Fear, power, control.

Yes, it does. I think it comes from being aware and thinking what amazing things there are and believing something powerful must of say made the sun etc.

It was our primitive fear of the unknown in the early stages of our human development. Now it is the fear of the complexity of modern life, IMHO

Religion comes from the inability to admit that you don't know something.

Fear and stupidity.

Egyptology

Mythology. Its fundamentally a form of story telling. The Abrahamic religions were very violent in every possible. Helped them a lot to spread.

Religion uses the fear of death to control people. The promise of a hereafter. And it builds from there.

If there is one single area religion has done the most damage, people's sexuality. I see that reflected in comments here, people who still suffer sexual taboos based on religious teashing... I feel sorry for them, and sometimes I just want to shout, "GET OVER IT."

While spirituality emerges spontaneously from the human body-mind synthesis, religion is almost always a social mechanism created by egotists who say they're enlightened, but really just want to exercise self-anointed authority over people - usually women.

Ignorance, people needed answers to questions like where did we come from

Man

I like Christopher Hitchens take on this. God didn't show up in China where they could write and keep a record of this, he turns up in the most god forsaken shit hole on earth full of illiterate people that nobody else gave a toss about.