If Religion, Spirituality, or Belief in a Creator is futile, why are the stakes and tempers so high on R&S?

Could it be that religion and belief in a Higher Power is something fundamental to the human psyche, which might very well be equated to the concept of an actual "soul", not just mere chemical reactions in the processes of the neurological systems of the body? Cultures all over the world, since time immemorial have doented sacred accounts which tell, sometimes on the grounds of severe corporeal penalty were they falsified, of a Being or beings responsible for the engineering of mankind as well as the cosmos in general. Could such creative imagery, complex abstractions and moreover universality in thematic principles and objects of belief be the result of random or chance processes, left largely unguided, by evolutionary foundations from an ape species struggling for survival then suddenly emerging as whole cultures of significance only a few thousand years ago? Perhaps religion or belief in the supernatural comprises an essential, sub-conscious truth of mankind's ancient origins.