In such an unpredictable environment, people want to be able to predict how another person will behave.
The only means by which we can can learn about another person is to give them trust and see what they do with it. That requires an expense of courage but risk can be reduced by first trusting with a lesser value and increasing value as trust produces knowledge.
An easier way, albeit entirely false, is to join a group of people who claim to adhere to a prescribed set of rules for behavior. Less courage is required and a facade of predictability is gained. Religion provides such a group. The larger the group, the more insular the group, the better appears the facade.
No learning occurs but the facade is carefully guarded, even when people put their own children into this facade of behavior prediction and their children are raped and abused. No learning occurs so members of the group are easily manipulated by group leaders who, themselves, laugh at the notion of an imaginary super human human parent watching over all the members of the group.
In a fragile life of uncertainty, predictability can be so treasured as the rightened child will treasure a night light, a bedroom door cracked open and a parent nearby.
Prescribed rules, a group of self proclaimed believers, all sharing the same super human parent...
A person wanting to believe in an imaginary super human agent is driven to prove its existence because that existence is not evident. A person relying upon themselves is not driven to prove their own existence and their own merit is evident.
Some religions have taken advantage of that by stating or insinuating that proselytizing is a believers duty to the imaginary being.
Numbers play a role too. An individual wanting to believe in an imaginary super human agent is reassured by a larger (and preferably growing) number of believers.
I am fallible but not fallen. I have learned ethics by making decisions, correcting errors, paying cost and earning wisdom to perfect future decisions. I have learned morality and justice by executing decisions, hearing input from persons affected, correcting errors, covering costs and storing all of that information to perfect future decisions.
This is not sinning. This is growing up!
The source article can be read here