What's the difference between religion and any other belief systems?

Yes

You don’t need religion to be a moral person, and you don’t have to reject religion to act amorally. But there is no perfect, universal, scientific morality. Cultures, communities, individuals will vary on what they consider a moral act, and morality can change with circumstance. When different moralities interact, there will be conflict. And the amoral (or rather those, who do not subscribe to the same morality as those around them) will always use others’ morality as a tool to manipulate, a curtain to hide behind, a weapon to wield, and a shield to defend with.

Religion helps communities to build a common morality in order to reduce tensions and foster fellowship within the group. But there will always be communities. There will always be disagreements, confusion, frustration, pride, loyalty, forgetfulness, honor, greed, hunger, struggle, disease, countervailing needs and desires, and mercy. The absence of religion would not stop people from seeking safe harbor and kinship in others, whether that is social clubs, fandoms, sports teams, political parties, activist organizations, etc. And when that kinship is endangered or perceived to be endangered, the absence of religion will not stop people from seeking to obstruct, forestall, eliminate, or revenge against whatever or whomever is perceived to be the cause.

I think the world would be in a better place if people stopped believing in fairy tales. This includes religion, Santa Claus, and every other useless nonsense.

Religion, specifically, set the world back by 1000-1500 years. Sure would be nice to live in a time when cancer doesn’t run rampant — but nah, let’s let the imaginary fairy grandpa solve everything for centuries.

Yes Yes Yes!

What I would want is that some people wouldn't try to bend religion to their will. But anyway what are religions but something that has been shaped over time by people... Sigh, whatever.

Yes, but not just because of the lack of religions, but the lack of superstition that would require. Basically if everyone believed things based on physical evidence, rather than feelings, the world would be better. But, also, we as a species might not have survived our earliest days.

Yes, but that's not possible.

It's tricky to say. Organised religion throughout history has been one of the biggest oppressive machines and cause of untold human life lost. On the flip side, religion has been the source (or at least financer) of an enormous amount of the most highly regarded artistry in our history.

The reason that isn't an obvious tip of the scale, is that if religion poofed out of existence, I'm almost certain that the oppressive machine would have just taken another form and still caused untold destruction, loss of life, and hatred. But I'm not sure the art would have still thrived as it did.

I don't believe so. I believe religions are human creations and as such, they can't be awful if people don't have that awful side to begin with. If religions disappeared overnight or were magically erased from existence we would still struggle with the same issues, only with a different flavour. Perhaps there would be no lies on certain topics but I'm not too sure that would make a massive difference overall.

Something i read during the beginning of the Iraq War put things in perspective. During the time of monarchies it was suicidal to challenge them . Religion provided a balance because you can't kill God. Kings and queens learned to work with religious leaders to help deal with the populace. Democracy made it less necessary. I don't know if any of this is true but it does make sense

Religion exists because it's a way to control people you can't reason with for whatever reason. It's definitely a net negative now, and has been for centuries imo, but back at the beginning it was an important cornerstone of civilization

You'd have to cut out the part of our brain that's responsible for religious thinking. So what does that do to humanity?

No. If it wasn't religion people would be assholes to each other about something else. Religion is just an excuse.

Hasn't the question been settled by the Beatles? *Imagine no religions, we'd all be in peace ohohoohoho, you may say Iama dreamer. *

But we may still find other reason to fight