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The content is irrelevant. No one gives a flying hell what the religion is about. It doesn't matter. If it is an institutionalized religion its effects on society as a whole would be absolutely the same.
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What? I don't see how you can take the content out of religion. And it sure as hell (no pun intended) isn't irrelevant.
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It was used in ancient time as the basis for legislation and morality when the state wasn't powerful enough to enforce them itself (The Ten Commandments are basically copy/pasted in today's most Constitutions)
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The state to me looked more powerful back in the old days when everything it said was law, no questioning. The state WAS the religion.
And the ten commandments are in todays constitutions because they are the base of our survival. It's in human nature (for normal people) to know that killing is a bad thing. Yet we kill people everyday. The ten commandments aren't in the constitutions because some old wise guy got them from god.
They are the base of a society that can live together. Moses knew that when he had to stay at his mountain for 40 years or so. Egyptians knew it some 1000's of years before him. And we still know it. But it's not our god that says it, it's our common sense.
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Do we need religion? Some evolutionary biologists actually believe that we do. Dawkins himself allows for this, quoting one milestone study which links the survival of the human race to our unique ability to take for granted and accept as truth things that seem outlandish and have no proof behind them. Authority, in general, is an evolutionary concept which enables group activity and survival, and as such any authority - real or imagined - creates the cohesion as a species we need to evolve.
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Now this is interesting.
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Everything we do in life is a matter of choice, and it should come as no surprise that religion is one of those choices. I chose to be an atheist, just as some people chose to be theists.
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And many people don't get the choice.