What is the function of religion?

[Confused Ape]

There does seem to be some kind of psychological drive for something where many people are concerned. This isn't so odd, though, if the human brain is hardwired for religion.

The First Chapter Of The God Delusion is titled - A Deeply Religious Non-Believer.

The boy lay prone in the grass, his chin resting on his hands. He suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a heightened awareness of the tangled stems and roots, a forest in microcosm, a transfigured world of ants and beetles and even - though he wouldn't have known the details at the time - of soil bacteria by the billions, silently and invisibly shoring up the economy of the micro-world. Suddenly the micro-forest of the
turf seemed to swell and become one with the universe, and with the rapt mind of the boy contemplating it. He interpreted the experience in religious terms and it led him eventually to the priesthood. He was ordained an Anglican priest and became a chaplain at my school, a teacher of whom I was fond. It is thanks to decent liberal clergymen like him that nobody could ever claim that I had religion forced down my throat.

In another time and place, that boy could have been me under the stars, dazzled by Orion, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major, tearful with the unheard music of the Milky Way, heady with the night scents of frangipani and trumpet flowers in an African garden. Why the same emotion should have led my chaplain in one direction and me in the other is not an easy question to answer. A quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists. It has no connection with supernatural belief.

So, if it's possible to have quasi-mystical experiences, could there be a quasi religion which satisfies what the brain is hardwired for?

Naturalistic Paganism

As a result of our reliance on demonstrable evidence, a few tendencies emerge:

We tend to view deities as metaphorical, poetic, or psychological in some sense, and not as causal agents external to and independent of the individual. Thunder is external and independent, but the personification of thunder as Zeus, for example, is not.

We tend to view magic as manipulating the world indirectly through the individual’s own psychology, for example by motivating her or him to action, and not as manipulating “energies” to produce effects with no known physical causal relation to the individual.

We tend to ground our practices and beliefs in experience, accurate history, and mainstream scientific evidence.

Our focus on evidence as the primary source of knowledge leads many of us to an awareness of, and gratitude for, the long evolutionary process which has resulted in our existence today.

Because our worldview doesn’t include afterlives or hidden realms, we tend to be focused on this body, this life, and this earth, cherishing each moment and improving the world for all life on Earth.

There is great variation, but some of our most common practices include:

celebrating the Neopagan Wheel of the Year
performing rituals
meditating
exploring mythology for inspiration and insight
discovering our world through experience, accurate history, and scientific inquiry
cultivating insight
changing ourselves and our society through responsible action
In our practices, we may invoke deities, spirits, and ancestors. If we do, the meaning may be allegorical, archetypal, or cultural. In so doing, we carry on a long tradition going back to ancient times.

Naturalistic Pagans don't believe in quantum woo.

Mis-applied science grants no support either. For example, quantum physics is often touted as “evidence” for magic, but this turns out to be a red herring, since it is highly improbable that quantum effects would ever occur at large enough scales to generate so-called magical effects