system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
I’m not sure about that…I think that you could make the argument that religion has had a large positive impact on humanity.  Please understand, I’m not religious in the slightest, but it’s an interesting question.

Our species has been around for over 100,000 years, and the overwhelming majority of that time we lived in small hunter/gatherer bands.  The development into the current state of humanity, post agricultural and industrial revolutions, was predicated on large amounts of people working together.  Taking creatures that are used to cooperating in groups of 40-50 and getting them to cooperate in groups that are orders of magnitude larger is a huge challenge, the biggest obstacle is trust.  Inventing religion was a way of getting all people to agree on sets of rules…this way, we could have more trust in one another.

Obviously, not everyone follows the rules, but enough do to make the system workable.  For example, a wild animal can’t have any trust that it won’t be killed by another wild animal, but humans can at least have some trust that they won’t be killed by one another, since humans (aided by “religion”) have agreed that murder is wrong.  We live our lives around one another every day with at least some level of this trust.

Another issue is that you may say that humanity’s current state is not desirable, so religion aiding us in getting us to this point is not a positive contribution.  I don’t share that view, but I could understand the position.  I would greatly prefer my current life to that of a hunter/gatherer.

Anyway, I’ve done a pretty poor job explaining this, but it’s a pretty big premise in the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which I highly recommend.
gpt
TL;DR- religion was an important an necessary foundational basis for organizing large societies

I agree with this, I would add (argue?) that it *was* necessary for setting up the structure and boundaries of society, but that we have outgrown religion in the sense of classic religion. Ideally we would all "worship" rational observation and the science that comes with it, the philosophy of laws and the boundaries of rights and duties, etc., instead of worshipping an unknown all powerful god