring groups is wrong. The same ethical principle of acting good to ones group and hostile towards everyone else if they stand in way of ones prosperity applied though.
As some groups grew larger and more prosperous, often individuals were not related and didn't even know everyone in their group. It wasn't necessarily evident how ones individual survival depended on people who they did not know. In such societies, there was usually also stratification in status and wealth, allowing for rulers and priests who did not take part in food production. A unifying religion was often important in unifying the group.
Modern states are usually unified by a common heritage, religion, or ideology. Many states that are not unified by one of these things have civil war, which we see in many states right now. The United States is ethnically and culturually diverse. Unlike what Bush and his friends would have you believe though, I believe that the United States is unified more by the common ideology of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution than any religion. It has always been this way from the beginning even as religiousity waxed and waned.
We cannot say how things would be different if the people coming to the Americas all had no religion. Many colonists did come in pursuit of religious freedom. The ideology that we hold did develop in a religious society as did modern science. The ideology does not depend on religion though and is enough of a uniting force. The rest of the world, in the past, did need religion to help unify society. Some dictators could unify a people by them putting their faith in him, but religion based on eternal god(s) was better because societal cohesion would outlive the death of the doctator.