If, hypothetically speaking, religion is designed to keep mankind on a stable footing evolutionarily, then different lifestyles would probably be needed at different times of mankind's history.  Therefore religions which seem useful views of the universe and behaviour in 1500 BC would have little appeal to man in 1500 AD, and the religion of the middle ages would need updating for the man of today.  The fundamentalist view of God as an arbitrary, jealous and severe tyrant in the Old Testament was already superceded by the view of God as loving father promoted by Jesus 2,000 years ago.

On the other hand, at that time, nothing was said against slavery, even by a humanitarian such as Christ.  Slavery was even practiced legally in the West up to only a few decades ago, and still occurs in many other parts of the world.  From just this one example, it should be clear that different parts of the world have evolved at different rates, and different religions have arisen with a natural appeal to the peoples of those times.

In our time, much mental illness is still seen in the view of medicine as a personality disorder which can be overcome by individual effort.  There are already over 50 differing schools of psychology, from the behaviourists and sociologists to the Jungians and Freudians, all of which take different views as to the real cause of neurotic, compulsive, obsessive or delusional states of mind.  It is only in the last few years that the brain has become one of the "usual suspects" as the real cause, the real contributor, to most, if not all, forms of mental illness.

Astonomy has leaped from the primitive view of the universe as a sphere with its center being the Earth to our more modern one of the Earth as a tiny, insignificant speck in an infinitely large creation.  Today there is still the puzzle of where the other 99% of the universe is to be found if the laws of physics are to be believed.  There is still no agreement over the true nature of matter or the fundamental energies behind the Grand Unified Theory.

The study of life has revealed that perhaps all forms of life do have common ancestors, but the theory of evolution was only devised and accepted in the 1800's.  Even then, there was strong resistance to it, but generally Darwin's theories sold well, and six revised editions of The Origin of Species were published in his lifetime alone. 

With technology, the rate of progress was relatively slow until the last 60 years or so; Babbage devised a perfect computer in 1835, complete with storage, printer and CPU, but found very little support, especially from the advanced minds who could have authorised adequate funding.  There was not the mass uptake of his ideas as there had been of Darwin's, another thinker who lived at the same time. 

So from all this it starts to become apparent that both man's mental capacity and his view of the universe has expanded, at different rates, throughout history, on any subject that can be mentioned, and that the mental level of all men of one time is not the same.  Also, that one level of understanding is needed before graduation to the next higher level, where it will be improved upon by certain individuals, adopted by some, rejected by others, and so on. 

When a child is learning to read, they start with simple books, perhaps even pictures only, to prepare the brain for the concept of information being absorbed from shapes and images on paper.   This is a tricky concept: the very young child has no sense of the permanence of objects: if an object is hidden, it will not search for it, but just accept that it has vanished.  The issue of permanence has to be resolved before a much more advanced concept of shapes representing objects, and later, thoughts and ideas, can be successfully absorbed.

Language is, after all, a series of images which have become more and more abbreviated to handle smaller conceptual components, until the concept of words and sentences could be used.   Who would insist a child of three start reading Newton's Principia as a more worthy source of knowledge than Noddy and His Sixpences?   Children do not all learn at the same rate, and their predisposition to learning seems to be somehow built into their brain, and these differences between individuals, within reason, would not pose a problem for teachers, who tailor their lessons towards a general trend of progressive learning. Obviously special needs will exist at times, but even then, the overall aim is still to go from the simple to the more complex, within the limits attainable by the brain of each individual. There is room for diversity, and in that diversity you have the entire span of education and its differing levels and institutions: allowance is made for every variation and an appropriate method of education is designed especially for each one.

So to say that religion loses its value because of differences over the course of history is to deny it the benefit of the evolution of concepts which has helped every other form of human endeavour, including art, design, philosophy, sculpture, music, architecture, science, medicine, physics, literature, technology, law, government, business, communications, transport, education, social customs, pop music, manufacturing, chemistry and so on.  The deliberate slant shows a prejudice against the spiritual. 

Nobody would suggest that since at one point everyone believed the Earth was flat, the study of geology is now hopelessly tainted and disreputable, founded on a tissue of dogma and superstition. It was the best we could come up with at the time, and it took some enterprising individuals to disprove it: that's the whole theme of progress!  Education has its root in the Latin word "to bring out", supporting the view that concepts are not merely external facts to be memorised, but ideas and views of reality which can only emerge successfully from brains.  If this is true, they must also rely on a certain architecture within the brain as a foundation.  For example, by no means known to medicine or science can a genius be made from a person of a limited intellectual capacity.  It should be apparent from all this that the limits to thought are somehow part of the brain itself, and this would apply to periods of history as well as individuals, cultures and societies.

Religion essentially encapsulates man's concepts of his fundamental relationship to the rest of the universe.  The basic premise that there is a universal intelligence behind life, and that man's individual behaviour has a great bearing on his graduating towards or away from that universal intelligence, is a constant that runs throughout every religion from every age and society of the past, and has not changed.  Only the way it is presented and the ability of man to grasp something which by its very nature must be infinitely complex and subtle, just as the real world is, will change from generation to generation.

The problem certainly includes intolerance.   Christ advised mankind to "treat thy neighbour as oneself."  But this was not acted upon.  Revealed scriptures were looked upon as possessions of the individuals present at the time, subject, in the end, to the same selfishness and greed as can be seen in the business world today.  The endless attempts to convert the unbelievers were more to boost the numbers and make their religion a dominant one, perhaps capturing a handy piece of real estate or treasure or glory in the process as a not unwelcome side effect.

