Howdy, as an atheist, my personal wish is for spirituality to be a personal matter, nothing wrong with development of ideas, but to set them up as the key to all understanding for another in a way that impeades on others is simply wrong.
When one speaks of a need of the masses, they should mean basics, food, shelter, security... but only the individual can choose for themselves what they want to believe in, which organized religion has a way of dictating to these masses, who are individuals, making it so much easier to accept and then build upon. Especially when to go against such dictation has a way of getting oneself ostrisized from most groups of otherwise intelligent people. Even intelligence has become dictated. The human being who can live without such huge outside influence over themself is a very intelligent being indeed. However, in todays world, such a purposeful direction is seen and acted upon as antisocial, radically antieverything
and a nut to boot. But these are really terms of acceptance into groups, if you do not follow us, you are an enemy, and if you adapt spititully away,traitor. The world is in a way these days which makes it almost imposible to find ones own place on ones own terms, reality is a "known".
As far as vision, I have my own, it does give me sense of meaning/purpose, and it is a warm feeling to know that regardless of how much some would like or try to instill thier beliefs into my mind, I occupy my own, all input into my reality can be self monitored, accepted or rejected, or placed in an area awaiting further information.
As far as religion is concerned, believe what you want, but do not inject it into systems of control in our society, in our government, our personal lives, leave it where it belongs, in your daily lives and gatherings if need be.
Would this throw the masses into an unsolvable existance/meaningfulness crisis? The comfort of the masses? That must be an individually found comfort, does everyone have to beleive the same thing to allow them to feel comfortable?
If so, the human race is in terrible shape as a mass,that is if happiness/comfort are mostly drawn from dictated ways of doing so, instead of self thought/development.
Anyhow, I do not wish religion never existed, otherwise I would never have developed my own current sense of reality, which is all we will ever have because reality is subjective as far as we will ever know it. One can get close to the truth for themself, that is about it.