Absolutely not! Religion is a coercitive social organization to terrorize all who do not submit to established practices and mobilizations.

Humans are the only animals on heart to have the greed gene. The Kings and Emperors invented Gods and religions to justify their divine power to rule and persecute! They started by inventing Patriarchy to crush women's right to rule. They created supreme Gods stronger than all the others. Greed led to invasions of other people to steel their wealth and crush their religion.

Emperor Constantine, in 400 AD, Invented the Holy Bible to consolidate his Roman Empire and justify the Invasion of the World to convert to Roman Catholicism. The great Nation of Mosus got in a quarrel and divided between Yahwe and Allah became enemies so the Muslims declared war on the Roman and Jewish Empires...

Another God was created by greed, Time! Emperors and Kings invented Time to get maximum wealth out of human work. Time never existed, only present time is real! Henry Ford, inventor of the industrial production line and great Financier of the American Nazi Party, was so happy of his invention that he declared: "Time is Money"!

Now we have Donald J. trump, President of the USA, who proclaimed himself as a "Creation of God to save America"! The American Dollar used to show the American trademark: "E Pluribus Unum" (One out of many), but the anti-communist campaign of Sen. McCarthy had it changed to: "In God We Trust".

Is the American God the God of Greed?

Aren't the American People the most religious people in the world.

The social purpose of religion is to establish salvation on an individual basis, as the social reality is the common sharing of risks reduces the costs and raises the performance of the protection. All the public services, the Insurance Companies and new technologies promote the sharing of risks!

Greedy leaders hate sharing the risks as their greed is based on individualized social protection...

A common set of ethics - such as no killing, lying or stealing, or sexual misconduct - must have helped to keep the tribe together and to stop conflicts from erupting into feuds. So I can see religious morality as having some beneficial effects, likely when these kind of rules were passed down from the shaman or chief and well before the invention of a code of laws or judges.

The advent of the dark ages definitely tells me it never did.

Who knows how far back but when the first religion was started it was the only religion, a moment later there were two religions and suddenly humans had a reason to kill each other, welcome to hell!

In the prescientific era it did in some ways, or more exactly it was an expression of a coping mechanism. I think over the past 300 years it's gradually become more and more maladaptive though.

Ernst Becker, the originator of Terror Management Theory, wrote a lot about this topic in books like Denial of Death and Escape from Evil. He saw primitive religion and its later embellishments as "immortality projects" to sublimate the dread of mortality and to manage the large amount of reality that humanity simply didn't understand.

there are a few people I know who were "saved" by believing rather than going crazy with too many drugs or drink but you can safely say religion has caused so much death, grief, pain and division probably since it was conceived that it far exceeds any good it has done the few.

I can't think of any particular examples except in terms of missionary work and selfless but misguided religious individuals sacrificing their health and lives working to save people diseased, starving, and persecuted by various governments, warlords or tribes around the world.

I guess rules about sex and when to plant crops were common in many old religions and ythese were probably good for there time.