Pragmatic use of religion's brainwashing.

 Religion does not only seeks and makes followers for a sake of vanity of its leaders but it is also serves as a policing tool that makes followers productive to their brainwashers. Especially in the past clergy was very prominent in society and prosperous too which is not without a good reason since many of the messages of prominent religions make people behave by threatening them with some kind of hell while promising reward of heaven for compliance. That created a system of clergy pacifying people and making them toil for the rulers and rulers in turn rewarding clergy with all the wealth and privilege for such a useful support  and contribution to their rule. It is especially bad to be an ordinary brainwashed person under such a system. I wrote much more about this in my book Mad Reality vs Aurelius.