DO WE NEED GOD?

I believe we are surrounded by The Great Mystery.
We don't know where we come from, why we were are here, or where we are going.
We don't know if we existed before we were born, or if we are going to exist after we die. All that is part of The Great Mystery.
We can't know these things, and I don't believe we need to.
Here on earth we need to take care of ourselves, we need to take care of the Earth itself, and we need to take care of each other.
As a friend of mine says, here on Earth, all we have is how we treat each other.
We know that if we don't take care of the Earth, it will become so polluted that it will not sustain life.
We know that if we don't take care of ourselves, we will lose our health.
If we don't take care of each other, we will promote conflict and killing, disease and death.
We don't need religion to tell us these things. They are just common sense.
My theory is that people didn't want to face The Great Mystery alone, so they invented religion to make them feel better.

Here is a link to an article in the NY Times that prompted this post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html