How Did Religion Evolve?

There are many theories which try to explain why there is religion. Freud understood it as a kind of universal psychosis. Emile Durkheim, the great sociologist tried to understand it as performing the function of uniting a community. Karl Marx understood is as "the opiate of the masses." He argued that the ruling class provides it to the working class to keep them subservient. I think that, at least in part, religion developed as an attempt to explain natural phenomena (earthquakes, thunder, etc.); a kind of primitive science. The easiest explanation for anything is always that "someone did it." Of course, the rise of science has tended to pull the explanatory rug out from under religion since what science can explain, religion doesn't have to. It is because of that there is an important conflict between religion and science, that some (mistakenly, in my opinion) tend to downplay.