Personally, for example, religion seems to me to be a similarity of a father-mother with regard to humanity. When a person is small, what is good and what is bad is told to him by his father-mother (do not listen to others, do not kill, do not lie, do not jade and do not kill). When he grows up, he no longer trusts his parents very much, but tries to find the answer himself. Well, when he finally grows up, he sets priorities on his own, on his own life experience. And humanity as a whole.
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to some extent. A society with a mythological consciousness (pagan religion) is a child, there are taboo systems for him, because it is not possible - otherwise they will be punished, a society Christianized - the child is rejuvenated, the threat of punishment goes backwards, instead of taboo, authority acts, causal relationships are explained. Then we grow up further and through the criticism of religious rationalism we come either to Freudism, in which society is a rebellious teenager, who has denied all teachings and now lives by desires, or to Practicism - concrete actions are judged by a concrete outcome, without reasoning about correctness or wrongness. But from puberty with time, society also grows, coming to humanism, when there is a need to do good not because someone said so, but from their conscious choice. This is the beginning of adult life.