I can't agree more! A big problem here is that merely to point to reasons for religions to come about (for example, that they solve real problems at the time of their appearance) is to "condone" every terrible thing that ever happened that could be ascribed to religion. Hint to the wise: the doers of terrible things
always align the reason for their actions with the current moral authority. Which in this day is likely to be efficient market operations. Their predations may yet be more harmful...we don't have that much history yet in post-religion.
In these discussions, to try and talk about religion as something other than "grotesque superstition" has a hackle-raising effect on people invested in our current cultural totems. The only thing to do for them (the heroic thing), is to fight tooth and claw against those irrational forces trying to coagulate into a new Dark Age of superstition.
Because of this, any real attempts to understand religion are few and far between. It's certainly true that "religion" as experienced by most is a social institution constructed by people of mixed understanding and motivations, and therefore, depressingly, is just as broken as every other organization people create.
These organizations are only the structure erected around a spark that remains almost as mysterious as consciousness itself: the mystical experience of the Divine. I do think philosophy, if it's meaningful at all, should investigate that initial spark. Because it does lead to those good things camelNotation is talking about: inclusion for outsiders; Myth as a durable storage medium for the mores of a culture; Ritual that supports embodied existence, with all it's imperfections and requirements to deal with real suffering.
Personally, I think there is plenty of complexity and intricate thought in that space to keep a generation of technically minded people interested. But alas, they mostly make jokes about a "Sky God" and deny the complexity which they have even inside themselves.
Here is a starting thought: paradoxical language is used in religion precisely because it "stuns" the intellect, forcing it to switch context in ways it doesn't yet understand, but in time, will. It's a kind of interrupt.
A deep inner experience of religion is something that happens on earth because people must endure the unendurable. To pontificate that "oh, they evolved denial, problem solved" is to throw white paint over a breathtaking chiaroscuro. It may be merely an "evolved response," but it deserves more respect.