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Alignment is the cornerstone of any fantasy roleplaying game. In the real world, players have all sorts of murky moral and ethical dilemmas to deal with. RPGs are an escape from those difficulties into a black-and-white world where heroes are heroes and villains are villains.
Furthermore, the game mechanics revolve around it. How does detect evil make sense without alignment? What about an anarchic weapon? Do good and evil subtypes make sense any more and, if so, how do paladins know when they get bonuses from smite evil?
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.
None of those things (Detect evil, anarchic weapons, paladins) would exist in a non-alignment setting.
And considering D&D and its clones/derivatives are the only FRPGs I've ever seen with alignment, 'cornerstone' is a strong word.
Actually after having to deal with a lot of arguments and basically nothing good coming from alignment in a persistent world campaign that I was involved with online for a couple of years, I've determined that you definitely do not need alignment to have things like detect evil, anarchic weapons, or Paladins, or for it to even "feel like D&D".
My current campaign has mostly dispensed with alignment in the sense that it's used in traditional games. Alignment subtypes are really all that matter in terms of game-related mechanics and all creatures are treated as Neutral-aligned for the purposes of effects based on alignment. The following house rules patched the rest.
1. Creatures are treated as Neutral unless they possess a subtype (Paladins and Clerics can acquire alignment subtypes like outsiders).
2. Effects that combat specific alignments (such as smite evil / holy weapons) deal 1/2 damage vs neutral enemies (so an anarchic weapon deals +1d6 damage to most everyone and +2d6 damage to lawful subtype creatures, while a Paladin's Smite Evil deals +1/2 Paladin level damage vs most enemies).
3. Spells like protection from chaos/evil/good/law provide their benefits vs neutral enemies and twice their benefits vs their opposed alignment (IE - casting protection from law grants a +2 bonus to AC and saves vs most creatures and a +4 bonus vs chaotic-subtype enemies).
4. Paladins can choose alignment subtypes to represent their ideals or can simply be champions of a cause. Unaligned Paladins do not receive the benefits or drawbacks of an alignment subtype and they do not get full smite damage vs any target but can smite any target. This also allows Paladins to serve as a "champion" style class as well, which is very nice from a world-building perspective when you want to have two factions or religions that are contested on different ideologies but not necessarily moralities.
Humorously, virtually nothing really changed except our games just got better. Everyone and I mean everyone in the games is more interested in who and what people in the campaign are doing rather than their alignments and as a GM I don't have to worry about whether or not someone in the party is going to end up left in the lurch because they prepared protection from evil only to find an adventure full of animals and/or non-evil antagonists. Our Party's Paladin has found that EVIL-subtype enemies are super rare but also doesn't have to be very picky with what he smites and instead now smites when it's thematically appropriate. On the flip side, he also doesn't end encounters very quickly when he smites either since he gets more out of it in terms to to-hit, AC, and DR-penetration rather than actual damage (he's currently 7th level and so he adds +3 to damage vs most enemies or +7 against undead/outsiders/dragons).
From a GMing perspective, it's made alignment subtype characters far more of a special deal. Even things like the lowly Imp or Quasit leap out as being somehow "more" because of what they are. It also means that if I include treasures appropriate for nefarious demon-worshipping cults and such (such as an unholy weapon) then the party can still loot and use the weapon effectively (if it provides a +1d6 bonus vs most enemies that they encounter it's still valuable loot rather than vendor-fodder).
It has also increased the viability of characters on the law/chaos axis. Nobody really cares about law/chaos. We sometimes pretend we do, but we don't. It shows too. Pick up any Paizo adventure Path and try to find an adventure centering about saving the chaotic people in the world against the tyranny of the forces of law. I'll wait. The best you might find is some Lawful Evil Chelaxians or something but even then it is more about good vs evil. However with this variant, clerics with domains such as Chaos isn't going to find his domain spells like protection from/magic circle against chaos, chaos hammer, and so forth useless or significantly less useful than protection from evil and holy smite.
Humorously, even spells like detect evil are still useful. For example, what most people tend to forget in the detect evil spell (and other alignment detecting spells is this little number)...
Creatures with actively evil intents count as evil creatures for the purpose of this spell.
Which means our party's Paladin uses detect evil as sort of a detect the desire to hurt/oppress/kill. Which humorously is actually how the spell worked in ages long since past where it detected the hostile intent of affected creatures.