What does religion offer?

[gall]

The only thing I can think of is that without religion there would be no Christmas. It's really a terrific holiday.... getting together with your family, exchanging gifts, great food.... and the message of peace and goodwill is highly positive. If only they would take the mythology out of it.

On the other hand, without religion we'd probably have hovering cars by now.

Assuming we had not lost 800+ year to dark times and retardation of the masses we would be in deep space colonizing now. Hover cars would have been a common place site for the last 300-400 years. Matter energy transfer would probably exist and we would have already had to solve our safe energy issues.

Although many other things could have also happened that still lead to a almost completely ignorant population as it currently sits today in the world. Other than first world countries the rest of the planet is largely not very well educated and many many of them can barely even read one language or do any sort of math.

[Jackalope]

Religion is to humanity as the appendix is to the human body.

While I like the idea of your analogy, it has recently been discovered that the appendix does have a function.

It turns out that the appendix is a store house for beneficial bacteria. If a person contracts a disease, such as cholera, that kills of the friendly fauna in the gut, the friendly fauna stored in the appendix are able to 'reboot' the gut.

"Scientists from the Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina say following a severe bout of cholera or dysentery, which can purge the gut of bacteria essential for digestion, the reserve good bacteria emerge from the appendix to take up the role."

Maybe you should change your analogy to wisdom teeth or goose bumps...

Interesting. This may explain why, when I had a life-threatening case of pneumonia in January of this year (where my natural bacteria were wiped out by the antibiotic treatment), that it took many weeks for my digestive system to fully recover. My appendix burst and was removed in 1982.

[Bad Writer]

Well at the least the explanation for the appendix wasn't "Goddidit".