Religion is, at best, useless

Did my opponent miss my screwdriver/knife analogy completely? To be useful, something does not have to be THE ONLY SOURCE of its use. A toaster can be used to toast bread. So can a toaster oven, or a regular oven, or a fire. And yet they are ALL useful in this regard. A pizza can be used to satisfy hunger. So can a hamburger, or a salad. And yet, they are ALL useful for this. A secular organization can be used for charity work, as can a religion. They are both useful for this. A secular philosophy can be used to spread ideals of goodwill and what not, as can a religion. They are BOTH useful for this. Something does NOT have to be the only source of its use to be useful. IF that were true, barely anything in the world today would be useful. Also, my opponent DID say that I cited 'dividing people' as one of the uses of religion. He said, "as in you are right, it can be used as a tool for dividing people" "You're right, it can be used as a tool for dividing people." See that? Go read it in the original context, too, I haven't warped its meaning. Also, keeping with the Chris Hitchens rip-off act, my opponent explains that only a rabbi or a muslim is going to mutilate a baby's genitals [circumcision]. Not only is the wording here only representing one viewpoint [that circumcision is evil somehow, simply because it changes the body], but it's also much more than just Rabbi's and Muslims who do it. Even among those born today, the majority of males are circumcised. You'll find that Muslims and Jews are very much not the majority in the US. People do it for a variety of reasons: wanting their kid to fit in, easier upkeep of hygiene, etc. As we see yet again, religion is not the ONLY source of this supposed 'evil'. Indeed, let me end this as swiftly as possible now. 1 Something does not have to be the only source of some use to be useful. If this were true, nothing would be useful. See my many analogies. 2 My opponent conceded that religion does charity work, though they are not the only ones. Therefore, this is a use. All my other uses are valid, too. Therefore, I have shown that religion is not useless. Cut and dry, there's nothing else to it. Also, consider how well I showed that religion calms people who would otherwise be paranoid about death, driving them to insanity or causing them to have night terrors. I showed this last round, and its certainly a good that secularism would have a hard time providing. Here's what I wrote last round: "I agree that it is very intellectually dishonest, putting faith in false hopes. However, I have a few things to say here. Perhaps the hope offered by some religions is not false. That possibility aside, and assuming that it is false hope to think there is life after death, what does that change? People can go insane over their death-paranoia. A man I know constantly has night terrors because he's so afraid of death. So then, isn't hope, however false, useful in preventing such things? I'm not saying false hope in general is good, but in this case, it is useful for many people." Yet it went unrebutted. Not that it's necessary for me to provide a use that ONLY religion can supply, since that's not the topic. The topic is whether or not religion is useless, and I have shown numerous uses thereof.