A few months ago, I met a fellow whose mother had successfully founded a small cult that exists to this day. He explained that she appealed to young married couples with problems, perhaps with their parents or perhaps in their marriage. She would offer spiritual workshops on how to improve communication to better their relationships, and so on. She learned to do this through a sort of apprenticeship with other "gurus," before breaking out on her own. Her unique twist was that she claimed to be a spirit channeler.
In any case, this fellow told me that people stayed, after they joined, because she gave individuals power once they'd proved themselves. This translated into social status and leadership in the cult. It felt good. The individuals felt important and were treated deferentially by the others. The gained power that they would never have gained in broader society. Who would ever give that up? "If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." This resembles an MLM scheme. If you're the "prophet," you get all of the spoils. If you're an immediate disciple of the prophet, then you get a lot of spoils. If you're a new recruit after the cult has existed for several years, there's never much in it for you except empty promises and hard work. And religious dogma holds the whole structure and dynamics together.
The more that the cult grows, the more bodies that there are to do work. And with an increasing population, the prophet gains increasing power. The cult started buying up properties on the same block, and expanding. They all lived together, and they intermarried within the prophet's family, establishing dynastic ties.
I conclude from this that there's power in numbers, in coalitions. And such coalitions readily arise when there's a cohesive force--a superglue--that unites everyone: namely, religion and a charismatic leader.
And that's it. That's all that religion amounts to: an evolving lie surrounding a core myth. All of the adherents--and all humans everywhere--ultimately die. Religion, and what we call our "lives," are merely software. Without hardware--without bodies--consciousness (presumably) wouldn't exist. People fool themselves into believing that the software matters greatly. It doesn't. It's the hardware that makes everything possible.
Alzheimer's disease readily shows just how fragile what we call the "self" is.
I shudder to cope with the implications of that terrifying realization.