Here's an essay I wrote on that very subject. It's not 10 pages, at least I don't think it is, but it is still pretty long. It also has references you should be able to use. If you quote me, you can accredit it to this link.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/religion_endangers_humanity_and_its_future

Don't forget to include these effects of religion.

Suppression of science.

Stagnation of culture.

Lack of basic freedoms.

The first problem is that religion is not necessarily bad for humanity. You start with war. There have always been wars. Only the Abramic religions credit their wars to their god but do not appear to have a greater or lesser number of them. Even Islam only stepped into a Byzantine/Persian power vacuum. Someone would have if not them. That it was Islam instead of some other mideast cult is quite possibly chance with its "inclusiveness" teachings developed as part of war policy in uniting otherwise enemies.

I agree war and some things others have suggested are popular in the atheist litany but as with war do not stand up to analysis. Because of that you won't get far in a debate and can be easily refuted by a professional believer like a minister. The good news is professional believers have an equally fallacious litany of benefits which you can deal with so the playing field is more or less level.

Therefore I prefer to view religion in general as superfluous. I see it as an unnecessary institution leading to no benefit.

But when it comes to particular religions it is another story entirely. Imposing religions being a bad idea was something Europe learned the hard way. Preferential treatment to a religion is something Israel is still learning the hard way. You can raise the negative aspects of religions. Even in the high minded "godless" religion of Bhuddism most monasteries prey on the superstitions of the uneducated. So if you like superfluous you can point out that eventually all their professional members come to prey on the superstitions of the masses.

The parasite nature is its invention of remedies for problems that do not exist. Creating guilt and then selling a solution to it is a Christian scam. But any popular superstition will do. Roving demons and protection from them is probably the most common scam of religion.

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Suppression of science and inquiry? When Islam started it was gung ho on both. But before it started and after a couple of centuries there was nothing to suppress. You can look at Catholic run in with Galileo which is about the only one worth mentioning and notice there was no science to suppress before the Renaissance. Even if you should think differently, it is only one religion and quite limited in scope and duration. But it existed as a parasite on the superstitious before, during and after Galileo.

In fact there is a benefit to religion. Most of the population cannot understand the niceties of proper social behavior or if they can do not spend much time learning it. Drilling into them simplistic rules keeps them being to much of a burden to society. Of course this requires keeping control of the religion and negating the foundation of modern society of equal opportunity honored at least in the breech if nothing else.

There is a (perhaps apocryphal) story that after Japan was opened it studied Christianity with an eye to importing it but decided it was no better than Bhuddism and Shinto in keeping the masses obedient and lawful. Being no better it was not imported with imperial approval.

So yes, religion has a value in keeping at least half the population civilized. Religion does codify the rules for peaceful social living. And in doing this it sets a social norm instead of leaving it up to individual families to make up their own and their own emphasis. And the teachers of this do need to eat and there has to be a mechanism to get people to listen and heed these basic rules.

But that is where it ends in having legitimate value. The one other area is charity to the poor as it has a social value in keeping the poor from taking what they need and keeping them alive to do the work even Mexican's won't do. You can see where the debate would go from there.

Religion has no value in promoting things which do not promote civilized behavior. There may be a need for a lawgiver but the one on MST3K is good enough even if he did look like Moses. All the theological claptrap is not required. All the in-fighting is not required. Antipathy to other religions is not required. Inventing things beyond their one value is not required -- inventing a position on fetal tissue or when life begins in general is not acceptable. Having any power beyond the Sunday school level of teaching social behavior and prohibitions is unacceptable.

Preachers who forget their place are unacceptable. Religion that tries to create morality before there is social experience is unacceptable. By this I mean it may develop that genetic engineering of a fetus may be found to be a social detriment AFTER it is done and we learn that it is. It is unacceptable to do thate before it is found to be a problem.

Religion does get out of hand and not just the current monotheisms but the old polytheisms. The monos do not permit any significant alternatives whereas the polys do and did.

On balance does religion do more good than harm or vice versa? That is a good question even though it is mine.

Perhaps in the west with the separation of church and state we have the ability to slap down the religions when they do things detrimental. We do not slap them down for teaching children not to murder, steal, to obey their parents and a host of things that follow from those. In the middle east, including that darling of the West, Israel, there is no separation of Church and state. (I know what they Izziehuggers tell you. It is not true.) They cannot slap down their established churches. I don't care how secular to raving atheist is a legal Jew in Israel there is no secular marriage nor divorce available. Both are in the hands of the rabbis. No matter how much they want it they cannot make it happen.

 If you write this essay, there is one thing that you absolutely must include if you're going to be complete.

