“Organized religion came of age...to fill many roles, not the least of which was the justification of power for the ruling elite. The ‘divine right of kings’ is not the invention of early-modern European monarchs. In fact, every chiefdom and state society known to archaeologists from around the world, including those in the Middle East, near East, Far East, North and South America, and the Polynesian Pacific islands, jutified political power through divine sanction, in which the chief, pharaoh, king, queen, monarch, emperor, sovereign, or ruler of whatever title claimed a relationship to God or the gods, who allegedly anointed them with the power to act on behalf of the divinity.”
Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil, pg.33-34
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