I'd say I agree with this, but I would also suggest that the concept of a god came about as an explanation for events we couldn't easily explain. Since the only agent of change that we knew of was ourselves, it makes sense that we'd project our own identity as an explanation.

Maybe people in ancient times loved stories. Someone made up a good, entertaining story with supernatural gods and goddesses, and others continued the story over the years and added to it. Children hearing the stories would tend to take them as truth, so myths would be built up.

Even today some of the old stories make great entertainment, and we also have our modern stories with godlike characters, Superman for example.

Interesting article. I wonder how they know that people were athiest in the distant past. My understanding is that writing hadn't even been developed then. I'm doubtful that cave drawings are sufficient evidence of the beliefs systems ancient people held.

I agree with their assessments of the influences that inspire religious beliefs in modern people. Among the people I know, I've observed that beliefs in God tend to meet some need that they feel incapable of meeting themselves. God is a great scapegoat as well.

This was a good read!

It starts with our hardwire to see patterns in nature (true or false ones).
Then evolutionary mechanisms will reward those that react even to false alarms based on those patterns (the grass moving can be a tiger or wind, but the result can be save energy not running or save life depending o your decision).
So we will be hardwired to interpret nature phenomenon and try to act upon it, negotiating with nature as we can negotiate with our neighbor. That's how primitive religion starts (and you can make pigeons and mice start acting upon false patterns too).
The came the organization of a common religion that build a primitive but essential social glue, expanding the "family" loyalty to a "same group loyalty", this enables bigger groups and bigger armies to be built, so religions that promote better social organization (remember, no social or scientific studies exist on this period) by trial and error will generate stronger societies and by evolutionary mechanisms they will grow in numbers and territory. And the people that can conform most with the group are selected also, as there is power in numbers.

Then when the world is religious, you start implanting on kids since young age this concept, and even if they don't believe anymore we are still influenced by those ideas. Understand that a lie told a thousand times became a natural truth.
On the view of a religious person, the religion is true as a natural fact. The emotional link is so strong that an attack to a group of ideas is taken as a personal attack. Here rationality goes nuts, because the sense of religion is part of the definition of the self.

This combined with the power that being a religious leader/example gives, generate a retrofeed where people abuse this power, the population gives the power and teaches the next generation that only religious people are good and worthy of trust.

In the end even the non believers are influenced by religion as we all have those areas where we believe something without thinking about it. A good example is the discussion about Utilitarianism versus deontology so popular in Marvel and DC movies, a lot of people react emotionalyy, supporting one side, by religious or cultural reasons.
The most believing that if you do good things, good things will happen and the problem will be solved, this is a false pattern analogous to religion, and a lot of people, even non believers see this.

In summary, we are evolutionary hard wired for false pattern/alarm reaction and group conformity, we evolved to survive like this, it is not some hundred years of science that will change this. Of course rationality can show us the way, but there is always that voice in the back of the head trying to bring us back to this "natural" behavior.

Okay.

Peer pressure.