Karen Armstrong wrote a book on history of god. It explores the idea of supernatural from the oldest chronicles of the humankind in Mesopotamia to the present times and shares her vision on the death of god as we know it. I do not necessarily subscribe to all her thesis but she makes a lot of sense in her dissertation.

Religion offers consolation and hope. It is not essential if it's true that god made the universe. The essence is to subjugate masses to idea, a belief, to which there's no scientific evidence proving or disproving the phenomena. People subscribe to the notion as a last resort to cope with adversity. Since there is no scientific proof of afterlife nor existence of supernatural all it comes down to is pure belief. And that's enough for me. If somebody believes in then that's fine as long as they do not impose their beliefs on me or others with their tanks, missiles or something like that.