I believe a given religion, just like a political party or government or other organization, is just a collection of people with some shared beliefs. People act in ways that are good at times and in ways that are bad, and I believe there are some people who are fundamentally more 'good' (altruistic in nature) vs. others who are more 'bad'.

Organizations of large groups of people tend to attract people attracted to power to seek leadership positions within them. I believe there was a behavioral study on the CEOs of major companies and the number who were categorized as sociopaths was quite alarming. I don't doubt the same is true for political leaders or religious leaders. When you seek and attain life changing amounts of power where you quite literally are "above the law" the normal rules of right & wrong no longer apply to you and perhaps your true human animalistic nature is revealed.

To get to your actual question, sure religion has done some good things. I think when my local church feeds some homeless people, that is unequivocally good. However, on balance, I think "religion is the opiate of the masses" is a fair statement. It is a way to give hope to the otherwise hopeless and prevent them from demanding some form of fairness/justice/etc... in this life because there is a promise of something better after death if you follow some set of rules in this one.

This is a form of mass manipulation to prevent the non-wealthy from realizing their power in this lifetime and demanding/taking a better life now. There is no population of monkeys/lions/other animal, where one monkey has 250 billion bananas while 50% of the monkeys around him don't have enough bananas that they go to sleep hungry. It simply wouldn't be possible in natural animal rules world.

Religion, additionally, is responsible for brainwashing the masses to commit horrendous atrocities. Unfortunately, humans are quite susceptible to herd behavior as seen more recently by political diviciveness. When you are committed to your 'team' based on a 'belief', you can do no wrong and you see your 'opponent' as sub-human. You can then commit the most egregious crimes against them and justify it to yourself. Divide and conquer is a tactic well understood by the elites.

It has been said that more murder has been committed in the name of religion than any other cause. I don't know if that is true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me. Looking at the christian crusades, the muslims marauding through India, christians mass killing native americans and the native peoples of modern day mexico/south america, etc...

On balance, I think religion is more bad than good. I think that because it is a version of the Matrix. You can believe it to make yourself feel better, to justify why some things are the way they are. But the reality is, you are an animal just like a monkey or a lion or an ant, and you are living in a man eat man survival of the fittest world. There are some of us animals who realized that in order to hoard riches that even kings of old could not dream of, they need to continue to brainwash the masses into submission with fairytales.

Take the pill, understand the harsh but still amazingly beauty of this world and short life we are so lucky to experience. Life is better without the opiate of religion numbing you from reality.