Religion as a whole...sucks and hasn't done much for humanity. Religion in it's component parts on the other hand has done some wonderful and terrible things for humanity.
Ironbite-which in and of itself isn't a bad thing but hey...look where we are.
Stop with the anti-theism please. Or do you want me to create another "FSTDT Members Behaving Badly" thread?
Well, I'm just going to chime in and agree with Ironbite. What we have seen historically is that good deeds are done both with and without religion. It would be hard to quantify this, but clearly religious faith isn't necessary for extraordinary feats of generosity.
On the other hand, an interesting book discusses religion in part. The book is called "The Authoritarians" and it shows that, statistically speaking, religious people are more likely to be racists, bigots, and other nasty things. They are more likely to see the world as "Us vs. them" directly due to their upbringing telling them that they are of X faith and others are damned" They are more likely to judge others harshly and more likely to "punish" those see fit (be it legally or illegaly). Religious types are more likely to blindly follow their leaders, to the point of killing others. They are more likely to create posses to seek mob justice. Finally, they are more likely to elect leaders who are inept, corrupt, selfish, and inhumane. Not to mention their ability to perform mental gymnastics and not critically analyze because "God" or "their President" says not too. It is a rather short step from "God is infallible" to "this leader whom I like is infallible" as Bob Altemeyer proves.
Long story short, we can't say individual acts done by religious people or institutions are done because of faith because we can't create that experiment to test such an dependent variable. However, we can see that statistically speaking, religion is more detrimental than positive to both societies and individual psyches. Especially when we consider the only benefit of religion to be either socialization or a placebo effect to one's own mortality.
Quite frankly, I think this thread is silly for a forum dedicated to skepticism. Just my opinion, but it would be like if I went to a trans forum and said "hey guys, we don't talk about cis-people (read: Cis-scum) enough, let's talk about all the good things they've done." Just seems counter to the purpose of the forum and a tad trivial.
Also, yeah, I'm an anti-theist. I find it all irrational and bullshit to be honest. I just don't care enough to argue such silly things as "does god exist?" or "what color is Saturday?"