Casual debate: Religion is beneficial

Does religion benefit society and individual?

These two are connected. As religion improves society, society can work better for individual. As religion improves individual, individual improves society as a result. My opponent might bring up cases of individuals who use religion as excuse to do wrong things, but that is correlation causation fallacy. If religion caused people to do wrong things, we would see religious societies be much worse. But opposite is true. Countries ran by atheist leaders such as Stalin and Mao were among worst countries on Earth. Religious people are less depressed and less suicidal. This is important because people who are less depressed are better able to help others and improve society. Science has already proved many mental health benefits of religion, and these are important as they bit by bit improve society as a whole. We have seen atheist societies, and all have degraded in mental health and quality of life, simply because atheist world view has no morality, as free will cannot exist in atheist world. Free will is important, no moral system can work without it. In atheist world, choices are result of matter movement, human is like rock.

P1. If religion achieves enough wants of individual, religion is beneficial for that individual.

P2. Religion achieves enough wants of individual

C. Religion is beneficial for individual.

P1 is true because what is beneficial is meassured by what is wanted, what is desired, what benefits persons wants and interests, what is beneficial for persons goals. So no opposite premise here is possible.

P2 is also true as religion causes individual to live longer, increases life expectancy, gives motivation, reduces depression and hopelessness. With this, it benefits person's life and allows him to achieve more goals at basically no cost. So we see that without religion, individual achieves less wants, as he lives shorter, so opposite premise would be self-contradictive.

The topic doesnt include all religions, it just says religion(singular, one religion) is beneficial.

Likewise, this debate is essentially if the world without any religion would be better than world with some religion.

Further, as my opponent conceded that atheist countries were horrible, and that atheists do indeed have worse health outcomes, it stands proved that at least one religion is beneficial.

Lol.  You must be joking.  If I agreed with you and conceded, we'd both be wrong.

Religion, in general, has driven many wars.  Here are just some: