What contirbution has religion given to the advancement of mankind that has come from nowhere else?

[lindysalsagal]

59. relgion has provided social structure where it probably did more good than the lack of the structure

or if the structure had been created malevolently for economic/political reasons.

But that was largely in the distant past, before science and global communication. For instance, when the hebrews taught people to avoid pork, that was done in the days before refridgeration, when bacterial food poisoning was much more likely in pork. The religion allowed for the observation of the trend, and the communication of the advice among the people.

Likewise, the improvements in language and publishing were originally due to the early church.

On the whole, early humans probably are better off having religion, even though so much war and suffering has been created by the church.

Nowadays, I'm not so sure religion helps all that much, but that's just my opinion. Now that we are a global community, I'd like to see us abandon those differences that make it easy to think in terms of "us" and "them."