Is religion good for us?

The problem with your list, is that it's not at all clear that any of them are examples of organised religion causing a problem. Let's have a look

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-the Israel/Palestine conflict
-the sunni/shia conflict
-India/Pakistan conflict

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I've put these three together, as they're all the idea of religion driving a people apart and causing conflict. Thing is, we know from looking at other examples of communal conflict that religion isn't a necessary part of this. The Hutu-Tutsi conflict, or the Sri Lankan civil war, are not based on religious divides, yet the divides produce the same anger, brutality and capacity for violent self-sacrifice.The key thing here is just the notion of different identities. Yes, in these cases those identities are tied to religions, but this is in no sense essential to create these conflicts - nor is it just about religion. Palestinian rhetoric has grown more Islamic as the years have gone by, but there have always been a minority of Christians fighting against Israel too, and in the past the major armed Palestinian groups were secular leftists. Conflicts over land and identity don't require any religion, and I don't think it's at all clear that religion makes them more common.

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-stem cell research in the USA

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Even though opposition to scientific research such as this often comes from religious groups, Luddism also crops up outside organised religion. Consider the attitude of many green groups to things like GM-food. They stem from the same revulsion of man meddling in things he should not wot of, but these arguments can come without any religious terms from people who wouldn't consider themselves religious.

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-the Texas board of education

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In a world without religion there would still be historical revisionism, as people tried to preserve the 'greatness of the nation' and what-have-you.

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-drug war/policy (this may be strictly economics hiding behind morals)

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Maybe there's an American context that I'm missing here, but I don't see any religion in the drug war. I grew up in the UK, which is a much more secular country, and religion is never mentioned in connection with drug policy, that I've seen. Nevertheless, drugs policy is irrational and wasteful there in much the same ways that it is in the US.And this is the point I'm trying to make, I think. Your beef isn't with organised religion at all. It's with human irrationality and illiberal ideologies which are present all over the place, with and without organised religion. You're mistaking causes, I think.

Exactly the same as it has been for as long as the conflicts have been going on! People will fight for the same reasons as irreligious people involved in these conflict already fight - they will fight to protect their family, their people, from the other. They will fight to preserve the honour, territory and safety of their group. The fact that many 'groups' in today's world have religious descriptions doesn't mean that group conflict is about the religion. Nothing at all, this is the point I'm trying to make. In a world without religion, people would still form identities to make themselves feel part of a group, as people already do with nationalism, or political ideologies. People would still distrust and demonise outsiders, and conflicts would still break out between groups. People would still believe fervently in irrational falsehoods, as non-religious people do now - opinion polls in the UK have shown that, as belief in God has declined over the years, belief in ghosts and astrology have dramatically risen.This is what I meant when I said you'd got the causes confused. I don't think religion caues people to believe irrational things and engage in communal violence. Rather, religion is the result of our natural tendencies to believe irrational things and engage in communal violence.

Reason's replacing superstition? When did that happen? Last time I looked, the MD down the road from me is a practicing homeopath; my coworker, who, laughs at the religious for being ignorant and credulous, thinks I'm a cultural imperialist for valuing 'western science' over 'eastern wisdom'; and my medically-trained mother is a reflexologist.