Religion and human prehistory

Christopher Hitchens

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody---not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms---had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). 

Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think---though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one---that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell (Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything).