Shamus explains that religion is not necessarily to do with gods, and that many cultures past and present view religion and law as identical.

Transcript

So when people think of religion, what jumps to the front of the mind is usually something to do with a deity - theism of some sort, and that's just not factual at all. You get all sorts of non theistic religions - you have Buddhism, Jainism - two of the three strands of Buddhism - Taoism, you even get non-theistic Quakers, even atheistic Christianity, and any serious student of Confucianism models that as a religion.

So the word "religion" literally comes from the Latin "relege" which means to bind back. The same term in most other cultures and languages is used for religion and law because it essentially means the same thing. In Arabic that term is "din" transliterated "D-I-N". It's used interchangeably whether you talk about religion or law.

There was a comparative theologian - I cannot place his name right now - he basically says if you spoke to the people of ancient Mesopotamia or ancient Pharoahic Egypt or the Aztecs and you told them that they live under compulsory religion, they wouldn't know what the fuck you're talking about. To them it was just law.

"Torah" as well means "law".

Absolutely. Look at the Mosaic law and you say right what were they doing there. They were coming up with a code
with standards for dress and for diet no basically trying to apply a homogeneous law to a diverse group of people.

Religion is a social engineering scheme.

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