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Assuming that religion and God did not exist, they would resurface.
Some people need to find answers, they can't accept that we don't know why everything happens, and need to find a greater meaning. These people would be the larger group, and those who understand how to exploit the insecurities of the masses would quickly provide answers, elevating themselves to positions from which they could control massive numbers of people for their own benefit.
Lacking a supreme being, those in charge would create a god in the image of mankind, and then tell the people that the reverse is true, that we were created in His image, in order to make them feel special and important. Like our modern Judeo-Christian God, this new God would exhibit characteristics of human imperfection and emotion. This imperfection would allow the common man to grow closer to the false God out of both love and fear. We would eventually have masses worshipping a vengeful, judgemental God who should be followed out of fear of smiting and worldwide flooding, or at least out of fear of eternal torture. He would, of course, be both omniscient and omnipotent, as most people would not understand the contradiction that is created by assigning both qualities to the same being.
After a short time, a few individuals would feel the need to take more power for themselves. They would take their own personal feelings, and delude themselves into believing that they had been given either permission or an order from God to branch off from the group and start their own denomination. An occasional person would do this because they truly believe that the methodology of the initial group is wrong and should be corrected, but most would do it for the sake of creating or enhancing their position of authority.
Some of the subgroups would be more permissive than the initial group, and would allow their members more freedom while keeping a tight grip on those who followed them with the same fear of God's wrath and eternal punishment. Others would be more restrictive, and would condemn all others, threatening those who did not adopt thier more conservative ideology with divine punishment for those who did not convert. Eventually, some groups would stray so far that others would not accept them, even as fellow believers of different denominations.
In the end, the same situation we have today would exist. Different names would be assigned, different beliefs would dominate, but people would hate and kill simply because others would not think the same way.
I know I'm going to upset people by saying this, but looking back at history, and looking at modern times, organized religion has done little more than allow a few people to impose their will on others, divide people and turn them against each other, and provide people with a simple way to deny the truth and shield them from reality when they don't want to accept that some things happen simply because of chance and that they may not be the chosen race of a supreme being.
If you really want to get your head spinning, take in all of that and try to figure out how I believe all of what I just said and still believe that God exists.
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