If you want to believe in God simply for the idea of an afterlife, then you admire religion for the wrong reasons. Theists believe in God for the same reason that atheists don't believe... they see an order to the Universe, an awe-inspiring majesty in which "beauty is truth". They notice that some truths are universal, and they put their faith in what they believe. A true believer WANTS God to exist, not because they're afraid of an absence of an afterlife, but because they have a firm determination that the ideals that their God represents are the only thing WORTH believing. For atheists, those ideals are "logic", "rationality" and "goodness", for theists... well, it depends on the religion, but they usually also include "goodness". People believe in different paths, but in truth, everyone wants to believe in a better world.

Except the psychopath scumbags, but you'll find a few of those in every camp. If Christianity didn't exist, people would've held Inquisitions for different reasons. Why, the McCarthy witch hunts were named because they were so similar to the supposedly "religious" witch hunts of old. But the McCarthy version was based on politics.

As I see it, people persecute other people for being different - whether or not those differences are religious, political, racial or what have you is largely irrelevant.