You absolutely must mention that religion teaches Faith -- that is, the notion that some things are true despite all evidence to the contrary, or despite a complete lack of evidence.  Read this essay that I wrote before you start on yours:

Religious Moderation

Laws, then, confer that benefit without mystical incantation. Ergo benefits: zero.

well i know one way religion is supressing science, that could be stem cell research. any other ways?

Since the discussion has shifted toward the argument from morality, here is what I think.

If you're going to blow apart the theistic assertion that a particular belief is necessary to give moral codification, the easiest way to do it is as follows. It is crucial to recognize that such an argument cannot be an attempt to defend the truth or lack thereof of a belief. To state that "God must exist because otherwise we would have nowhere to get our morals from" is an ad consequentiam fallacy. So, the argument instead argues for "belief in belief", or rather, that belief in God is necessary. The problem with such an argument is that it is circular in nature. In the absence of evidence that certain supposed tenets are actually inspired by divine command, those who claim that we must do x,y and z because of divine command, and this setup is necessary for "morality" (thus betraying terminal ignorance of evolutionary psychology) are merely arbitrary assertions. Anyone can begin with the premise that divine command is necessary "lest morality be arbitrary" and make a subsqeuent declaration that they and others must do x,y and z because they have arbitrarily asserted that such claims are consequences of divine command. This argument is especially corrosive to those who would defend religion in general, and not merely a single religion, on the basis that it provides a "moral foundation" simply because of the mutually exclusive nature of many of the claims, indicating purely from a logical standpoint that at least some of them are not divinely inspired but rather arbitrarily asserted to be divinely inspired. Any argument which states that belief in God is necessary for a moral foundation can be terminated in this way because it is circular, assuming they know what a "moral foundation" constitutes and asserting that such a foundation is divinely inspired, and then turning around and saying that belief in such supposedly divinely inspired tenets is necessary lest morality be arbitrary, when in fact the assertion that those tenets are divinely inspired is completely arbitrary. The best part about the whole set up is that religious people make the declaration that they have "faith" that x,y and z are divinely inspired and true. The problem with this is that it is necessarily just as "arbitrary" as any other source, since if faith is declared, then the assertion that x,y and z are actually divinely inspired is just as arbitrary as any other claim that another source for moral grounding exists. I could just as easily claim my toaster is the lord and master of the cosmos and is beaming into my head commands to walk into a crowded shopping mall and blow everyone away with a machine gun. The scare quotes around arbitrary are because we are discussing this purely from a logical perspective and not considering empirical arguments from scientific disciplines which provide a biological basis for morality. In fact, by using words like "arbitrary" and "divine command" we are actually working within the ridiculous and terminally ignorant framework of theism and even then, as we have seen above, are running into grave problems with this argument. Can you see now the problem with "belief in belief"? Because of the arbitrary nature of the belief, claiming it is necessary for morality and that morality is defined in terms of it is completely circular.
 

Do you really want to hire hundreds of lawyers to lecture gradeschool children the difference between 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree murder and the differences between levels of manslaughter down to depraved indifference and culpable negligence?

Without religion and without these lectures in the law a perp can lawfully claim ignorance. It is only the social norms which make it possible to get away with gradations like depraved indifference.

The primary rule of law is that justice must be seen to be done. When the perp honestly says he never heard it was wrong and the jury never heard it either you can't hang the perp just because. Justice will not be seen to have been done.

Sound odd? The majority of people do support the idea that starting a war is a crime and most of those agree it is a war crime to start a war without just cause like responding to an attack. But they only agree if it is not their leader and their war. See Iraq as of six years ago yesterday for details. Most Americans would not support shipping Bush and friends off to the Hague for a speedy trial and slow execution. Yet aggressive war and conspiracy to commit aggressive war were the top two crimes tried at Nuremberg. No wonder crimes against humanity is the only charge spoken of today. No wonder even among those crimes only gas chambers are talked about even though it only came up in one question during the trial.

I am talking the actual charges and findings of Nuremberg. They are not taught as law. What passes into common knowledge is what is promoted in the manner of a religion is only gas chambers. Even that has never risen above 25% belief in national polls in Europe. And that is about as high as any tenet of any religion ever scores.

The problems with religion, as I see it:

1) faith.

2) dogma.

3) the social acceptance of religion/that it is taboo to publicly speak ill of religion (basically the result of heresy).

Technically neither faith or dogma are exclusive to religion, however religion is certainly the greatest propagator of them. Combined with (3) and we have a dangerous system which is socially shielded; isolated from criticism. If we treated religion as we treat all other ideas (as we should be doing) it really wouldn't last long at all. When we treat politics in the same way we run our religions we end up with the likes of National Socialism, or Stalinism, etc, and clearly everyone sees the problem with this, so why do we run our religions this way.

