What would the world be without religion?

[-AoG-Kero]

If there was no religion, what would our world be like? honestly?

anyone care to elaborate?

[Rand]

Without religion, the world would indeed be a far worse place than it is now. Religion gives people that hope and fear they need to stay in line, for those that follow those rules of religion. Of course, most atheists would be happy because people would stop believing in things that atheists feel are very not true, but there are better solutions than that.

Strip religion of the worshiping, omnipotent God, and ridiculous morals (anti-Gay, anti-stem cells) and you get a good list of things to live by as well as something to make you less sad when people die.

No religion = chaos, in my opinion. People need a God to push their problems onto.

~Rand-

[Vexx]

I would think that it would be a bit chaotic. Do you mean if it suddenly disappeared, or if it wasn't there to begin with?
If it suddenly disappeared, I'm sure alot of people would probably kill themselves, everyone would go nuts and start raiding places and general stupidity like that.
If the religion wasn't here to begin with, I think it would be a pretty violant place. There wouldn't really be many morals or rules, like most religions have, and people would be killing and stealing right and left....If you think about it, our laws are very similar to the Ten Commandments. If they didn't get the laws from the commandments in the first place, it might be different. Probably be just how it is today only we don't wake up at 6am every Sunday morning to go to church...

[Alice Shade]

If God didn`t existed, it would be necessary to invent him. - Voltaire.

Religion, in essence, is a crowd-control tool.

Now and ever until crowd stops being stupid, gullible and hateful, religion will be always a useful tool to control the crowds.

[Rand]

Wonder what life would be like without atheism (or google, since Google is a huge part of life now). If there was no religion, there'd be no atheism.. but if there continues to be religion and no longer atheism.. what would happen? Nothing?

Religion is crowd control.. Atheism is...?

[Vexx]

Wonder what life would be like without atheism (or google, since Google is a huge part of life now). If there was no religion, there'd be no atheism.. but if there continues to be religion and no longer atheism.. what would happen? Nothing?

Religion is crowd control.. Atheism is...?

If religion is crowd control, I'd say being an atheist would be like being a rebel. You can't control me! Nevveeerrr! -shakes fist-

Sort of like the good/evil, debate...if there was no good, there'd be no evil because you'd have nothing to contrast it with...

[-AoG-Kero]

Strip religion of the worshiping, omnipotent God, and ridiculous morals (anti-Gay, anti-stem cells) and you get a good list of things to live by as well as something to make you less sad when people die.


~Rand-

stripping religion of worshiping and such would basically leave a philosphy would it not?

so maybe it would be appropriate to say "the world would be better if there was no religion, only philosphy?"

but yeah, people are stupid...if we found a highly advanced alien civilazation that liked us, and had tons of stuff to teach us, we would probably blow up their world cuz we didnt liek their religious beliefs

[Rand]

Well, the philosophy is all people would need if we could get over the need of a God (say, they need some sort of hope that someone will make it all better). If people just followed the good things, we'd be all good. I don't dislike religious people for being religious, I dislike the religious people that protest against the progress of mankind and limit the rights of others (telling us that no one can play god except God and God says no gays, no abortion, and no stem cells).

Until people learn how to deal with their own problems without asking God to fix them, the world would be much worse without religion. When people learn how, take out the training wheels and we're set.

[Alice Shade]

God is a manifestation of human`s psychological desire to be observed and judged.

Supernatural Gods performed this duty jointly with government in past.

In future, they could be united in the form of sentient supercomputers.

[-AoG-Kero]

Of course the way i see it...

if people beleive in god, then god does indeed exist. I have seen angels in my life time, and i mean literal angels(either they were angels or ghosts) and so that kinda sets me as being christian.

However not everyone has had the convenience of having a religious-deciding-point like me. So i figure no religion is wrong or right.

