Logical Reason #2: Religion is a cultural fabrication used to assuage fears and explain phenomena.

    According to my research, historians and anthropologists have yet to identify a culture or community that lacks religion.  Religion here does not necessarily mean a formal, organized institution, but rather a belief system used to connect a group of people and explain phenomena.  Clearly, human nature tends toward religiosity.  Whether people worship nature, one god, many gods, or a powerful leader, people like to have something to idolize.  
   Some people argue that this universal need for belief is evidence of our strong connection to the divine.  As an atheist, I see it as just the opposite.  We like to explain things.  Before the rise of scientific thought and methodology, societies understandably used supernatural explanations for things like natural disasters, disease, birth, death and countless other events.  They didn't know better.  So, who could blame them?
   We, however, do know better.  We know the causes of thunder, flood, earthquakes, illness, babies etc.  We don't know everything, of course, but we are learning SO much ALL the time that it's becoming difficult to find phenomena that don't have a scientific explanation.  But I'm already touching on reason #3. Stay tuned for that.
   For a few years, I taught middle school.  I taught at a great, altruistic alternative school for "high-needs" or "high-risk" adolescents.  My core subject was science, but I got to teach a variety of electives.  One subject I taught was Greek Mythology.  I was struck by some of the similarities between the myths and stories in the Bible.  For example, Pandora and Eve both unleashed evil into the world by disobeying God.  Both histories tell of an epic flood that wiped out most of the human population.  Prophecies and wars and murders played major roles in Greek myths and in Bible stories.
   These similarities lead me (and many others) to believe that religions evolve.  They borrow from each other.  They mutate to fit the times and the culture.  But inherently, they are all simply attempts to explain the unexplainable, to enforce laws, to build community, to justify behaviors, to create meaning and hope of an after life, and ultimately, to give people something to believe in.