I never did believe. My father drove me to church rain, shine, snow, hurricane, earthquake etc. He never went in. Later as teenager I met a friend who told me that his Dad owned a bar, Every Sunday morning they had a poker game there & my father never missed the game.

Precisely

Restraint is definitely needed. I do not believe that most of the earth's religions will provide that. Our only hope is to be governed by ethical and intelligent governments. Since that is a worldwide requirement, I am not confident we will have a good outcome.

A small minority of religions encourage ethical treatment of our earth. I have never understood why people do such stupid things for very short-term gain. The only religious people I hang out with are searchers. That means they are all searching for a way to both be better people and better stewards of the Earth.

Yes, but not in the overall sense. What authentic religion is designed (by cultural evolution, not conscious human intent) to restrain is just those naturally evolved human traits that would be problematic in the context of an agriculture (as opposed to a foraging) based society. And the advent of agriculture, along with its enabling constraints, have catapulted our species from an "also ran" into a species so dominant that we are now threatening to take the whole of life off the planet.

So from a fitness perspective it's a much larger win than if religion hadn't evolved. We're overpopulating the Earth. But now that success has become another threat in its own right, which the abandonment of religion won't solve. What we need now, unfortunately, is more restraint, not less. But it now needs to come from an awareness of the objective facts instead of from an unconscious ritual, or from an unconscious rejection of ritual.

It’s a big waste.

And there are humans that need it.

Bolts are for nuts.

That would be a short circuit... (being told to lie does that...)

Those who need religious restraints to act ethically and morally have little confidence in their own innate integrity.

Alex De Tocqueville noted this many years ago during a visit to our exotic young nation. [edsitement.neh.gov]
Here's some quotes: [azquotes.com]

They should be restrained by intelligence and common sense instead of religion. Actually, I haven't heard of any restrained evangelicals lately, either.