If the chicken came first, wouldn't the egg be a lot smaller?

There are a number of articles on the internet relating to an archaeological discovery in Turkey named Gobekle Tebe.

Apparently archaeologists have uncovered a pre-historic temple at this site. While that is interesting, there is something even more interesting to be learned about Gobekle Tebe.

It seems the temple pre-dates everything – even agriculture. What’s so interesting about that? For a long time archaeologists, anthropologists and historians have asserted that communities, even civilization itself, developed to accommodate the needs of agriculture. Now, it seems, that everything, communities, civilization and even agriculture itself, might be by-products of a temple’s requirements.

That suggests that humans were religious beings first then other facets of civilization like government, military, engineering, law, medicine and all the other elements descended from that.

That could very well explain why societies that attempt to move religion away from their center always fail. They fail because human beings are religious beings and cannot function collectively or individually without it. Religion presents the common denominator or central focus of civilization.

Tinkering with fundamental elements of religion may be a very destructive thing to do. One such element comes to mind – marriage. This seems to be element (in one form or another) of religions everywhere. Perhaps changing its definition may remove a common denominator and prove fatal for any culture that dares to make such a change.