> organized religion will always be a net negative.
There are clear benefits to organized social stuff. For whatever reason, religions appear to be more effective at this than secular groups. One of the more "fun" theories I've seen is that this is because religious beliefs are often nonsensical and costly.
For large scale events, I'm not convinced that nations that tried to do away with organized religion got better outcomes for it.
Actually, it's organized religion that can be good or bad. Personal religion is a personal affair, which seldom concerns society. But organized religion has been critical in the establishment of laws and customs, ethical change, societal norms, national expression against opression, etc.
Organized religion helped to defeat Communism, and tempered dictatorial control of many despots in the middle east. So your statement is far removed from reality.
This only works to your benefit if the despot is on your side. Even if you are in the inner circle, despots tend to be very temperamental and murder their own supporters on whims of insecurity. So be careful what you wish for.
Organized Religion is literally the only organized opposition left under dictatorial rule. Even tyrants have a hard time going around murdering clerics. But you go ahead and believe what you want.
The cold war propaganda was ratcheted down some time after Gen X; to a super-majority of under-30s, even conservative ones, this probably sounds more like a knave's laugh line than a sincerely held belief.
If that's the case, they have no clue what they're talking about. The Pope literally helped to organize and support the main opposition Solidarity movement.
With many churches across the world actively working to end it.
They still have imaginary friends on facebook though. At least god has morals. We haven't replace those and the number of mass shootings seems to be going up as belief in god goes down.
I guess teaching kids to trust in science and not in imaginary friends is slowly paying off.