"Religion only exists because we yearn the feeling of community " No, community is only part of it, and frankly, that we lived in communities beforehand is not

"Religion only exists because we yearn the feeling of community " No, community is only part of it, and frankly, that we lived in communities beforehand is not relevant. Religion is the 'foundational philosophy concerning nature of who we are' that transcends most other subjects - i.e. it's metaphysics at it's core. The 'community' part arises only in the same way secular civic and legal issues arise in our own communities. The misunderstanding is partly evident in your comment about 'very religious people'. You're conflating 'people who say they are hardcore believers in XYZ' with necessarily 'very religious' people. Fred Rogers - a trained priest, started 'Mr Rogers Neighbourhood' and did that for 50 years to help communicate more intelligent ideals to children. He didn't mention the word 'God' a single time on air, you wouldn't know directly that he was 'deeply religious'. Fred was not 'anti science' or someone we might normally conflate with 'hyper religious'. As I indicated, Barack Obama is religious. He literally worked for the Church for a few years at the start of his career. One might argue his whole career was a bit missionary. Certainly Jimmy Cater's life - and Presidency - was that. They're also not what we would consider 'super religious' bent on 'magical thinking' - but Fred Rogers, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama are who I would think of for example when contemplating who are 'the most religious people'. So in a way, the nature of the comment implies a kind of 'straw man' - plucking out those with the most specific and material orthodox 'beliefs' about a system, the kind for whom the parables are meant to be understood more literally because maybe they're not so capable of the more enlightened bits - and having them representative of 'the most religious' - which is a little unfair. The plebes are going to be prone to 'magical thinking' no matter what happens. 'Scientific materialism' as it applies to the nature of life etc. is a constant stream 'magical thinking' - the dissonance between 'physics' and 'morality' is a chasm completely too wide for anyone to seem to cross with sound thinking. And finally - every modern politicized subject, even those adhered to by 'intelligent people' is chock full of 'magical thinking'.