DISCUSSION THREAD: The end of religion

DISCUSS: The reasons for and against the eradication of religion.

Please limit the discussion to the topic at hand. There should be no trolling or bashing of specific religions or posters in this thread. All intelligent arguments are welcome in this thread.

I'll start. I will leave the discussion to simmer for a while before contributing again.

At some point in the infancy of human civilization, religion provided a necessary stabilizing influence. It served as a system of laws, it gave people a moral force and obligations, and it gave people hope and something to live for.
However, we've grown past religion. We don't need it anymore, and it is causing us some serious problems.
More large groups people have been killed on the planet over the course of human history than for any other reason. It appears as though the world is headed towards another religious conflict, and the forces are so large and powerful that it is truly doubtful whether our global civilization will survive the coming war.

Some arguments (debunked) against abandonment of religion:
1. Loss of morals. Once the assumptions of religion are discarded, and one realizes that the entirety of the religion was created by man, it follows that it is not god who gave us morality, it was man. Intelligent religious leaders recognized long ago that to live in large groups, and in harmony, there needed to be a group morality. Without god, morals exist as a way for people to live together in peace. Don't kill, don't steal, and so on are common sense.

2. Punishment in the afterlife. Humans, just like any animal, have a foundational instinct to avoid death. In humans, this manifests in large part as fear of death. It is only natural to desire something beyond this life. The loss of the self, of ceasing to be, is one of our greatest fears. This has lead to the afterlife myth. Hell and heaven are the primary christian variation on the afterlife myth, which have been long used as the stick and the carrot by religious leaders. It is simply another way of controlling the people and giving them an incentive to live according to the rules set out by the religious tradition.

3. Divine intervention. This is simple. There is no fate. Only coincidence. If you feel as though you have been blessed or saved by some divine providence, examine the circumstances of this supposed miracle. Whether through positive thinking, better circumstances, skill, preparation, or just pure chance, things do not happen for a divine reason. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people every day.