I'm real late to the party here, but here's my take on religion. It was absolutely necessary to have in the past for the same reasons you said. It kept order, brought people together. Without religion it would be difficult to argue that morals would be developed. Why would one person care for another, especially when survival was something which came down to a dog-eat-dog mentality. Religion taught people values, and gave them a god who enforces these values. Every religion, at it's core, is filled with both peaceful and co-operative messages. Without religion, and the unison it brought, civilizations may very well have never reached the level they did. We might not even be where we are now without religion tying people together. Religion in the modern world ironically serves the exact opposite function that it did in the past. It tears people apart more than it brings us together. In my personal opinion it was through the growth of communications and the human race that it became a problem. Rather than unify people it gave them a reason to feel separate. The promise of a good afterlife, and the fear of God wasn't enough incentive to keep people on track once we came close to one another. In fact it gave people an excuse to fight one another. The gains they would get from going to war could be justified through their 'righteous' means. I think today, religion has very little positives to offer. We've come so far as a race that many of the rules and values they teach are irrelevant. Now, I still do believe that each religion has certain aspects which every person should know and follow. What I don't believe is that a religion as a whole should be followed the way we do now. Many lessons are important, but it no longer serves the function of bringing us together. It only tears us as a race apart. Religion is a function which is thousands of years old. It, as a function, is becoming obsolete. The values and morals are important, but it only holds us back. The functions of religion should be dropped, allowing us all to become unified as one. And rather than being unified by a set of beliefs, unified by a set of truths and realisms. The sciences and hard facts should be the only things that we follow as strongly as we follow religion today.