Religion are needed/not needed according to situation.

From a functionalism perspective:
Generally I view religion as an institutions that somewhat controls and unite people, which makes it quite essential. Looking back into the history, in most of the case, religion have the greatest influencing ability to the masses compared any other authoritarian figure. The faith people had on religion surpasses anything else that some even go extreme doing things the masses considered as deviant act. It's amazing how religion can affects people way of life in almost every single manner in our lives. Religion also teaches as the way of life in a good manner, enabling to behave as 'normal' as we learn the culture through religion and blend in well into the society. Hence, religion is essential for the unity of people and teaches us to act as commoners.

From a conflict perspective:
Religion in most countries are too closely tie up to the government and being used as a tool to control people and manipulate faithful believers. Extremists used religion as an excuses to do deviant acts and religion interferes with decision making as sometimes the most effective and rational decision are considered to be immoral and thus not executed. Hence, religion promotes corruptions, terrorist activity by extremist and slows down the advancement of society.

From a symbolic-interaction perspective:
Technically, every society comes with religion and it thus it has become one of the element in our daily life, regardless of whether god exist or not, it's merely a subjective interpretation by individuals. The existence of religion sometimes promotes conflict in between interaction of individuals with different religion background but promotes cohesiveness between individuals of similar religion background.