How religion improves civilization through progressive revelation.

I wrote this today as a response to a question on the forum Quora (www.quora.com).  The question was: "Would big societies be able to exist without people believing in religions?"  Some people said "yes" and went on to tell about all the bad things that they find to be associated with religion.  I can see their points, but I still maintain that when a religion has become strongly established in a culture, it becomes polluted by politics, and other human frailties and so loses much of its true worth.  This was my response, for what it's worth:

I read a study a few years ago (and I apologize for not having the reference) that gave evidence that in primitive societies religion was a needed cohesive influence for cooperation and prevention of conflict in groups of more than about 20 to 30 individuals.  Most religions provide:

1) A common commitment to a set of values which prevent the strong and/or greedy from destroying the life of kinder and/or weaker people and regulate how common resources are to be used.

2) Shared rights, celebrations, rituals, symbols etc. which provide a sense of community.

3) A sense that there is a higher power (god or gods) which has authority to make laws and demand sacrifices. (Such laws and sacrifices being for the common good as much as to please the higher power.)

Consider the 10 commandments:

The first 4 (No other gods, No graven images (i.e., objects to worship), Don't take the Lord's name in vain, and Remember the sabbath and keep it holy) have the purpose of establishing loyalty, reverence, and a community activity which leads to the unity and agreement of the religious community.

The other six are laws which are important to establishing cooperation, trust, and justice.  Basically, they are necessary in order to develop  those institutions (like commerce, supportive families, specialized tradespeople, etc.) that we take for granted in our present society.

If you look at experiments in game theory, (like "the prisoners' dilemma") you see that unless there is a consensus that people cooperate, it is often to an individual's advantage to be greedy or self-serving.  However, if there is a consensus to cooperate and follow certain rules of behavior, then every one benefits and most every person in that society has a much better quality of life than even the strongest most ruthless self-server in a non-consensual "society".

The pioneers of new religions, those who sacrifice self-interest in order to follow a higher level of rules for cooperative behavior, despite the fact that the rest of society opposes them, are the ones who eventually bring about that higher level of cooperation and therefore general prosperity for the rest of the population.  Eventually, most of the population is following these rules and agrees that they are "just common sense if you want to live in a decent  civilization."  Whether or not the believe in the deity or the religion, they are following consensual, society-and-individual-strengthening behaviors which were originally brought into common practice by religion.
The problem we see now are partly due to there being such a huge human population on the earth. In the competition for resources, including human resources, the various religious groups, while somewhat internally cohesive, are at odds with each other.  Meanwhile, advances in science have brought us powerful technologies which can be developed and used either for the improvement of life, or for its degradation and destruction.  Unless all the nations, cultures, races and religions can learn to cooperate, the conflicts will continue to the point of a world wide disaster which could make the world wars look like a football match in comparison.
I believe that, once again, the bar for cooperative behavior is being raised by an emerging religion, and that many of its principles (like equality of the sexes and of all races, elimination of prejudice, and universal education) are becoming accepted as the norm by civilized people everywhere.