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They served their purpose in prehistory (holding Egypt together for several millennia), but we just don't need such social control systems any more.

I'm not so sure about that. Without God, you must explain moral codes in practical terms. The most basic (lie, cheat, steal)are easy enough. Some of the less obviously explained moral codes are both very important and not easy to explain the practicality thereof. (Envy, gluttony, etc.)

Humans are not fundamentally morally superior now as compared to 5,000 years ago. The only thing that has provably changed in that time is the societal indoctrination methods, and churches are the majority of those methods.

Churches, God, and Sin are ways of imposing codes of behavior that have been show to be successful over several millennia. The concepts of 'God' and 'Sin' are necessary to impose these codes of behavior, because you can't argue with God and you better do what he tells you.

If you were once again a child, or once again a teen, or once perhaps still are, how often do you recall arguing with your parents over some matter? That you were unconvinced by their stance?

They had at least two decades more of life experience than you to learn life lessons, and perhaps you might remember they were correct much more often than they were wrong.

But you still argued with them, because you didn't understand the value of their experience and you had to learn some of the same lessons the hard way, just as they did.

Well, assigning the most basic of these life lessons as commandments from God, with whom you may not argue, and who will punish you eternally for consistently failing to obey him, removes them from the 'negotiable' list completely. Do not lie. Do not steal. Do not murder. Don't try to screw your neighbors wife. Don't make babies with someone you're not committed to. Don't be envious, etc.

Any one of these things, when broken, will gain the perpetrator a momentary advantage that is plain for anyone to see. In the long run all are detrimental to both the perpetrator and the society around him. Convincing everyone that God would burn you in hell for eternity for doing any of them made folks decide that the momentary gain wasn't worth the fire.

Much less obvious is the long term benefit to society when everyone obeys these rules. Both explaining the full logic of why that is so, and getting the student to accept your and societie's experience is a damn near impossible task with an empty slate of a child or a hormone-driven teenager.

Further, there are countless adults who fail to grasp the utility of the religious rules and traditions we live by. If they are religious, they may yet follow the rules and their lives will be satisfactory, and their impact on society a net positive.

If they are not religious, and do not accept that those traditions and rules exist for reasons they do not grasp, then they will behave as they see fit- leaving ruin in their wake, as lessons learned hundreds or thousands of years ago are tossed out as the baby with the bathwater.

So, allow me to try to summarize if you've made it this far:

Religion is a way of passing down millennia of hard-learned lessons in a way that leaves no room for argument.
I would go into the lessons besides 'don't lie, cheat, murder or steal', except you might argue with me about those topics, proving my point while convincing yourself I'm anachronistic.

Western civilization lies atop a massive carefully-built structure of unnatural behaviors that enable the tremendous intellectual and material wealth we enjoy today.

That behavioral structure is so carefully crafted and re-enforced that we forget that it is unnatural, and in forgetting that, we disparage the tools with which it was carefully built and must be maintained.

We are not naturally better than folks 5,000 years ago. We are only better because of the methods our ancestors derived to make us internalize their hard-learned lessons early in life.

Incidentally I do believe in God, but that doesn't prevent me from seeing the anthropology.

Zen's an appealing form of Buddhism - pure, simple, difficult, uncluttered; if I were a Buddhist that's probably the form I'd pursue. But Buddhism's much broader than that, picking up all sorts of local cultures and pre-Buddhist religions and random other stuff along the way. Tibetan Buddhism incorporates a lot of Tibetan Bon religion, with all kinds of scary demons, mountain spirits, prayer flags, and the like. The Pure Land Buddhists worship Amitbha Buddha, also called Amida, hoping to enter the Pure Land in the next life as a result of their devotions; you'll see Jodo and Hongwanji missions spreading that. In a rather opposite direction, there are the Nichiren Shoshu people who chant their Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo to get their wishes granted. I'm inclined to suspect that Zen is more austere than what the Buddha himself believed...