Secular societies reached large-scale cooperation through religion then discarded it

Evidence

With the benefit of time, when future historians look back at the course of human societies, they may see the prosocial religions as yet another crucial social transition—an intermediate cultural bridge between the small-scale human societies that dominated much of our evolutionary history and the complex secular societies emerging in parts of the modern world. These new institutions and traditions began to erode the foundations of religions with Big Gods. No doubt this is a complex question, and there are many unknowns. Yet there are indications that some societies with strong institutions and material well-being may have passed a threshold, no longer needing religion to sustain large-scale cooperation. In short: secular societies climbed the ladder of religion, and then kicked it away. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 560

Categorization

• XREF: This ladder-kicking thesis connects to the reader’s analytical framework — Rodrigues’ religious infrastructure in Japan being displaced by institutional secular authority parallels the threshold passage. — connects to: Muslim societies lacked Christianity’s church-state conflict driving secularism; The presumed secularity of South African governance was saturated with religious legacy; Secular society is the first major cultural rival to religiously organized cooperation — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 502
• QUESTION: What exactly constitutes the ‘threshold’ where institutions substitute for religious cooperation, and is it reversible?