Religion is the first direct marketing company in the planet. All you need to start a religion is to come up with a story about a Savior/Messiah/etc that sounds so extreme that it must be true. You get a few people to believe it, and then they tell their friends and so on. Then your believers pass it on to your children so that the next generation cannot question why their parents believe in these crazy stories and in a few more generations you have a following of people who believe in your story because that's what their ancestors believed in. When does the cycle end?
When the new children of the world take a good hard look at religion and ask questions, then the world will take off the chains and actually progress. There is nothing wrong with doubting God and having questions. Had the Germans done more of that then Hitler might have not gotten so powerful. After all, Hitler did not kill Jews. He had his henchmen who were Christian, to do all the dirty work.
Religions are getting more insane. Scientology? WTF? Look it up if you haven't heard of this crazy new religion. These newer religions are more crazy than the original ones. They have to be, in order to compete.