A few more pages into Russell's History brings us to another version of the uncaused causer concept. People that like to use the morality argument fail to give a good account of what caused the Causer. The logic supposes that everything has been caused by something else, which leads back to their objective of the Prime Causer. The logic breaks down of course, because if everything must have a cause, it would go on ad infinitum, and not stop at their Prime Causer. Anyway, this is what Russell has to say about it... or rather had to say about it over 50 years ago....

It was common in antiquity to reproach the atomists with attributing everything to chance. They were, on the contrary, strict determinists, who believed that everything happens in accordance with natural laws. Democritus explicitly denied that anything can happen by chance. Leucippus, though his existence is questioned, is known to have said one thing: "Naught happens for nothing, but everything from a ground and of necessity." It is true that he gave no reason why the world should originally have been as it was; this, perhaps, might have been attributed to chance. But when once the world existed, its further development was unalterably fixed by mechanical principles. Aristotle and others reproached him and Democritus for not accounting for the original motion of the atoms, but in this the atomists were more scientific than their critics. Causation must start from something, and wherever it starts no cause can be assigned for the initial datum. The world may be attributed to a Creator, but even then the Creator Himself is unaccounted for. The theory of the atomists, in fact, was more nearly that of modern science than any other theory propounded in antiquity.

The atomists, unlike Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause. The "final cause" of an occurrence is an event in the future for the sake of which the occurrence takes place. In human affairs, this conception is applicable. Why does the baker make bread? Because people will be hungry. Why are railways built? Because people will wish to travel. In such cases, things are explained by the purpose they serve. When we ask "why?" concerning an event, we may mean either of two things. We may mean: "What purpose did this event serve?" or we may mean: "What earlier circumstances caused this event?" The answer to the former question is a teleological explanation, or an explanation by final causes; the answer to the latter question is a mechanistic explanation. I do not see how it could have been known in advance which of these two questions science ought to ask, or whether it ought to ask both. But experience has shown that the mechanistic question leads to scientific knowledge, while the teleological question does not. The atomists asked the mechanistic question, and gave a mechanistic answer. Their successors, until the Renaissance, were more interested in the teleological question, and thus led science up a blind alley.

That is it though, the biggest reason religion has been a detriment to society. The mechanistic questions lead to advances in knowledge. I guess it could be argued that scientific knowledge has been the detriment, but if we are to survive as a species we are going to have to eventually get beyond being prone to accepting things on faith. That is the kicker though; if we accept the prime mover, then we can accept individual eternal life, and don't need to concern ourselves with the human race as a whole.