I can't take credit for the reader review, it was just one that I pasted in from amazon.

"The idea of a God comes about as man as a society contemplates his own limited time on earth."
Well, moreso that our spiritual tendencies did. I believe that the concept of God is a result of that, but only later on after people already believed in an afterlife. It was then that, through internalization of your parents (and other external objects), that people started believing that their long dead ancestors could speak to and watch over them.

Nietzsche's take on it was that the primal tribe felt that their achievements and prosperities were the result of the achievements and sacrifices of their dead ancestors. Now believed to be in the "spirit world" they felt a debt to repay them with sacrifices of their own. Of course this leads to a snowball effect with regard to the lore of a people. Ancestry tales involve greater feats and strengths being attributed to their ancestors, and since they had already developed a tendency for the spiritual/supernatural interpretation of things, those feats started sounded fantastically god-like. The advent of the Christian god, which is believed to be anywhere, omni-wise, and literally powerful enough to do anything is the advent of the latest phase of the "primal ancestor".

You may also know well that this creditor/debtor relationship between gods and mortals still permeates today; within Christianity it is the "sin debt"

"We now deal with religions already set in stone, with numerous stories to aid the explanation/justification process. With these stories comes extra material. How does this God view humanity, what does He want for us, etc. I would say that youth today are more interested in the extra material then they are the idea of heaven (i.e. God loves me, God has a plan for my life, etc.) I know I was (back when I believed in some form of theism)."

That's hard to tell, simply based on personal experience - religion may appeal to a person for a variety of different reasons. Religion certainly has a developed foot hold, it channels the spiritual tendency into a well-dug rut.

"Though I wonder how religions like Buddhism, or philosophies like Epicureanism, which preach strict agnosticism about Divine things, could have developed if religion started as a psychological evolution."

Very interesting that you bring that up. The author argues that spirituality in humans evolved, so it must have conferred an advantage at one time like any trait that is inherited. Just as with any trait, it can be traced with a bell-curve. On one extreme you have your religious zealots and fanatics, the young boys who give heart-warming speeches for their church at the age of 12, and so on. Further up the bend are those who make their religion a pretty serious part of their life, but they aren't by any means fanatics - they just go to church pretty regularly and believe in god. Then you have your easter/christmass crowd, who say they believe in god and go to church every now and then because it makes them feel more secure about their place in heaven, or maybe it just makes them feel like a good person. As you approach the other end of the bell curve you have your agnostics, and then finally your atheist pit bulls.

People like you and I have simply learned to live accepting of the fact that we are going to die and there is nothing that's going to stop it. I grew up in a church until I was 18, with very religious parents, but now there's not a metaphysical bone in my body.

"Though I wonder how religions like Buddhism, or philosophies like Epicureanism, which preach strict agnosticism about Divine things"

Buddhists also don't believe that death is death, either, and so a coping mechanism is still in place.