To try and answer the unanswerable questions, by attributing the characteristics of the universe to god or otherwise. Notice that this definition leaves room for just about anything. I have not made a statement that says there is no all-powerful being that controls and created everything. I have made a statement that says if there is such a being, human physicists in the year 468780898 AD will be able to write down the equation that describes that being and how it got there. That doesn't seem very likely, of course, so I prefer to believe that there isn't anything like that.
Religion is the cosmic joke of all time.
No, religion is just an earthly joke, as far as we know, anyway. But I'm sure we would find religion on other planets, whose intelligent inhabitants were at about the same level of intellectual development as humans. I put believing in some sort of omnipotent god at about the same level as believing in Santa Claus. Or perhaps some religions stem from drug induced hallucinations which the ancients did not understand and committed to legend, which was eventually transmitted to written form. The rest is history.