I Was An Atheist By Third Grade

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44. But that's not "religion." That's Christianity and Islam.

Even Judaism doesn't formalize the idea of an afterlife, and while a number of religions encouraged their warriors by teaching that they would be glorified in the afterlife if they died in battle, even that isn't universal and the idea of something like Hell is quite rare outside of Christianity (and many believe it was bolted on to a synthesis of early Christianities around the time of the Council of Nicea few of which had the idea of Hell either).

The original comment to which I replied was positing that religion was invented to control people. That is demonstrably not accurate, because religion existed for tens of thousands of years before people started using it that way. It is more that the need of empires to control people drove religion in that direction than that religion itself drove people in that direction.

Religion is both much older and much more diverse than Christianity. Thinking Christianity is typical of religion would be like thinking a Rolls Royce is typical of cars.