There has always been a community motive for religion, and that same community has always been a source of contention between two congregations of disparate thoughts. What I am more curious about is why so many people have felt the need for a god to begin with. Based of its pervasiveness and archaeological evidence we can assume that the vast majority of all humans who ever lived had at least some notion of God, despite vast differences in culture, and vast geological separation.-The exact point made by Karen Armstrong in her book, "A History of God'. She thought we were programmed to be religious.

This doesn't really answer why religion has the hold it does.
> People also get happiness from other community activities,
> such as supporting football clubs, or even local humanist groups.
> I don't believe there is any inherent need to believe in gods.
> I've certainly never detected any tendency for that in myself.
> In fact I would say I have an inherent liking for natural explanations.-Football and other clubs filled a social need for me, but I can not say that they ever scratched the particular itch I have that spirituality does. And contrary to other popular beliefs, for me at least, it has nothing to do with being afraid of death or the unknown, or the need for a non-naturalistic explanation for events. When science makes sense, I have no problem excepting their explanations for things. However, when they start touting things like quantum fluctuations literally created something for nothing, I just want to reach across and slap them while asking what created the quantum fluctuations, or designed the system that allowed those quantum fluctuations to happen in the first place. Some may think me unreasonable, irrational, or illogical, but to me, saying that I observe too much organization for it all to be random chance is not illogical, or irrational at all.

MATT: Who will take care of me when my wife and (future) kids are gone? The typical structure in America is such that, if you are religion-less, you are going to have a tough time.-I sincerely hope that Nature won't play such a dirty trick on you, but your observation and the appalling news clip you alerted us to on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ww1AilSJ3U
only increase one's feeling that we live in a mad world. -I'd have thought religion was appealing for a wide variety of reasons. May I add a few suggestions (in no particular order):
1)	Fear of death
2)	Fear of isolation 
3)	Fear of purposelessness
4)	The need for hope and comfort in the face of suffering
5)	The need for love
6)	The need for authority
7)	The need to belong to a group (not quite the same as (2) because many people pray alone)
8)	The need for mysteries to be explained
9)	The power of stories
10)	The inability of science to explain fundamentals
11)	The possibility that there is more to existence than the material world as we know 
 it
12)	The possibility that religion may contain truth -But I haven't included our being "programmed" to be religious. The vast variety of beliefs suggests to me that it's a matter of culture not instinct, but who knows?

A completely different take
> 
> http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=37&blogid=21
> 
> > After my son died, I had no one to go with
> Hi David - my deepest sympathies
> 
> I found this closing remark of Joseph Campbell (In A Hero with a Thousand Faces) strangely comforting, a little while after my son died.
> > It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal - carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.-Thank you. It fits.