[Rand]

I figure you can't really prove that God definitely exists or definitely doesn't exist, as it is faith based, but there is another factor. We are all living in what a person could call a hub (Earth), but we all have different glasses which allow us to see things from OUR point of view, making every point of view different. These points of view can be called realities. We all live in our own little reality. So, if, like Kero, people see something that no one else sees, it is generally held as an opinion that that person is insane, stressed out, tired, or drugged up*. Kero will think it is real, since it is his reality, so for all that matters it was really a real thing he had seen. So, if you personally believe there is a God, truly believe, you could plausibly see proof or even God Him/Herself, causing you to strengthen your belief. You can do the same thing with a lot of other situations too, which is why ignoring is easy if you get good at it, you just convince yourself that person doesn't exist or that s/he doesn't have a voice. It's funky the way the brain works. It's kinda like doublethink. You can see what is really there, as a true fact in the 'hub', but you can also see your reality. Just like when Winston indeed saw five fingers when being tortured, his mind really saw five fingers instead of four when there were in fact four fingers held up.

When you think about what the brain is capable of, you kind of wonder how it could be the way it is without a God. I'm sure that can and will change when we master the brain, but until then, it is truly amazing.

*There are other possibilities

~Rand-

[-AoG-Kero]

well the way you put it...it sounds like your calling me insane!!!

lol. but the situation i was in was one of singularity. The place i saw the vision was in my house, and all those that couldve seen it were asleep. so meh

[Alice Shade]

Eyewitnessing is not a proof.

For any event to be proved, one needs to offer reliable way of recreating event. It does not have to be something one single person can do, specifically, but there must be a clear rule(s) by which one can predict, that event will occur.

[Rand]

Not everyone thinks that, Alice. For some people it is seeing and believing. We could go into a discussion of how everyones belief system (how they believe, what they require in order to believe something), but that would just be pointless as everyone is slightly different. Some people take what they see as fact. Therefore they believe God exists by this "seeing proof" of an angel or Him, therefore they are religious and engage in religious activity.

Your thinking is that seeing is not proof. Someone else's thinking is probably that it is.

Now, using that "seeing proof" to tell others that God exists, no. Not at all. All the seeing proof did was convince that one person... and that is all it should do. Then again, I can't count the number of times I've seen some new program about someone who had a dream about heaven and people believing in God because of it.

Guess I'm trying to say that not everyone is as... you... and you are. It seems to have worked on Kero.

[-AoG-Kero]

well it did work on me but that single event didnt cause my belief, it just helped. and i understand what you mean by seeing isnt proof. For me it isnt like that either.

but the way my life has turned out so far, that event, plus other things have cemented my faith.

[Alice Shade]

It`s not a question of personal opinion.

Either you can prove what you saw, either not.

If you can - show it again. If not - be quiet. Simple as that.

[Rand]

I'm not the one going on talk shows and talking about it. People sometimes think their word is all that is needed. If I could find one of these people, there are plenty at my place of education, I'd drag a person who has had one of these visions and make him/her post about it and we'd see that the person would continue to believe it was real, even though they couldn't prove it again. *shrug*

If people took your advice, there'd be a major decrease in idiocy level in the world. Until that point, people will still do those pointless talk shows and news programs that talk about someone seeing something.

[-AoG-Kero]

lol i never would try to convince someone what i saw was real, because i dont know if it was. It could have been from lack of sleep, a dream, or just a bad memory.

I would share my experience if asked, but i wouldnt try to convince anyone.

[Alice Shade]

Rand, when I met with something irrational in RL, I usually do something that directly contradicts that irrational, and ask - "Still sure?"

[-۞-]

If we had no religion we'd be short one annoying John Lennon song.
Bring it on.
.
Seriously the idea that religion controls civil order is a dreadful myth.
Situations like floods, power cuts and police strikes show that God has little influence on 'keeping people in line' with respect to civil order.
.
People use religion to control and manipulate individuals but that is mendacity.

[Alice Shade]

Oh? Who said it`s useful for any emergency situation?

Religion has one simple purpose - keep the kings as kings, and paupers as paupers. It does not goes any further then providing stable hierarchy for the society.

[-۞-]

lol i never would try to convince someone what i saw was real, because i dont know if it was. It could have been from lack of sleep, a dream, or just a bad memory.

I would share my experience if asked, but i wouldnt try to convince anyone.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there Kero, you encountered something to which you give an interpretation but without any other evidences it is hard for us to know what you really experienced.

Your thoughts about it are relevant but not conclusive.

[-AoG-Kero]

I think you've hit the nail on the head there Kero, you encountered something to which you give an interpretation but without any other evidences it is hard for us to know what you really experienced.

