Would the world be better off without Religion?

Well let's think about it.

There are basically 3 parts to almost every religion (almost).

- You have the Bible thumper types that try and live their life by the 'book'. These people may try and impose their religion on you, try and convert you, but at the same time they have tried to better their life some way or another, which is great. This is the most positive side to religion, but with everything good there will swing a bad side to things.

-The middle group. I believe Agnostics can fall into this category, it's also people that follow a good set of morals, try and live a decent life, but don't get involved too much, they're basically the people that don't care too much or may not display it very much, a majority of the populus in the world fall into this category.

-Now, we have the 3rd category, the extremists. The opposite side of the spectrum, these are the groups/people that try and justify killing in the name of their religion, by saying their God has told them to. This side almost out-weighs any specific religion when they use their religion as an excuse for hatred (ex: Muslims, the Jews fighting over holy land, etc.. Hell even the Christians had crusades back in the day) There are hardly any religions out there these days that are guilt-free of having violence put in place by their name. Except maybe, Mormons?

But that's besides the point, does the Good outweight the Bad, or the opposite? I personally feel that Religion is a good thing for this world, it really does help people live their lives better more-so than the extreme side that has taken it out of context and the wrong way, but that is just my opinion. Some say that religion isn't a good thing (mj) and that the world would be a better place without it, doing so would create somewhat of a utopia, but that in fact would be a roman case scenario, and would end up turning into it's own form of religion with it's own mini-evolution... Just an opinion, though.