I wish, knowing people and history we would think up other excuses to behave like dicks. Humans in power aren't nice. 😑 power corrupts unfortunately.
Mhm. It'd be far worse. To quote George Carlin, "Think of how
stupid the average person is, and realize
half of them are stupider than that." Religion has its place in the world as with any other ideology, making those who believe in it fearful of what they do because of the eventual repercussions they'll face, because the smarter people behind said religions put into effect controlling factors to mediate the believer populace according to a general shared ethos and supposed manifestations to extract compliance through nebulous threats of otherworldly belief (eg. hell, naraka, etc). It just suffers like any other ideological position.
Problems primarily arise when non-believers take advantage of loopholes and other factors (like distance from ecclestatical superiors, or hiding their true nature to become said superiors, infiltrating and corrupting further from within) to take advantage of laymen believers, like those many charlatan mega-church pastors that falsify miracles to fill their coffers and actively repudiate the tenets of the faith they purport to follow constantly; The event that always immediately comes to mind is when Joel Osteen closed his mega-church location to refugees after Hurricane Harvey, while Mattress Mack opened his gallery furniture stores immediately to everyone that needed help. That was also what led to the Catholic/Protestant split, due to so many corrupt politicians in the upper echelons of the religion.
There's also problems when a religion doesn't reform away from expansionism and conquest, as is an issue with Islam, where you aren't even allowed to reject it if you don't believe, and also the incessant internecine warfare between Shia and Sunni over points of faith (much like you see with purity pogroms in various non-religious ideologies, as well; Atheism+ comes to mind). Similarly, if you get competing religions, as with any opposing ideologies, you'll get friction, even if one is nominally meant to be pacifist; as with the Buddhist Sinhalese that persecuted the Tamil minority to the point it led to a 26 year war initiated by the Black July Massacres, in Sri Lanka, or the anti-Muslim riots and killings in Myanmar led by the Buddhist ၉၆၉ movement (context;
bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim, or "In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful," is represented with the number 786, and frequently displayed in Muslim-owned businesses. So, the Buddhists in this movement represent the "Three Jewels" of Buddhism with 969, or as it is written in Burmese, ၉၆၉; the nine attributes of the Buddha, the six attributes of his teachings, and the nine attributes of the Sangha, or monastic order).