The mistake occurred because religion, mystical ecstasy, psychic phenomena, miracles and the rest were viewed in isolation from each other and not as an extraordinary activity of the brain, witnessed from a period long before the pyramids were built. From the time over 1,500 years before Moses, to Ramakrishna and Gandhi, a span of not less than 5,000 years, this special class has repeated the same story, displayed the same traits of character and followed the same simple pattern of life. A hundred times more time and resources were spent providing evidence for the guesswork of a 19th century naturalist on the Origin of Man, which time is disproving now, than on the study of a recurrent phenomenon relating to the same issue, vouched for by the brightest luminaries of human thought, hundreds in number, covering the whole span of human history.
Religion sometimes seems quaint to the jaded modern eye.
Religion deals with questions not answerable through the five senses. The race is still drawn to answers provided by religion and often cannot be shaken from them by criticism, even if some beliefs defy common sense, which is in itself very odd. Something instinctive in man seems to respond to the concept of worlds beyond the senses. Take away the dogma and you come down to the founders, all of whom had some kind of contact with what they considered a divine being, or a higher state, which they advised was only reachable by following a certain mode of life and code of conduct. The brain responds either gradually over generations, or quickly in the case of individuals already biologically prepared in some way, and man becomes a co-operator with Nature's evolutionary processes.