Hell yes! As long as the religious nutjobs get raptured out of the world first. Wink wink.

Without the extremists that take their religion literally, yes. The moderates contribute to peace, love, community, etc. It's a complicated question actually.

If you want to solve a problem, any problem, you need to understand it properly. If you have the wrong "model" of how things work, it's highly unlikely you'll come up with the proper solution. If you have the wrong data, it's highly likely you'll draw the conclusion and not come up with the optimal solution. (Garbage in, garbage out.)

Religions create a non-fact-based model of the universe. One that says that God created things the exact way they should be and things can never change, or evolve. It's unlikely they can solve things correctly with that model of the universe.

Religion is necessary for a time...just like labor unions. Both have served their purpose. Time to quietly bury them. Just saying.

It will take a lot more than that to make this world a better place. Try ridding us of consumerism, hate, greed, hunger for power, inequality, poverty and fear and religion will disappear along with these.

of course as their won't be any humans

Absolutely, I spent a year working in Saudi Arabia and I saw the worst that religion has to offer!

Would the world be a better place when we're more focused on what's good about us than what's bad about us? Would the world be a better place if we invested our time and energy in ourselves and each other than some invisible entity? Yes, yes, and yes.

I want to say yes, of course. But I've seen that there are large amounts of people who would be worse people without it. They are usually the ones that assume that YOU need a god for morals.

Take it a Little Further... Will The World Be A Better Place Without Us? Can We Poll Nature?

Yes.

What is religion?

Religion served a purpose for me when I was child. I learned that this world is full of people who are delusional and there are those who live and are grounded in reality. So I guess religion helped me to understand bullshit!

I have come across the notion of rhetorical truth. Which the state where even if something is not actually true it still has adaptive benefit. For example, the belief that a porcupine may shoot its quills. This is not true, but they'll stick you before you know it. So someone with the belief that they may shoot them operatively give them a wide berth and effectively benefit from a false belief. Now, not all the supernatural belief may be claimed to have adaptive benefits but there is likely a reason that the ideas persisted in society; because they fulfilled some role in society. For example, the beliefs in human history that prevented the spread of germs, while those beliefs had no idea what the true nature of the problem was nor understand it in the slightest, it had an adaptive benefit to humanity.

Religion often promotes more tribalism and may have rampant negative effects like exclusion, persecution, and fanaticism that holds humanity back from the pursuit of truth-seeking which should never end. However, some of its manifestation create well-being pursuance of strangers within the possibly wide group, which is of good progress recognizing a shared walk that we are here in, not just those of the same belief system but of all fellows on the planet. Anything that facilitates the desire for the well-being of strangers or creates broad connectivity is helpful. A common theme of almost all religions is that of compassion. So that a religion practicing such even for outgroup such as is evident in Christianity actually makes the world a better place to live even if the root driving factor is delusional. Also, a sense of responsibility for one's actions that almost all religions engender is of good moral fiber.

So, even though there have been atrocities due to religion and toxic belief that allow egregiously practices such as being burned at the stake for heresy, humanity would have simply had other reasons for their tragedies notwithstanding religious practice. Religion has played a crucial role in the progress that is morality even as it has added a good portion of senseless operative beliefs.

Resounding yes.

yes

The new powers that we are creating with internet (google, Facebook, Twitter, the Market place, etc, will create even more structure of powers that will help more extremists dominators to actualise their desires to impose to others.

I don't think it would change much of the world, the problem is with extremists dominators who need to impose their view and power on others and this will always exist religion is just a justification, a tool to get where they want to go. Religions gone, there will still be other raisons for extremists dominators to impose their views like nationalities, economics, politics, philosophies, even sciences etc. There is no lack of ideology that they can use to impose on others.

Yes.

My issue is that religious beliefs are extremely broad and each little thing (Luther the creator of the Lutheran/protestant church was anti-bullshit Catholics). Some people who believe in religion, some people who believe in monarchy and people who think they will be on the reasonable, right side of any argument. There is the thing that life should be fair. Conflict would not disappear without religion but just like having a bad snack in site in the house you might you're more likely to gain weight. People aren't the same and religion doesn't help. I think the world would be better without religion, but not perfect.

I think so.

YES!

No. People will just find something else to bitch about.

It would be better off without us...