Question

Could it be that we’re religious only because of an ad hominem based on psychology? Religion has great power in the psychological sense: it gives people a sense of belonging, and it also helps people out of pain and suffering (the messiah, the Garden of Eden, a world that is entirely good, God as protection from suffering and pain)?
 
The alternative—that God (or any other Flying Spaghetti Monster) gave the Torah at some event in time—is far less plausible than the alternative proposed by archaeology and Hebrew Bible scholars, who speak about a group of slaves leaving Egypt, encountering the Midianite-Kenite deity Yahu, and from there entering the Land gradually and slowly, while Egyptian, Midianite, and Canaanite influences merged into one cultic religion that combined Yahu with the Canaanite god El. Over time, around the campfire, the story of the Midianite deity Yahu being discovered and accepted by the group of slaves turned into a story about a revelation of the god Yahu with smoke, pyrotechnics and divine acoustics, sacrifices, and the reading of laws. The stories, together with the laws, entered the editing process of the various writers of the Torah, made their way down to Ezra the Scribe, he edited them, and this edited Torah was accepted in a ceremony only in the days of Ezra—because psychologically they had experienced exile, and religion creates belonging. That is the reason they prohibited marriage with non-Jewish women.
 
 
In short, is there a chance that religion is based on an ad hominem?