Before, the law and religion were fused in one. Religious doctrine was legal doctrine, and the moral and ethical principles of religion were practically identical to day to day codes of ethics, behavior, and punishment.
Submission in religion was analogous to submission to the rule of law we consider today as essential for organized society or civilization.
Consider the popular sayings:
“Nobody is above the law.”
“Nobody is above God.”
Or,
“God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.”
From an evolutionary and ethological perspective, the abstraction of God has to be the alpha, as the abstraction of the law has to be the alpha. The alpha is a focal point of the collective, and submission to it keeps it functional and useful, for coordination and conflict minimization purposes.
Today, religion and the law are largely separated as in the separation of state and church mandated by the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
However, a complete and clearcut separation is impossible, as the law depends significantly on the cultural basis of the collective.
In other words, a code of law depends on a code of ethics and morality, and codes of ethics and morality are typically contained within religion.
Underlying all of the above is our own nature.
