[WS:] Not really. I am not sure what made you think so. I said that what religion is depends on how people use it. I do recognize multiple roles religion play in human society and stated so on this forum time and agian.
More specifically, I do agree with your point about the social importance of magic, which btw was elaborated by Bronislaw Malinowski in his ethnographic work, which served a very practical function akin to what modern risk management does - symbolic management of what is materially unmanageable.
Demonstrating this, however, was not the purpose of my posting. That purpose was a critique of radical atheism, which focuses on the denial of deity or other theological claims made by religions. I see this anti-religion as just another form of idealistic, if not religious, thinking. Their central theme is the phatic function of speech (if we say a certain way, this will have an effect in the material word). For that reason, theology and philosophy bore me to tears - they are mainly semantic arguments amounting to intellectual masturbation. Frequently, but not frequently admitted, their main phatic function is to show off the erudition of the speaker. High brow pissing contests, if you will.
Wojtek