The problem is that humans evolved to be religious, and you can't just ignore that and get rid of it in a generation or two. It is in our brains and we have to live with it somehow. So from that perspective ... maybe Jesus does cure depression.
Humans most certainly did not evolve to be religious. We evolved to look for and, if necessary (to our minds), invent meanings behind things which sometimes have truly no meaning at all, i.e. the existence of existence itself. We also evolved to be fearful of the unknown, e.g. the experience of death and afterward. It seems quite simple to see how those two things resulted in our eventual invention of religion, but we did not simply evolve to be religious per se.
The former phrasing has a sense of inevitability to it, for one. It masks the fact that people created systems to exploit weaknesses in human psychology. Evolution led to a bias toward unsubstantiated pattern recognition and simple explanations for complex systems, not organized religion.
If religion has become "a part of our brain" then so has slavery, rape and the divine right of kings, for the same reasons. Yet no one argues that we just "have to learn to live with" the latter.
It isn't evolution, at least not in any genetic sense, it's simply culture. People believe religion is an immutable fact of life and the only possible source of meaning and morality when their culture teaches them as much. But there are cultures where religion matters far less than it does in, say, the US, where people get along just fine.
Our brains are also wired to kill for survival, rape for reproduction.
Religion is a coping mechanism for some, although its trivial to ignore. Religion is more likely than not a con-artist trick, that has lived on for centuries.
Except some of us consider ourselves to be quite evolved, not religious, AND absent of depression. Maybe depression (or the lack thereof) has nothing to do with religion at all.
For some people, it is. There is a segment of non-religious people who do treat the current scientific consensus as gospel and moralize adherence with typical religious in-group/out-group dynamics, despite not really understanding or engaging with any of the actual material. I disagree that relying on scientific consensus is inherently religious, though.
Tell me, of these people who supposedly practice "Science as Religion," what are their rituals? What's their scripture? Their theology? Their religious doctrines? What exactly makes this a religion rather than people simply behaving dogmatically?
You've described people who uncritically accept authority, moralize disagreement, and engage in in-group/out-group behavior. None of those characteristics is unique to religion. You can find them in politics, sports fandom, nationalism, and virtually any ideological community.
Treating scientific consensus as authoritative isn't the same as treating it as sacred or infallible. Scientific consensus is provisional, evidence-based, and subject to revision. Someone can misunderstand that process or defer to it uncritically without turning science into a religion.
You're conflating dogmatism with religiosity. They're not synonyms. Calling something a religion because some adherents behave dogmatically strips the word "religion" of any meaningful distinction.
