So yeah, we aren't suckers, and without us our civilization will collapse.
0: https://www.oipa.org/international/animals-sense-of-fairness
He's saying people with religious beliefs lean more towards maintaining an honest society.
Personally, I'm inclined to agree. I'm Japanese and one of our old sayings is that "The Sun is looking down on us.", which is to say the Sun sees everything we do so we shouldn't do anything we would be ashamed of.
>Even without belief in gods, birds will 'take note' when other birds receive food non-proportionately[0].
By what measure are you so decisively saying that birds don't believe in gods? I'm not aware of any means with which we can communicate with birds to such a detailed extent.
>That's not even mentioning how religion has been used in the past to tear societies apart as well as individuals.
Every single religion is fundamentally about uniting peoples together and maintaining the public peace. It is unfortunate that this gets warped and abused when two different religions meet and end up viciously disagreeing, but murdering each other has never been the primary point of religion.