I always thought it was just an easier comfort for some people. Religion is always tied in with faith or believing in something and to some people that is easier for them or gives them some hope in the world. There's a lot of people afraid of death - despite everyone will eventually die. Some find it easier to accept or something to believe in that if they're good to others in life, they won't sit in a hole in the ground without being conscience, just rotting away. Instead, they feel they'll be in some euphoric place where there is no pain and their life can continue on. Sure, there are people who are egotistical behind religion, claiming their religion is better or if you are of a different following such as Christian =/= Orthodox Christian and then you have someone talking down on the other for not following the 'right' version, ect. That's their problem but I've always personally seen it as people needing/wanting that extra hope, wanting some sort of reassurance/comfort that they won't be a rotting corpse in the group. I've never really seen it as egotistical except for the small minority that boast about everything they do with their religion and go out of their way to try and shove their own ego down any throat they possible can.

Whether or not people rot in a hole until the earth gets destroyed or go to Heaven/Paradise/ any other comforting name -- is up to that individual person. I'm not going to argue if it's real or not. Just personally, I think only a small minority of humans think they're so good that they go to a type of Heaven while the majority find it as a comfort or an easier acceptance for life after death.

You extend this diagnosis only far enough to encapsulate religion.

Religiosity is just another form of anchoring and terror management, a prophylactic, the most prevalent form, but one of an infinite number which are engaged in on a daily basis by everybody.

What can we say when confronted by the vast meaninglessness of our existence, when we tilt our heads upwards and see the puppet strings wrapped around our every movement and thought, when we recognize that the universe is a play without a plot?

We can say that it will get better, that we will make a go of it on our own, that the future will be worthwhile, that we give our own lives meaning, that this project in which I am engaged is my meaning until its completion when my next project will begin.
All the way through we repeat these mantras until we are confronted with the reality of our being fleshy puppets, decaying bodies with decaying minds draped over decaying bones.

This is the lesson the vast majority of people learn and eventually repress, either through an unequivocating quest for truth or through a fit of depression.
Yet we all return to the stage and resume our positions, for the show must go on.

What else can we do, aside from opt out entirely? Say that a God made this all possible and that he loves us, cares about us, and that he will make it all better.
This we say, this we believe, come Hell or an inoperable tumour.

Everything the ego makes us do is in order to maximize its chances of survival, what greater threat to the survival of the ego could there be than the will to die of the mind it co-exists with?

The ego created the greatest system of false hope known for the purpose of keeping us as far away from the end of a self fashioned noose or the pointy end of a blade turned inward.

Everyone is guilty of this, not just the religious.
The only ones who are not guilty of this are no longer among us.

Eli wrote You extend this diagnosis only far enough to encapsulate religion.

Religiosity is just another form of anchoring and terror management, a prophylactic, the most prevalent form, but one of an infinite number which are engaged in on a daily basis by everybody.

What can we say when confronted by the vast meaninglessness of our existence, when we tilt our heads upwards and see the puppet strings wrapped around our every movement and thought, when we recognize that the universe is a play without a plot?

We can say that it will get better, that we will make a go of it on our own, that the future will be worthwhile, that we give our own lives meaning, that this project in which I am engaged is my meaning until its completion when my next project will begin.
All the way through we repeat these mantras until we are confronted with the reality of our being fleshy puppets, decaying bodies with decaying minds draped over decaying bones.

This is the lesson the vast majority of people learn, either through an unequivocating quest for truth or through a fit of depression.
Yet we all return to the stage and resume our positions, for the show must go on.

What else can we do, aside from opt out entirely? Say that a God made this all possible and that he loves us, cares about us, and that he will make it all better.
This we say, this we believe, come Hell or an inoperable tumour.

Everything the ego makes us do is in order to maximize its chances of survival, what greater threat to the survival of the ego could there be than the will to die of the mind it co-exists with?

The ego created the greatest system of false hope known for the purpose of keeping us as far away from the end of a self fashioned noose or the pointy end of a blade turned inward.

Everyone is guilty of this, not just the religious.
The only ones who are not guilty of this are no longer among us.

I think this has to be the realest and the most deep post I've ever seen in forum history.