Origins of Religion and Religious Reformation

In a recent public lecture in Malaysia on the role of religion in the 21st Century, Dr. Karen Armstrong argues that new religions have emerged in the aftermath of violent episodes in the human history. She further argues that the core teaching of many religions can be distilled into one well-known statement: "Do unto other what you would have others do unto oneself". These statements (and others) set me thinking about religion as a possible mechanism for cooperative behavior for the human species. The violence beget violence can be theoretically proven. Is the rule-of-thumb creed "Do unto other what you would have others do unto oneself" nothing but a sort of "tit-for-tat" strategy that ensures we avoid the cycle of violence in our societies? Can one then prove that religions in the form of such rules can emerge and evolve? What then is the role of God? Dr. Armstrong also stresses the infinite and indescribable nature of God? Is God a complement to our bounded rationality?