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By asking whether religion is needed or not, you are implicitly making the assumption that religions are false, because if religion were, in fact, correct, then the question of whether it is necessary or not becomes irrelevant. After all, if God exists then he exists regardless of whether humans believe it necessary that he exist.
Assume we play your game, however, and say that religion is incorrect. I believe religion to be necessary, regardless. My first reason for this is simple - and I think hard to argue with: if it were not necessary, it would not exist; certainly not in the form it does. Religion, if you consider it false, is a way of life. If you strip away the validity of its dieties and supernatural phenomena, then you are left with its teachings: a set of rules by which the faithful choose to live their lives. A false religion is no better or no worse, no more useful or less useful, than the set of morals and secular beliefs that we aetheists choose to abide by.
Some religions can be considered a crutch, as they attempt to explain and euphemize many of the misfortunes that have a perverse tendency to fall upon us mere mortals. It is easier for a child (or really anyone, I suppose) to swallow death, in all its forms, when they believe it a one-way trip to eternal paradise and salvation. We could designate religion as a device to prevent humans from becoming preoccupied with things beyond our control.
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Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out.
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