"Transcendental social" is a phrase used in the article I found yesterday from New Scientist.  Because we are such social beings, we have developed religion out of a need for camaraderie and to share our imaginations.

This is something I didn't need a scientist to tell me. But at least it explains how and when we developed these skills of using our imaginations.

I've always said to my kids, that other people talk about God and an afterlife, well what about other lifeforms. Where's their God, where's their afterlife? These are the weird things I think about when I look at my dog, Ginger. She's not worried about what's going to happen to her when she dies. She just lives for today. But she doesn't have an imagination.

People practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imaginations.  From the article:

Maurice Bloch believes our ancestors developed the necessary neural architecture to imagine before or around 40-50,000 years ago, at a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age.

At around the same time, tools that had been monotonously primitive since the earliest examples appeared 100,000 years earlier suddenly exploded in sophistication, art began appearing on cave walls, and burials began to include artefacts, suggesting belief in an afterlife, and by implication the "transcendental social".

Just the word "transcendental" means  anything "without outflows," ie, free of the three marks of greed, anger and delusion.   Which I find kind of funny, considering how I feel about the delusion of religion. 

I "get" so many people need religion, it gives them great comfort.  I'm still against children being indoctrinated into something they have no choice to follow when they're children.  Kids can't make informed decisions about these things.  They'll root for Daddy's favorite football team, because that's what daddy likes.  They don't have a clue on why they like that team. Geez, why not let  your kids make stock picks for you.  Or pick a lawyer.  They just aren't informed enough to make those decisions.  But they can be lead blindly into religion with no choice, except  to follow their parents imaginations.