I can't argue that teachers sounds like a good idea. I can point out most of them are not qualified to teach some of the subjects they do teach such as science, arithmetic, grammar and even spelling. So now they get one more responsibility? And 65% correct is passing? And how many extra hours a day or a year are you going to add to fit in this new course material? Or is it fit in next to such effectively taught subjects as sex ed?

If you ask around you will find a deep seated belief in the unwritten law. Both times I tried I found I could not shake a belief in the unwritten law. I doubt teachers are free of this delusion.

There is another route, entertainment. It has been official policy of Hollywood and most publishing houses since the beginning of time that good always triumphs and evil always loses in the end. There is the moral teaching of the masses outside of religion. In those the methods of the good guy is always permitted. In fact the exception to the good guy is always right is the opening of Rambo 2 showing him in prison and then for multiple homicides and then able to redeem himself by being as he was in the first movie. In the book Rambo died in the end. Which is the better teaching aid?

As I said with murders, what if entertainment were like reality and 70% of crime dramas ended unsolved? To be a teaching tool they have to be unrealistic. Religion does not have to be realistic.

Keep in mind I am talking about some lower fraction of the IQ scale. They don't get 65% on gradeschool quizzes save by cheating which defeats the entire point. If smart enough one grows out of religion entirely, if indisposed to religion people drop it. As has occurred in Europe in the last half century or more being religious has lost its standing as proper social behavior. It is losing that status in the US.

At the same time Europe has done that it also appears to be attempting to legislate the promises of religion. The good are rewarded in life. The good worker is never without an income. The good are not stricken with disease so medical care is a right. Unfortunately also one does not blaspheme so there are thought crimes for contradicting the official wisdom of the state instead of church.

Religion in some form is nearly universal. Religions organize as do civilizations. We have had our problems with religions having civil power or control of civil authorities. Separation of Church and State has been the thrust of progress in this matter for the last two centuries. Religion will not disappear in our lifetime. I think we are headed in the right direction.

Okay... what's your point? I don't see what WWII or Indians war mythologies have to do with what I said? Do you think it negates my point?

To elaborate on my original comments... the root problem isn't religion, it's faith-based thinking and dogma, which as I said is not exclusive to religion; it can also present itself within conspiracy theories, denialism, cults, alternative medicine, secular politics, etc. I don't think faith and dogma will ever be eradicated because I regard them to be part of human nature. But as I said, religion is the greatest propagator of faith/dogma and combined with the social acceptance of religion we have a effectively institutionalised this into a dangerous package. Religion is effectively the antithesis to progressions. Reason and critical thinking, along with the open method of science allows us to be aware of and control faith/dogma.

Well all of those events and wars are not the reason we now (as a society) shun criticism of religion. I would say contend that the reverse is true: that the dogmatic nature of religion is the reason these events took place.

The inability to criticise religion is inherent to religion, because religion isn't about questioning and critical examination; it is about faith, hope and desire. Any religion that opens its doors to reason, criticism and evidence will pretty much end up with godless naturalism and secular humanism. Religion can only be maintained by restricting itself. That is why we had things like heresy and the abolition of contradicting/opposing views. 

This is also why mild criticism of religion today appears to be far more worse that criticism of a politics proposition, or a book or restaurant. When you insulate something from criticism for so long, the slightest criticism can be seen as insulting and offensive.

(p.s. what is a Izziehugger?)

Can I ask why not?

I would somewhat agree insofar that I think it is better to promote a positive worldview: secular humanism, naturalism, skepticism, reason, science, and so on.

Maybe it would be a good idea to establish a word which encompassed all of this, so when you say, for example, "secular humanism" people know exactly what it constitutes, as opposed to a negative position which even if understood correctly still doesn't reveal them much.

Atheism carries so much baggage, despite the fact that most atheists have the same position as those non-theists that refuse to call themselves atheists. If we focused primarily on the broader non-theistic worldview be bigger and more powerful.

No, that would be a poor choice of policy. Why are you suggesting it?

No, that's insane. There's no way to legally claim ignorance in the case of murder or capital crime. There isn't even a way to do that in the case of many white-collar crimes, so ...

Jeez, I guess we know you're not a lawyer. Again, not true. "... And the jury never heard it either" is the part that blows me away. I don't know why you would need a religious precedent to find harming another person obviously illegal in the context of individual rights and freedoms.

You're completely obsessed! Have you ever had a conversation without bringing up Nazis? This thread has nothing to do with Nazis!