A propos the item on the dysfunctionality of religious societies in comparison to secular ones, Huw Price (Philosophy, Sydney) calls to my attention the following sharp observations of Hume:
How happens it then...if vulgar superstition be so salutary to society, that all history abounds so much with accounts of its pernicious consequences on public affairs?
Factions, civil wars, persecutions, subversions of government, oppression, slavery; these are the dismal consequences which always attend its prevalency over the minds of men.
If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miseries which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of.
--Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, XII, 220
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