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.

So it literally did nothing, because Communism doesn't exist in real life?

> tempered dictatorial control of many despots in the middle east

[citation needed]

Looks like this is helping the argument that religion is a net negative

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.

Getting rid of organized religion does not get rid of the fundamental aspects of human cognition that give rise to certain types of group dynamics.

Since the 1800s, non-theists have warned that getting rid of religion is not an unmitigated good. "God is dead" was a warning.