For the pre-scientific world, supernatural religious beliefs were much more acceptable than they are today. Science demolished the framework supernatural religious beliefs were based upon. That framework was human ignorance and gullibility.

Religion explains natural phenomena in a manner which we are evolutionarily adapted to maintain.

Science proves that these explanations are wrong and offers us objectively true explanations which we are not at all adapted to and drive us crazy.

Example: Our senses tell us that the sun rises above us in the morning and sets in the evening.
Religion may explain that a deity lifts the sun in the morning and drops in in the evening.
Science explains that the sun does not rise or set, but rather that we are relolving around it, spinning, force of gravity.

You can see clearly that the religious explanation corresponds to our sensory information, WYSIWYG, while the scientific explanation does not. Furthermore, the religious explanation places us in the center of the world, while acc to science we are insignificant.

Who can deny the incredible cognitive stress that adopting the scientific position entails?

Note that I am not arguing that the religious explanation is objectively true!

I have found that the new atheists have not addressed this issue, but rather maintain a naive *religious* belief that “the truth shall set you free” (John 8, 32).

You are probably feeling pretty scared right now.”

I’d say that emotionally, this isn’t really right. Once you actually change your mind about something that was a core belief, the emotion is frequently liberating and something of a “what was I ever scared of?” feeling. The terrifying, gut wrenching part is when you have discovered you have a serious doubt about what you have long believed and try to imagine the parade of horribles that could manifest if you take that doubt seriously.

Afterwards, even when some of the feared possibilities in the parade of horribles arrive as feared, the emotional impact is often far more modest than anticipated.

The same is true of a lot of the process of growing up, which is a change of worldview as much as it is a biological process. You know you are psychologically ready to have kids when you can tell your parents that “so and so and I are planning to have kids” without worrying if your parents will disapprove or feeling so shamed that you want to keep that fact a secret. The fear you’d felt for a decade or so about saying something like that to your parents has already dissolved by the time that you say it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that humans have evolved to rely on their physical senses and have universally developed religious beliefs that correspond to them.

*raises eyebrow* No religion that I am aware of has dogma which corresponds to the output of our senses. Religions are founded on a set of cognitive shortcuts which science eschews – and by being very, very successful, has rendered obsolete.

I see this most clearly in the difference between one’s religion and the desire for the state to adopt and enforce that religion. Those who don’t possess faith in some organized structure might default this question to a “moral code.” Although we don’t have a state religion in the US, we do have a core moral code that overlaps greatly with several religions, mostly in the morals that are meant to control people and keep the peace, but certainly some over-reach.

I think this ties in with your question of measuring utility on the level of the individual. Because when we measure it elsewhere, we have to ask why and what are the conflicts we’ve created.

For example, how a Left-Libertarian and a Right-Libertarian would view unowned property, such as the environment and unappropriated natural resources. A R-L might say “first come, fist serve, I claimed it, it’s mine” whereas a L-L might respond in a more egalitarian/redistributionist manner.