Purpose of Organized Religion:***

Throughout all my theological studies, a question that I'm consistently asked is why is religion important. I'll be the first to admit that the very core of any religion is the connection between worshiper and deity. It is necessary that this relationship is personal and intimate. A consistent aspect of this relationship is supplication. Whether you call your deity Yahweh, Allah, God, or by some other name, you're speaking to your higher power. This is the core of continued conversion to one's faith, the manner that one seeks guidance and a common mediatory tool.
Despite this truth, religion is generally pushed as necessary. It is necessary to look at this need logically. If there is a deity that does listen to the litany of their followers, then it would make sense that there is a system of communication established. These communications are not linear, or one-way, but interactive. Both sides send and receive information. Across all religions, these interactions are riddled with directions for life.
With a population of the world being around 7 billion, and an estimated 86% of them are religious, there are roughly 6.02 billion religious individuals in the world. Thus, again, if deity speaks in reciprocation to those who communicate, then one can conjecture that over 6 billion people are receiving guidance from deity. This is, however, distinguishing that all religious individuals are either praying to no deity, the same deity under different names, or separate deities that all exist. With this being a religious blog, and for logical structures that will be explained later, it will be addressed under the view established by the two latter versions of communication and direction occurring.
The blessing of organized religion then comes into play. When individuals come together as an organized group, they are able to create community and continuity. Being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that there is a living prophet on the Earth. A prophet means that there is a signified person on earth given direction over the entire church. Seeing that most Christian churches do not have this, except Catholicism, and no centralized leader in other world wide church, such as Taoism and Hinduism. Because of this lack of structured world-wide communication, individuals are forced to rely solely on their own flashes of inspiration. When you put hundreds or thousands of these flashes of inspiration together, you have a unified vision in received messaging. This position, along with the community of supportive assistance included in religion, illustrates the necessity of organized religion.

*** These thoughts are just a fragment of a defense for the purpose of organized religion. It would take another couple thousand words to solidify this argument.