It doesn't keep you irrational at all, where do you get this

Innovations is haulted by intellectual luddites called 'devout religious people'.

If you believe in God, you believe it has rational basis.

to describe religion as oppressive you'd logically apply the same to all human culture

You believe that God has explanatory power.

You believe that God causes you to travel into the afterlife.

It is no co-incidence that society has been moving into a secular post-cultural mode.

The vast masses of people dont need to be rational in the scientific sense

The masses are not naturally atheistic

Yeah, the masses of people don't need to be, but regardless religion is still irrational

It's broken down to having zero evidence, and purely being based upon "faith"

What doesn't have evidence?

God, afterlife, the whole bit...

Theism?

I think theism is the result of psychological evolution

Sure.

basically the amalgamation of the truest of all values

humans have a tendency towards hierarchy

I'm not talking about theism, I'm talking about religion

But you are making empirical claims based on psychology. These things misfire all the time.

humans cannot feel the same towards equals as they do to a divine power

define religion

explain @Deleted User

Have you heard of 'phantom limbs', where amputees still feel sensations as if they still had their limb?

The body is misfiring, even though it evolved this way.

Just because psychology evolved a certain way does not mean it exists empirically.

There a plenty of examples in psychology of sensory illusions.

There are misfires but this doesn't mean that the reaction itself has no evolutionary purpose

Again, you are confusing subjective purpose with objective empirical claims.

also, this relies on empirical observation, and religion isn't emperical for most people

Yes it is.

unless they have an experience like that

People literally think God will send them to Heaven. That's an empirical claim.

Which there is no evidence for.

Yes it is.

but look at the psychological mechanisms that would lead to that kind of thinking

The divine arbiter would decide whether their actions were meaningful enough to deserve heaven

this gives their actions meaning

I'm not saying that God doesn't give people meaning. I am say that it is based on sensory illusion.

As far as we can tell.

I worship my ancestors tbh