Is it really possible, assuming for a moment there is some form of higher intelligence somehow distributing information to brains properly attuned to it, that is, via revelation through prophets, saints, or gifted writers and artists, that it would arbitrarily distribute one creed to one group of people, and a totally different one to another, thus forever pitting different groups of believers forever against each other?  Is it so far-fetched to believe that all these changes have come about from the interpretations of the scriptures, often by individuals with a vested interest in the success of their own religion?

The core of each religion treats the individual as a key part of the cosmos; when understood properly it means that all mankind are brothers.   But even in the 21st century, there is opposition to this fundamental truth.   Man has not evolved spiritually because of a greater focus on technology and material wealth.  Spiritually he is not much different than the man of several hundred years ago, except he now lacks any kind of certainty. But can you imagine a society built on the medicine or technology in the time of the Pyramids? So why are modern intellectuals asked to believe that the cryptic stories, such as in the book of Genesis, somehow are to be taken literally? 

The backwards nature of religion today is deplorable.  Sometimes it is even used as an instrument of oppression, as by the Taliban, to reduce women to the role of sub-human beings, who cannot work, study, or leave their house without covering every inch of their body in black clothing.

In an age when man is inspecting the furthest reaches of history in space, through enormous telescopes, searching for mysterious energies at the very depths of matter, and hunting for the colossal store of worlds which physics indicates are permanently hidden from the five senses, why are we asked by the fundamentalists to believe in crude, primitive concepts of Heaven and Hell that even four year old children can find fault with?

Well-meaning, though short-sighted, individuals, all tried to make their faiths "better" than other faiths with a layer of miracles and dogma.  These do not detract from the fundamental teachings, but tended to create, by contrast, the non-believers as a disadvantaged and even dangerous enemy.   In all these cases, the true villain is man.  Man's selfishness, man's intellect, man's limited vision, man's tampering, man's meddling with a natural impulse.  Today, the same trait is causing chaos in its creation of vast business empires whose sole aim is to make money for a few people at the top, creating material slaves out of millions at the bottom, and demolishing crucial parts of the ecosystem in the process.

When looking at the true culprit behind the abuse of the fantastic potential which religion represents, we do not have to look too far.  Is the spirit of greed and competition and material plunder of the earth's resources a desirable alternative to the religious precepts, which, at least, hold a possibility of inspirational and altrusitic literature, if not behaviour?  If not, why the blame on religion?  Man's intellect and desire for superiority: the very opposites of the traits encouraged by all religions, is behind all the massacres, crimes, and inequalities of history.  Whether the flag has three lions, the cross of Jesus, or a dollar sign on it, the thinking behind it is much the same.

The ideals of religion, on the other hand, have been the small voices trying to set matters right, by suggesting the fundamental way we live our lives.  Today's 21st century society is based on the belief that money, science, and status rule. The result isn't much to shout about: decimation of wildlife and fishing stocks, melting of the icecaps, a massive hole in the ozone layer, political strife and turmoil in every country in the world, rocketing suicide rates, increasing degenerative brain disorders, addiction to drugs and alcohol pervading most Western countries, corrupt governments, increasing crime rates, and a third of the world's population (Sep. 2000 figures, World health Organisation) "living in extreme poverty". The world's entire oil stocks are due to run out in 2020, after no more than a century and a half of petrol-based transport. Without petrol, the entire UK was brought to a standstill in September, 2000 in under three days.

Add to that dozens of armed conflicts spread across the world and a total of perhaps one hundred million lives lost through wars in the 20th century, and there you have it...you do the adding up.

The result of this might be that young teenagers would fail to see the point in life at all: reading just the facts above would be enough, and would commit suicide not as a result of any particular pressure, but as a response to the alternative of living in a world free of any spiritual dimension whatsoever.  This is happening now, especially in leading countries such as Canada and the USA.  Some disaffected youths also take action against their classmates, in a killing spree, before turning the guns on themselves: their actions are those of brains which are no longer a part of the evolutionary development.  They are off the rails, over the edge; but in a moral vaccum, they go unnoticed until the fateful day.

Another result might be the free reign for charlatans, conmen, pyramid salesmen, cultists, pyschotic megalomaniacs and the power-hungry, to monopolise the attention and energy of millions and millions of earnest seekers after truth, who are waylaid this way and that by nonsensical creeds and cults, in their search for information about their own soul.  The phoney gurus, bead materialisers, and millionaire holy ones can fool even bright, lucid minds, such as happened with the Beatles, because the availability of factual, proven information on their own soul is completely absent.  In the absence of any established, sensible religion in accordance with the current intellectual level, the seeker after truth is vulnerable to a variety of tricksters much as the population of only a few generations ago would risk their neck on the recommendations of quacks and snake oil salesmen because of the lack of any formalised principles of medicine.   These vultures gradually disappeared once medicine became an accepted branch of scientific study.

Another result would be the eagerness to proceed into world wars, as brains slowly lose their hold on reality, becoming more and more attached to material greed and wealth.  Crime, degenerative disorders, moral decay, senseless pressures, death from overwork, and a falling away of life's greatest and most natural pleasures, in favour of amassing money, and servicing the mortgage and the bank loan, are all a result of our failure to evaluate religious principles as the proper evolutionary device of the evolving mind.