Religion, Why?

I don't know who or what Jesus was but I know he was a good guy. Son of God? Hard for me to imagine but who knows? The point is he along with Moses and Abraham are recognised by Muslims and Christians as prophets if nothing else (Jews? Well two out of three ain't bad). So it seems strange how one 'God', 'Jehovah' or 'Allah' (presumably the same guy) has caused such division.

Not only is there division, peoples of all creeds are killing each other which is basically against all scriptures however you try to manipulate them. Muslims split into a number of factions after Mohammed's death because they couldn't agree on a successor, then promptly went to war with each other and anybody else close enough.

Christians were no better. Henry VIII changed the church to suit his own ends and 400 years later bombs were going off everywhere. The crusades tried to take the moral high ground but as with oil today, plunder and conquest were the main incentives.

Many biblical events occurred, perhaps a little less spectacularly than described, but they can be explained by natural phenomena. Why in the days of such technological enlightenment can't certain factions accept the possibility of the non-existence of a supreme deity? Wouldn't that make war a thing of the past?

NO!!!

Why not? Because there will always be greedy people who wants to spoil the party!

If there was no religion then surely there would be no racism either! I don't judge by colour or creed (there are nice and nasty everywhere it's not exclusive to one nation), its best to just take each person as an individual because that's what we all are.

So now by getting rid of religion, I've stopped wars and cured racism, what else?

I know! It won't be a sin to be gay anymore! Now I'm not saying it's right because I don't believe it's natural otherwise the human race would die out! However I don't see how anybody can tell anybody else how to live their lives.

Right so thats war, racism and general ignorance. Wait! Wait! I forgot famine!!!!!

Of course if all the money spent on weapons was spent on food and social welfare nobody would go hungry and everyone would have somewhere to live.

Wow, I'm a genius!

Right so let's get started, anyone got any ideas how I can get religion banned?