Your thoughts about it are relevant but not conclusive.


yay ^^



i think

[Lord_Jereth]

I think humanity, as a whole, would have always been better off if our cave-man/primate forefathers had left religion/superstition in the caves/trees along with the loin cloth and the appendix .

Religion has done everything in its power to keep humanity ignorant, poor, at each other's throats and scared of the dark (the unknown).

My belief is that if religion had not survived our earliest needs to catalog and understand the unknown, i.e. what we did not understand/could not explain at the time, we would be much more enlightened as a species and farther along in our technology.

Up until the last few centuries every major philosopher, physicist, mathematician, inventor, etc. - i.e. those that chose to find answers to questions in the natural world as apposed to the supernatural, were seen as looneys at best or heretics at worst. They posed a threat to the church by saying that these things are not the provenance of God but follow natural laws and have interlocking systems that keep them running and complete without the NEED for a God - ultimate heresy. A great many of our best known early (western) scientists were persecuted by the various arms of the church for saying that there were actual physical explanations and laws to govern phenomena that the church had heretofore claimed to be the work of God, i.e. gravity and the workings of the universe, etc.

I postulate that if, in the early days of technological advancement, these great thinkers had been unfettered by the threat of execution by the theocracy that was the catholic church, we may have become so enlightened early on that by now we could have advanced beyond the need for such evils as greed, hatred and the infighting and persecution that is our way of life, today.

Religion is by no means a system for morality nor is it a very good indicator or example of it. It is merely a system of chaining a people to superstition in an attempt to control them through ignorance. Knowledge is power, religion abhors knowledge, knowledge abhors superstition, knowledge begets understanding and enlightenment, therefore religion abhors enlightenment. If we as a species are enlightened enough to be moral, what need of God or a theocratic governing body to promote morality? We as a species never needed religion to be moral. We just needed to be curious enough to find the truth. Religion is the lazy man's answer to and for everything he doesn't understand. Very simple, really.

If, on the other hand, religion is the only thing supposedly keeping us moral and the lack thereof had lead to extinction at our own hands, what better reason for that extinction? If religion is the only thing that's kept us from killing ourselves off (contrary to actual history) then maybe we as a species deserve to have only been a footnote in earth's geological history. What a reprehensible reason to be the dominant species of the planet!

My 0.02$ worth ...

:icon_cool: LJ

[Alice Shade]

Well, in a nutshell...

This is mostly true.

However, I disagree with assertion, that church seeks to outright repress the knowledge. Historically, monasteries and churches were the centers of scientific thought, actually. First universities rose out of seminaries, which existed to educate in the name of god.

Rather, church had always been trying to control and censor scientific research tightly - as in to allow the "beneficial" inventions to come through, while repressing the discoveries that could`ve blown the ruse.

In all honesty, I have to give due to monk Berthold Shwartz, for one. Inventor of the first firearms and military explosives, he certainly deserves to be recognised in posterity.

[Lord_Jereth]

In all honesty, I have to give due to monk Berthold Shwartz, for one. Inventor of the first firearms and military explosives, he certainly deserves to be recognised in posterity.

Actually, thank the Turks and the Chinese for these, first.

I see the validity of your argument to a point but I think Galileo and Newton might beg to differ.

:icon_cool: LJ

[Alice Shade]

Well, Chinese invented gunpowder, but not firearms. They tried to utilise rockets in warfare, but that was not a very successful concept. Turks did even less - they just provided the means to import said gunpowder (and, ostensibly, stole recepy, though that is an arguable assertion).

It was Shwartz, who invented the concept of firearm as is. Without him, Modern warfare/hunting might`ve taken entirely different forms.

___

As for Newton and Galileo... We can also give dues to Giordano Bruno, as well, while we are at it.

Those facts are entirely consistant with my point. Church did allowed the science, and even encouraged some venues - a lot of alchemists were monks, for example. Yet, it actively repressed the revelations, what could`ve undermined their defining postulates - doubtlessly out of simple self-preservation instinct.

[Lord_Jereth]

I think it was more to the point of allowing scientists to practice their craft in the vain hope or misplaced faith that these same scientists could find no other reason than God to explain the, then, unexplainable and when other means of explanation were found, that information and the scientists were shut down, shut up, and in many cases, executed as heretics. They made a bet, if you will, and when the dice turned up snake-eyes they hid the findings.

