Why Do People Need Religion?

[Mudhammam]

The brain is hardwired for mythologizing the sense data it receives

I wouldn't go as far. It's hardwired to feel special by being part of some select group. In this sense every secular ideology can take up the role of religion as well. It already happened with the more prominent ideologies of the 20th century.

Where religion comes in with a vengeance, is the fear of death and the desire to meet one's deceased loved ones again.

Sure, but the brain fabricates as a matter of necessity. It only stores a small amount of information in comparison to all of the data that it is constantly bombarded with, which it then connects with other events and memories that actually share no objective relation; when these are recalled, they're often distorted and reconstructed in new contexts. The very idea that there is a single, individual ego behind the eyeballs which is free to think and act as it chooses is a mythology, and one we cannot really detach from except in moments of philosophical contemplation.