Religion: Ditch it or Keep it?

Although religion allegedly turns people's attention away from the most serious real world problems such as proliferation of nukes, genocide, poverty and the education crisis and turns people's attention toward less important topics such as the debate over gay marriage because religion is concerned with "what god wants" and on the afterlife, nevertheless, religion is beneficial to human cooperation and helps individuals come to terms and deal with difficulties in their lives and with the scary prospect of death. Since cooperation and social living is essential for human survival, one might argue that something that enhances cooperation is evolutionarily adaptive and therefore should be kept around.
Sam Harris points out that religion causes people to be more concerned with unimportant topics such as gay marriage rather than concerning themselves with problems that cause human suffering because of what god says. However, it is not religion itself that causes people to be concerned with trivial matters but rather the focus of those in the religion who choose to concentrate their energies on small bits of doctrine rather than the larger issues of the religion. In Christianity, which Sam Harris is refering to when he comments on the emphasis on gay marriage by religious people, God also tells people to love one another and to help one another. If people are loving one another and helping each other, they should be focusing on larger issues of the world such as human suffering, the education crisis, genocide and poverty.
In the article "Why Do We Believe?" Robin Marantz Henig describes how religion can be advantageous to human survival by promoting cooperative behaviors, thus enhancing group fitness. Although at first, it does not appear that Henig has a positive outlook on religion, she is actually merely explaining the evolutionary significance or insignificance of how religion came to be and why it is so natural for people to believe in a supernatural power and follow a religion. She explains how some scientists see religion as being adaptive either in the past or currently adaptive while others see it as a byproduct of other adaptive traits and as not being adaptive themselves. Henig is not "hating on religion" although some of the scientific explanations for why people have a tendency to follow religion do make religion look illogical. We are not told to ditch religion in this article, rather we are told how the phenomenon of religion came about. Take from it what you will.