Despite our advancements, there are still a multitude of questions that science simply doesn’t have a sufficient answer for, and possibly never will. Not knowing the answers to these profound and existential questions can cause anxiety and stress in some individuals, but if they fill that knowledge gap with religion, spirituality, mysticism, or superstition, it suddenly becomes a lot less painful on their psyche. In short, some people need religion because they are unable to cope without it.

Our species simply hasn’t had enough time to be subjected to the kinds of selection pressures that would filter out such individuals. The opposite is probably happening, considering the strong correlation between people who have multiple children and people who identify as belonging to a certain religious sect or group. Perhaps it will always be a flaw of the human race, to seek out knowledge that we can’t understand and ascribe meaning to it so that we might make ourselves feel more important than we truly are in a vast cold universe.