We all whistle past graveyards.

It wasn't the "religious" who arrived at the notion that religion is, itself, a man-made device, invented to give comfort at facing the daunting unknown beyond death.

No, it was someone(s) who deemed themselves above such delusions. Someone who accepted a priori that religion had(s) no basis in objective reality. Someone who accepted the false equation that empirical = "real".

Ironically, it is within the very statement of that thesis that the proposer unwittingly shows his transparent fear of that same unkown. The ones who are so insistant upon the notion that religions are so "invented" arrive at that conclusion through analysis of their own fear of the unknown and conclude, whether falsely or un, that everyone must have that same fear -- and thus, others choose to deal with it in a way they see as irrational, while they remain steadfast in the resolve that the unknown is also the unknowable and is probably also, therefore, not a reality either.

But the rub come in this:

Most of those that believe in this "religion as a false construct", like Moyers, are just as adamantly "evangelical" in their zeal to pound down the opposition.

Just as there are those whose evangelical zeal arises from their own insecurity in their own beliefs -- causing the evangelical to take great comfort in the number of people they can convince of a like world-view, those who believe in the "religion-as-construct" have just as great a security problem. They MUST convince as many as they can of the objective non-reality of religious "truth" in order to feel secure in their own belief.

...and misery loves company.