So... I was told to state my theory on Abrahamic religions here.

[a completely inoffensive name]

But according to my theory, all the prophets never existed. They were just figments of their imaginations. But, my theory is a bit controversial.

Doesn't matter if the prophets existed or not. Something was needed to establish a common trait throughout a populace in order to get them to work together.

Moses was probably an intelligent slave that created the idea of God and told it to fellow slaves in order to unify them against the Egyptian regime. By telling them they were the chosen ones, they rallied around him and he now had the power to free all the slaves from suffering. Not exactly an evil villain type thing to do. From there, they could create their own community, and so Moses isolated himself from everyone and came up with some basic but very smart rules to make sure that social order is maintained. He then came back and passed it off as God telling him directly. From that we got the 10 Commandments story.

Fast forward many years and you have the same situation. The Jewish people are now under the authority of the Romans who are not exactly very nice to them. An intelligent man comes along who isnow called Jesus and he sees how crappy everyone is treated in the region. He attempts to do the same thing that Moses did way back when, except this time some people don't believe him (those that would still be Jews) but many other people do believe him (the now Christians). This time though, the status quo wins and they kill Jesus. However, people love martyrs. So his popularity grows due to his dedicated fan base.

Neither of these cases has religion be some evil plot for control, but instead has been an emerging entity that attempts to correct injustices and restore social order.

EDIT: My point here being is that these intelligent people would have come along at some point or another. It is natural for someone to finally step up and say, "Let's do things differently because this sucks. Why? Because God."

EDIT 2: Ok, I still don't think I have made my distinction clear.

Religion was created by intelligent people to control a populace. BUT it was not out of malice and it was not a conspiracy. These intelligent men manufactured religion to control a population out of necessity for altruistic reasons. Religion in this way was inevitable to arise by someone with the balls to do it, because the impetus was there. These religions then grew out of control as they evolved beyond the life of the original creator.

No one ever sat around and said, "Imma create a religion so I can rule all these suckers and make lots of money$$$$$!" At least until L. Ron Hubbard.