2 central needs served by the invention of religion

• The need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses
• The need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones, and to our decay and demise

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• Our deepest wish may be that someone would come along and save us from ourselves.
• A pessimistic worldview does not have to entail a life stripped of joy. Pessimists can have a far greater capacity for appreciation than their opposite numbers, for they never expect things to turn out well and so may be amazed by the modest successes which occasionally break across their darkened horizons.
• The gravest problems have no solutions, but it would help never again to have to labour under the illusion that we had been singled out for persecution.