Centurion, tell your old man, that religion is a survival instinct in itself. Religion is not about seeing Creation as it actually is, but how we need it to be in order to keep on trying.
The colossal paradox is, that this theme is actually represented in the Book of Genesis. In that fable about eating off that damn fruit tree:
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
- Genesis, 3:6-7, New International Version.
If one couples that a bit with the contemporary scientific consensus and psychology, this can actually be seen as a fable about Homo sapiens becoming fully intelligent perhaps some 150.000 years ago (science actually talks about "the mitochondrial Adam and Eve", using that literary reference). Somebody was actually really bright 5000 years ago, when that fable was thought up by some bipedal ape in the Middle East. When the text say "naked", it can be interpreted as humans gaining self awareness ... and ever since then our lives have been crap, since then we haven't been in the blissful paradise of ignorance. The paradox is that intelligence allows us to grasp our place in Creation ... and that's seriously depressing, 'cause Creation don't care about us. We are just another random product of its physical processes, another roll off the dice. The creational force in the Cosmos is not some being similar to ourselves, with a behavior similar to our own. In that context, humans created God in our own image, not vice versa. Nobody watches over us in the vastness of space. We are alone, only responsible towards each other. At the very least, that's by far the only thing making any (God) damned sense at the end of the thinking process. And that's so much scarier than any random predator from our biological reality. Once we understood that, we panicked and created religious stories that tells us the exact opposite of that horrible reality, as a survival instinct, as an odd side effect to intelligence, as a reassuring fable, as a beautiful lie. Religion is the adult version of Santa Claus.
I also said to myself, "As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?
- Book of Ecclesiastes, 3:18-21, New International Version.
Truthful words are not beautiful;
Beautiful words are not truthful.
Good words are not persuasive;
Persuasive words are not good.
He who knows has no wide learning;
He who has wide learning does not know.
- Dao De Jing, ch. 81, Lau translation.
Maybe that'll be a comfort for the man, being this well meaning, devout tribal ape that doesn't want to die. Tell him religion ain't going nowhere just because we're an animal, too.