The Modern religion is, aside from being a sort of decayed Christianity, based almost entirely on modern wealth. That is, it's based on the material comfort in which the middle (and upper) classes live. In ancient times only the wealthiest of people could be ignorant of evil. It took a prince, and really a young prince, to be ignorant of suffering. The middle and upper classes are almost like millions of Siddhārtha Gautamas who never left their palaces.
This also explains why some atheists (like Richard Dawkins) can be so committed to science (and hence to atheism). Believing (somewhat erroneously) that science leads to technology, it's science that holds the possibility of permanently sealing off the palace walls. It's almost as if we've entered the garden of eden through a breach in the wall, and are now trying to seal off the breach. There's something to the idea (which is why they can hold it so fervently); religion, like clothing, is a thing for outside of the garden of eden. Inside of the garden, people talked directly with God and there were no priests.
The flaw in this thinking, of course, is that removing temptation is not at all the same thing as moral improvement. (Removing temptation can help, since morality can be buttressed by habit, but morality is always a matter of free will, however strongly habit pushes.) Relatedly, you can never truly remove temptation, since we're all in competition with each other for earthly goods such as popularity. (The desire for popularity is mostly a mis-direction of the desire for our creator to look on us and see that we're good; we use each other as surrogates for God, though of course the appreciation of people by each other is quite legitimate too.)