Is Religion around the world a good thing or a bad thing?

After looking at this since I was born around 1950 I think for society in general and civilization in general religion has been a good thing in regard to civilizing people, pacifying people and making people less violent than they could have been because of people in a single area tending to believe much the same things and so less likely to kill each other than if they believed different things and followed different behavioral rules.

However, for the individual I think religions have been a complete disaster in destroying all individuality and creativity through things like repression, individuality, creativity etc.

So, in this religion is a complete paradox.

Now, at this time of the world, however, there is a new element to the mix.

This element is religion combined with overpopulation.

This is also a complete disaster for the human race. We see this now in the Sunni Shia divide, the Muslim Judaism divide, and the Christian Muslim divide. This is a complete and possible permanent disaster for the human race to face at this time.

All these divides could easily cause a loss of 1 billion or more people this century. If these losses were tied to global warming there would be no one to take revenge on because it would be considered an act of God and not any single person's responsibility. However, now all these divides between religions could possibly completely extinct the human race the way they are presently going especially in the Middle East. So, this is something for the whole world to contemplate and to think about a way to prevent the extinction of the human race during this and following centuries.