Politicians praise religion for keeping citizens on the straight and narrow. Theocracies are the ultimate end of the institutionalization of this belief. In a theocracy, religious belief and social order are one. It preserves social order which develops through the ages of cultural evolution. It acts as a cultural ratchet, permitting the development of additional social order while forbidding backsliding.
Religion makes concrete to the people that hugely complex abstraction known as society.
The sum of social relations is too manifold, abstract, and subtle to grasp directly, and the demands made of individuals by society too stringent for easy acquiescence. A society therefore must be represented to its members by some emblem of its scope and authority, such as a totem. We see here a striking example of circular thinking. It is highly misleading for any theory of the origins of religion to stipulate that the existence of some sort of powerful god-like societal intelligence is required in order for that society's citizens to be able to contemplate of the possible existence of gods. Besides that, the facts the argument uses are clearly in error.