I’m sure religion provides comfort, but the key word in your comment is “authentic.” Can religion still provide comfort after science has made theism much less intuitive and self-evident than it used to be? If religious people have to delude themselves to some extent, to support their religious faith in the absence of that intuitiveness, is that religious experience still authentic? That is, old-school religion may be an obstacle to intellectual and existential integrity in the late-modern, postindustrial world.

My point here isn’t so much that atheism is obviously true, as that intellectual theists have to resort to ignoble tricks to convince themselves and others that their prescientific religions are still perfectly respectable. Alas, modernity was a game-changer.