I'm not religious, but I can appreciate the therapeutic aspects of it, or even the passion and commitment that people draw from it.
I've always found that religion's main purpose was for people to find solace in unanswerable questions. People like the thought of life having a purpose. Science doesn't really give you a purpose for life, unless you find that reproduction in keeping a human populace, an answer. Or if you find that life is really just a life. But to most I don't think they like that idea because it's just not as fulfilling as living for a god or any other belief or entity. People like the thought of immortality; of it continuing even after the body is broken. Another thing science cannot answer for sure. Hell, like I said, I'm not religious, but I do like the thought of life continuing even after I die. The thought of not existing terrifies me even when people tell me that (of course) I wouldn't realize it.
No one can stamp a fact to life's creation, or the beginning of time, because facts leave no room for reasonable doubt. Sure science has given us the Big Bang theory backed up with spatial expansion of the universe (which seems pretty factual to me), but in the end, it's just theory. Religion isn't anymore, or less, theoretical than a scientific theory, because theory is just that, it's not fact, thus everyone can have reasonable doubt which leads to other ideas or beliefs.
This may just be a tad off topic, but sometimes I amuse myself with the thought of how can anything be a fact? To me, we'd have to know everything, for certain, for any fact to exist. But that's just my line of thinking. Whatever.