If you mention God as being the best way to do anything (even if you are lying about it's existence to calm others), then i will question your belief in the existence of this God. Regardless of Jim Jones overall goal, the point is that he used religion to achieve them and as you admitted, so has others who actually were believers. The interpretation of religion can be twisted. Nothing else has to be expressed like us and probably can't because the conditions changed. Organisms still do well surviving without our mechanisms. There were others like us until we killed them because of competition. You still offered no reason for us needing to create art other than for communication purposes and recreating fictional realities based on our brains perception.
You can question my belief in the existence of god but any answer i give you would be totally irrelevant, i could question your belief in evolution but it would be totally irrelevant. Both concepts exist there effects are all that matter. EVERY concept can be twisted the teachings of darwin became eugenics which lead to social darwinism which has created more suffering than religion has. But has given no benefit to daily human life. Organism don't do well surviving without our mechanisms because survival is not enough, bare survival without improvement is a dead end that will lead to extinction. There are creatures older or just as old as us they went through the same climate changes and forced adaption as we did it still was not enough. they are now at our mercy. Humans, unlike animals are consciously trying to improve ourselves not just survive.
Tribes formed for protection, family relations, and business needs (resources) more than for religions affiliation. The need for cohesive structure led to rules and laws. As i said if you find structure in your religion, you can do what Jefferson did and omit the fantasy (even if you care not to talk about that). There are plenty of reasons for low birth other than the lack of religion. One has to do with the focus on education before having babies, and not popping out 10 kids to work the land. Still, how much a problem is it with the billions of people we have on this earth already? People are going to those lands willingly because of economic prosperity the same way they are coming to the States and even Jamaica. You even have Chinese people there. America is experiencing a decline in birth also. But religion didn't initiate the human birth process nor was it necessary to encourage it. Other animals don't require religion to procreate, but changing conditions affect them too.
Low birth rate is a huge problem for a native population, when you are importing large numbers of other people because sooner or later they are going to take control of your land and outbreed you. The real native people of america are an example of this, If northern europeans are not careful the same thing is going to happen to them. Jamaicans are under no threat of the chinese outbreeding them in Jamaica. Tribes formed for all those things but moved beyond simple social organization and religion arose. we don't require religion to procreate but religion spurs procreation and does encourage it.There are other reasons for low bith rate but lack of religion and the changing social values it created in northern europe is a reason the native people of those nations seem to be experiencing it. You cannot remove the unknowable from theist/non-theist religions, without it you have civil law and i have already told you why that is an inferior self motivating factor.
I'm not going to chat about my upbringing and prove how bad Brooklyn was, the point was to illustrate that it started out as an economic need for survival and turned bad. It's not like Jamaica didn't have the same issues. I wasn't accusing the church of taking part (even though some did), i asked where were they to put an end to it since they are so good add guiding our societies. Also, many who claimed to be of Christ (not churches but people) committed these acts.
I don't believe it was started out of a need for survival. in jamaica's case it was a need for survival for most drug dealers in america drug dealing is nothing more than easy money.The church does not have law enforcement powers anymore but the concept of god sure does seem to have reformatory powers.
Who said the white man was concerned about their religion? They were concerned with conquering under the banner of their religion the same as others have done. I'm thinking the fact that war is coming to your front door would do a lot in uniting a people. Religion hasn't done much to stop mans urge to conquer but civil conversation has but it's interesting how it's mostly underlying religious wars going on now. It's still based on survival because people don't want other cultures moving in taking their jerbz. Religion is just a cool catch phrase to mask the base motivation of an earth based organism trying to survive with scarce resources and turbulent economy by conquering and taking advantage of others. It hasn't helped the problem, it's only aided in masking it.
The native americans tried civil conversation with the us government how did that work out for them ? people tried talking to hitler how did that work out ? The reality is man is warlike religious or not and our wars are not based on survival anymore they are based on greed,ego and fear. what's going on in syria does not have shit to do with resources, the Buddhist genocide of the muslims in burma has nothing to do with survival. if you took religion away these people would still be fighting. Have you flipped through the O.T ?IF anything it reveals human nature not mask
it. The hospital came out of religion the concept of a code of laws came out of religion studies have shown that religious people are happier than non-believers. Do bad things come out of religion/theism ? sure but the good outweighs the bad by far.