I read over your response but 'm not going to respond in detail to it because it's based largely on a misrepresentation or misunderstanding. Although the article does generalize about the problems with "religion," in the crucial section where I lay out the argument and the use of the analysis in the first few sections, I narrow the focus to exoteric, mainstream religions. Here's where that starts to happen:

"The latter, deflationary approach seems the most rational one as far as mainstream, exoteric religions are concerned. It’s much easier to explain away these implausible religions for the masses as nothing but human confusions and gambits in our struggle to dominate each other, than to respect them as evidence of contact with that which is most real and powerful."

The thing is, I make that distinction between exoteric, literalistic, and esoteric, enlightened religion in virtually all my articles on religion. As I said, I have an article coming out soon on the entheogenic core of religions. Moreover, I tackle the Nietzschean problem of envisioning a transhuman religion (my version would include pantheism and an aesthetic reconstruction of morality). So obviously I don't reject every trace of religion.

But enlightened religion turns out to be consistent with atheism. So the problem is "theism" when the latter is understood as the folk would have it, as the idea of a personal, transcendent creator of the universe who intervenes miraculously in nature such as by providing revelation of his nature to the chosen group that worships him in their temple. That's the kind of religion that's most socially useful and philosophically problematic.

Critical thinking spells the death of the kind of religion I reject, namely literalistic, exoteric, theistic religion for the unwashed masses. Enlightened religion and science may spring from that critical thinking, but those ought to replace theistic religion.

I criticize consumerism too. But this article is focused on a comparison of the evolution or history of the two institutions. Philosophies and scientific theories and practices go through stages like religions. But the former are self-critical in a way that religions can't afford to be.

You say it was no surprise that polytheists began to "hide" or "restrict" divinity, because polytheists wanted to be the "sole mediator." Yeah, that's my point, because that was a political interest. Occam's razor allows us to explain the rise of those organized religions as political rather than spiritual phenomena.