Quote Originally Posted by skysaw View Post
It's a very untenable position to hold that removing religion would instantly end civilization.
A very large portion of the Earth's inhabitants are religious. Some more than others, of course.
One of the most important aspects of religion (if not the most important), in my opinion, are the ethics and morals they promote.
The religions give billions of people a set of ethic rules and guidelines.

I would like to expand this to encompass atheists as well. I must admit that I am not very informed about how they derive their morals, but they do have them, and knowing atheists, there is probably good reasoning behind them.

All religious people have reasoning behind their morals (and some atheists can be pretty religious about their views, as well ).

"What would happen if religion was removed?" can therefore be analogous to "What would happen if all reason behind morals were removed?".

Well, there would simply not be any reason to adhere to any morals anymore.

Our civilization is based upon morals and rules, and the trust that other people, the government included, will follow those rules.

What would happen if religion was removed?
The end of civilization may very well be the outcome.