some people have a mystical capability, they find awe and wonder in the world, or the phenomenon of consciousness whereas others have religious capacity. they want answers to big questions and will accept any absurdity.
of all our instincts the religious one is vulnerable to profound suggestibility. all to easily subverted for political or social control or to make a living for the wicked old men who run these institutions.
most religious seem indistinguishable from mental illness. it tends to narrow rather than expand horizons, it takes myth and metaphor as literal truth, it values faith over experience, and imposes certainty where open mindedness has more to offer.
if you think about the fundamentalist beliefs of organised religion they are somewhat deranged and when they have millions of followers they will become very angry if they are challenged on the nature of their reality.
we can never know for sure how much the ancients believed in their gods, did they belive in the logos type gods as actual independent entities, or did they believe in them as mythos style, metaphorical principles to explain the human world and heart.
the greeks would have believed in the mythos until christianity engulfed it, exchanging one roman empire for another.
at the council of nicea the assembled had to decide what written texts would constitute the truth, therefore most material was discarded.
paganism had no texts.
it was all oral and designed to be elaborated upon by the orator according to taste and usefulness.
the new logo centric monotheism with a literal insistence upon the word of scriptures discourages mythological thinking and any reasoned enquiry. at the same time another logos centred monotheistic religion was growing with exactly the same technique, a sacred and absolutely true book.

man controls religion, has steered it from the goddess tradition, into a patriarchal control and power construct that is ignorant and dangerous. men have a lot to answer for.