Religion is a feature of cultural evolution that, among other things, addresses anxieties created by cultural evolution; it helps keep social change safe from itself.
Interpretation
Religion serves to manage the anxieties that arise from changes in culture and society.
In this quote, Robert Wright explains that religion is a product of cultural evolution, designed to address the uncertainties and anxieties that social changes can bring. By providing a framework for understanding and coping with these changes, religion plays a critical role in ensuring that the transitions in society remain stable and constructive rather than chaotic and destructive.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of religion in society, one might quote this to illustrate its function in managing social change.
Think of it : zillions and zillions of organisms running around, each under the hypnotic spell of a single truth, all these truths identical, and all logically incompatible with one another : 'My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death'. And you are one of those organisms, living your life in the thrall of a logical absurdity.
Understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that—in many realms, not just sex—we’re all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer.
...human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their ignorance of the misuse.
I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.
faith without doubt is addiction
To live is to feel oneself lost.
Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.
The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.
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