For people who desperately cling to life, religion asserts a potentially wonderful existence after death. Assuming you jump through the right hoops.

To allow people to be stupid. If you cannot think or read well or if you are just incredibly insecure, not believing yourself, then religion fills the hole. God makes you great and the devil is why you fail. No where do you come into play with rational thought.
Yes that is it. Religion removes rational thought and yes allows a government to control us via their religion and the stupid sheep.

I think the first purpose of Religion was the first form of governmental control to be used on a population. When you instill the belief in a "god" you can then set down rules. Once the belief system is ingrained you can start to have more control over people.

When you cut through all the high brow justifications, about fear of death, making us feel part of something, control of people, populations, disease, and all the rest, I've come to think that religion at heart is a business. The customers are the gullible believers. The product is an intangible load of nonsense that can never be proved or disproved. Look at any sizeable religion and what do you find? Money and wealth. It's a fraudulent business that takes the money but never has to worry about unhappy customers because no one ever comes back from the dead to say they were sold a crock of crap. If prostitution is the world's oldest business, then religion runs a close second. In my older years I've stopped thinking of religion existing for all kinds of fancy psychological and philosophical reasons, and come to realize that's nothing more than legal fraud, with profit as its purpose.

I think that it's purpose is to give us purpose. I wrote a paper on that my senior year of high school and got an A with lots of + marks after. That's the best grade I ever got.

Religion has many functions, and the inability of anti-theistic approaches to offer a full complement of alternatives is one of the reasons religions still persist despite the Enlightenment. One of these functions is the deferment of the hope of Justice.

We live in a very unfair and unjust world. Society requires that the majority of its citizens conform to preset standards. Religion offers the hope (a false hope in my opinion) that the balance of injustice will be offset at a future time. That the rich do not in fact have an unfair advantage over the poor and oppressed. A judgment awaits all.

We know these ideas are crap, but what do we offer in their place? The non-theistic community should be at the forefront of establishing justice in the here and now. We all have a responsibility to be true humanists.

To provide a sense of cultural conformancy and cohesion, and to counteract fear of death and the loss of the superego.

I would guess; to maximize the effects of imagination. When life is harsh, which it often is, or just isn't giving us what we think we deserve; imagination is a refuge.
Like any players of D&D will tell you, it's more fun the more people who plays along with the fantasy. It feels more real the more people keep insisting it is. Some people can speak confidently and are payed - sometimes exorbitant sums - to strengthen the shared, oh so comforting, delusion where you are the hero(ine), beloved by mystical forces and all wishes will come true.

Seems obvious to me. No one who ever argued in favor of religion has failed to fall back on "wouldn't it be nice if it was true"; as if that was the whole point. As if belief is the act of picking whatever fantasy you want to be true and not what the evidence proves.

To provide a simple explanation for how, why and when.

Well my opinion religion does two thing attempts to answer question we don't have answer for and secondly to control the population.

The purpose of religion is pretty much the same as the purpose for Santa Claus. Parents tell their children about Santa Claus in order to induce them to be good, so as to get on Santa's "Nice" list, and avoid the "Naughty" list.

Religion is meant to scare people -- telling them they'll go to Hell unless they do what the church leader tells them. A good church leader (okay, that may be a contradiction in terms) will focus on ethics. However, many church leaders tell their followers to give them money -- making a scam out of the Jesus myth.

Control.

I think it is a pre-scientific method of making sense of the world around us. I don't believe the early founders of the world's religions had evil, or manipulative goals in mind. They were just trying to figure things out. Of course, religion has been subverted by those who do have evil intentions of control.

It herds sheeple.

The discipline you are trying to describe is called philosophy with strong emphasis on ethics. In science a PhD means Doctor in Philosophy. Philosophy and science has always been interlinked. Buddhism is considered atheist being more philosophy (self-aware) than religion. The Japanese are considered atheist because Shinto is focused on nature rather than a single deity.
When a supreme being emerges and is recognized as the head of a philosophical thinking, it becomes a religion, ceases to be objective hence it becomes a way to control the weak minded masses.

Answer = So you don't feel small!

The concept of “Gods” began as an attempt to explain the unexplainable. As beliefs deepened and became entrenched, kings and other elevated men leverage these “beliefs” to control the gullible

To delude, divide, confuse, and control.

Control.

It appears to me religion has served many purposes at different points in history, in diifferent cultures. It seems to have evolved as a mechanism for power, control, and in some cases, money.

To assign credit or blame to/for events that could not yet be explained by science that was commonly understood. Or that people choose to be willfully ignorant of.

Why is the sky blue? God made it that way.
Why? God works in mysterious ways

And then, of course, power and control.

It's sauve for the original authors.

Who knows? Religion came to be from an animal on this planet called a human being. Just knowing that gives me plenty reason to believe it's originality was self centered.

It's how the first athiests controlled the gullible.

Send me 10% of your income and I will tell you.. you just have to "Believe" and have "faith".. trust me.. ??