It's like giving up anything else you become dependant on, especially if you have an addiction problem. It is why so many of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation organizations are religiously oriented. They take you off the drugs and get you addicted to the idea of a greater force. Addicts can become the greatest believers, because once they latch on to something, they get obsessed. The religious like to point at porn addiction, computer game addiction, sex addiction, but they would never point out that religious fundamentalists, evangelicals and radical Islamists are nothing more than religious addicts, being often controlled by whatever leaders they have attached themselves to. Which is what in many ways make them dangerous. They lose the ability to think for themselves. The problem is never going to go away and free thinkers and people who can avoid addiction will always be a minority. And we tend to reproduce much slower than the believers!

Society in general is not ready to shed religion cold turkey. I'm not sure that's even possible. Humanity is crawling out of a very deep hole of ignorance and superstition and only a minority are capable of handling bare-metal reality.

My personal view is that will gradually change over the next millennium or so. Also, probably the more strident and toxic forms that religion takes, such as fundamentalism, will be pushed to the margins well before then (I'm guessing 3 or 4 more generations). Also I believe the way out of religion for society is through it. Not to attempt to eliminate religion, but to let it die an organic death. This is already happening; worldwide only 17% of self-identified Christians are evangelicals. The other 83% are liberal or cultural Christians, all of whom hold their faith so loosely that evangelicals don't even see the point of it for the most part.

So yeah if I had a magic button I was able to press to make religion and the memory of it go away, I think a lot of humans would re-invent religion all on their own in pretty short order. Lacking the entrenched and ingrained and ancient aspect of religion as we know it, what they invented would probably not be as hideous as what we are working our way out of ... but it would still be a tendency. Until people are committed to critical thinking and intellectual honesty, they will keep paying more attention to confirmation bias and agency inference -- hence, religion.

Huge human need for immortality, need for way to deal with death. Promise of the after life looms large. Not sure you could sell religion without it.

Probably so since it was ingrained since birth that they have no control over their being.

To deprogram any person out of their life-long beliefs without replacing them with something else is a futile exercise.

That is because they feel inherently weak or powerless, and sold their sold to become absolute true believers in the religious dogma. They do that do gain the power of the religious group and the perceived certainty of purpose and meaning. They are captives of their religion and its leaders.

I believe that normal, healthy humans have the capacity to handle their particular life issues without fantasy or delusions. IMHO

There are those that genuinely follow the tenets of religion, and there are those that merely pretend. I have no problem with the former.