I think it wasn't so much the religions (let's just use Christianity as an example) were created to control people, more that those in power found them to be a ![G o o d [Good]](/emoticons/g_o_o_d.gif)
way to control people, and therefore adopted them. If this hadn't happened, Christianity probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere, really, especially with the whole 'let's throw Christians in the pit and have lions eat them!' thing the Romans seemed to enjoy doing.
Of course, once it was adopted by those in power, they had to change it to suit their purposes. Which continued to happen for a long time, leading to different types of Christianity (the most obvious example here is King Henry VIII creating the Church of England so he could legally divorce). Still, the religion itself wasn't orignally created for this purpose.
Oh, and Rascals, seriously... what's with the quote? ![Paranoid [:aranoid:]](/emoticons/paranoid.gif)
*Insert something amusing here*