The Essence of Religion

[Religion] is quite simple at bottom. There is nothing really secret or complex about it, no matter what its professors may alleged to the contrary. Whether it happens to show itself in the artless mumbo-jumbo of a Winnebago Indian or in the elaborately refined and metaphysical rites of a Christian archbishop, its single function is to give man access to the powers which seem to control his destiny, and its single purpose is to induce those power to be be friendly to him. That function and that purpose are common to all religions, ancient or modern, savage or civilized, and they are the only common characters that all of them show. Nothing else is essential.

--H. L. Mencken, Treatise on the Gods, 1930

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