I understand your position, as I live in a country were Christianity is pretty much the dominant aspect of religion. It may be over 95% of the population in total. 

I just could never understand how can some upholders of that faith proclaim and uphold some seriously bad decisions, when in the root of that religion, the message is very different. That's what set me apart from Christianity in my younger years and that led me to the discovery of other religions (Before I followed the Wiccan religion, I followed some Buddhist concepts). 

In the end, I guess as long as human beings don't disrupt beliefs to their own personal and greedy motives, there shouldn't be any kind of worry, but that's not what history has shown us, unfortunately. 

Wow, this is a difficult question to answer as religion has been so ingrained in human development. I've seen people say there'd be less war and we'd be far more advanced technology-wise, but I'm not sure that's entirely true.

Certain culture and civilisations relied on religion to develop. The most obvious I can think of is the Anchient Egyptians where the Pharoah was seen as god-on-Earth. All the technology, architecture, medical tech etc. they developed would have been lost. So whilst I disagree with organised religion, I think in early development of the human race it was neccessary. At some point though, I think it became a hindrance to progression as people became dogmatic in their thinking.

First paragraph: If it were up to the religion in my country I'd be a very hateful person. I've generally noticed that a person's desire to be good is more connected to said person's personality, rather than any religious teaching.If you don't have empathy, no religious teaching will make you a better person.

Second paragraph: People generally feel bad when they go against their own beliefs (are you suggesting that non-religious people don't have values, or that their values are not correct?). What matters really is what your beliefs are. Religion teaches lots of nasty things. A Christian may feel bad if they don't disown his/her homosexual son or if they don't force him to go through the traumatic experience of conversion therapy. Most of the good things that the christian religion teaches are actually ethic principles created by greek philosophers. People certainly don't need religion to be good. All they have to do is relise that for society to fucntion properly, it's necessary for them to respect certain rules (else no one should complain that they live in a disfunctional society).

Define extremist. Because I often hear atheist extremist or militant atheist bandied about and I honestly can't find an example of militant atheism without injecting some other extreme dogmatic system such as some stronger versions of communism for example.  Thats if we're talking about the violence usually associated with being a militant or an extremist. If its used in the context of simply being passionate and outspoken however, then I cannot see why thats an issue?

If you're outspoken and you say something stupid, people are going to make you look like a fool publically.  You say you'd just like to let them co-exist, but co-existance requires talking, debating, the ability to hold differeing opinions without agreeing and not acting like they don't exist. So just because you're being open about an opinion certainly doesn't mean you're disrupting ones co-existance.

There seems tremendous pressure for non-religious people to be quiet, but when you walk through a city you'll see churches, mosques on most major roads etc. Religious people certainly aren't being quiet and nor should they, I only expect it to go both ways.

For a lot of people, making money, having sex, having fun, and dying aren't good enough reasons for the question:  "Why are we here?"  And on top of that, there are millions of people whose quality of life is a lot less than ideal.  Many of these people find their strength in believing in a higher power.  They empower themselves by congregating with other like minded individuals. A little belief and hope that there's more waiting for them in the afterlife makes the current situation a little more bearable.

Thinking on a personal level and much less on a "Thousand Year Holy War" level, I think there would be a lot more suicide and depression in the world.  Plus, South Park would have a lot less to make fun of.  And.....I'd probably kill all of you.

All of you.

Obviously, there's no way to know for sure but I assume technology and medecine would be a lot more advanced. Human behaviour-wise though, I'm not so sure. Part of me wants to believe we would have attained a higher mindset and be more tolerent. The other finds that people tend to always find a reason to dislike each other. Why does it have to be so complicated? -_-'

There'd be no Crusades, or Witch Hunting, or many other things that happened in the past which were just plain retarded.

There would be little or no dogmas, everyone would be a lot more freethinking. But then again none of us could debate theology, which is always a fun.

But seriously, if there was no religion we would find something else to occupy our mind in the same way and pander to our need to feel as though we know about things that we just can't explain in reality. But all in all I guess it's had some positive influence and some negative, there's no direct and easy answer.

Just out of interest, which potential genocide in particular was prevented by direct religious intervention?

I probably wouldn't suffer so badly learning random names in my religion class.

But to the world, less wars, but also less morals