Galileo was put under house arrest for refusing to recant his findings that the earth was not the center of the universe. Newton was not allowed to be buried in his church cemetery for much the same reasons. When their findings could not be totally eradicated from the educated public mind and were upheld and reinforced by other such scientists as valid, only then did the church finally relax its stance out of necessity and enlightened self interest.

Regardless, the answer is the same and I still believe that without the church we would have been further along in our technology and possibly a better present and future for ourselves as a species. The church has been detrimental to our development, which was my original point.

:icon_cool: LJ

[Alice Shade]

If you base your dominance on fundamental belief, would you dare to allow any suggestion, that the very belief is fallacious?

On the other hand, would you dare to repress any advance? Knowledge is power, and repressing it indiscriminately will ultimately leave you at the mercy of more informed opponents.

[Lord_Jereth]

Well said.

:icon_cool: LJ

[Skeptic for Mankind]

Sad to say, I think that our world would be worse off, if it weren't for religion. Despite the Inquisition, holy wars, and witch burnings, I think that it was a necessary evil to get mankind organized and in order. It's terrible that we needed something like that to unite us, that we couldn't just be virtuous for virtue's sake.

However, I think that for those who truly value and understand life, you don't need a god in it to make it worth something. If you don't belive in an afterlife, it only makes this one life more precious. You don't see atheists flying airplanes into buildings. You don't see agnostics starting wars over their beliefs. Some of the best people are atheist or agnostic. Virtue for virtue's sake is something that atheists learn to do, not believing in being under the watch of an all-powerful being. These are people who refrain from killing not because they think that God Almighty will smite them with a thunderbolt, but because they belive it is wrong.

It takes a truly strong, good person to be an atheist. I don't know what we can do about the rest.

[Alice Shade]

Sounds inspiring...

But actually, concept of virtues is skewered.

Virtues are not ultimate rules, and are only applicable in certain situations. Certain others require to abandon them, for the best outcome, though.

Honesty of atheism is in taking responsibility for abandonging virtue, not hiding behind god`s forgiveness.

[Rand]

I'd like to know what the world would be like if Common Sense was valued above Religion. What I mean is, what if religious people accepted that things like Stem Cell Research, Gay Marriage, and Abortion are good things to advance the human race, increase fairness among men and women, and give women a choice that could ultimately save their lives.

I think we'd be much better off.

[Alice Shade]

Not a fact.

Could be much better off, that`s closer to mark.

And could be so entirely different, noone`d be able to compare, anymore.

[-AoG-Kero]

i dont know enough about stem cell research to have a relevant opinion, but i do agree with the other examples and agree with the above

[Fallen Hero]

Different. (back at main post)

[FreeDUMBisFREE]

I make NO apologies if you are offended by my position on this issue. I define myself as an Atheist AND an ANTI-THEIST! I have admitted that from day one, so if there is someone out there whose feelings are going to be hurt (like in one of the other threads I've responded to on this site) by something I say or by my screen name or signature photo, then don't read any further.

In my opinion, the world would be a much better place without religion. The shift from polytheism to monotheism has not helped religion's cause. The Greeks and Romans did not need monotheism to maintain virtue, philosophy, and moral values.

Morality or lack of morality has very little to do with religion; and people do not need a single-God concept to live a moral, humanistic, and worthwhile life. In fact, I believe religion has only gotten worse the more monotheistic it becomes! Now that the three major religions (Islam, Judaism, and Xianity) of the world all revolve around monotheism and Abrahamic law, religion -- in my opinion -- has become incestual. Judaism started it all, Christianity took what it liked from Judaism rew-rote it, re-structured it, and then bastardized it in a way to be exclusive and Anti-semitic. Islam came along and did exactly the same thing with regard to Christianity AND Judaism. It's all too much. It leads to tribalism, oppression, murder, violence, and a lack of reason.

[Alice Shade]

Whoa, chill there.

It`s your own opinion, no need to be Firebrand Preacher about it.

So you think religion is inhibiting the world... Cool. A fair amount of people hold same notion.

Personally, while I think that religion has serious detrimental effect on the science and society, I would not dare to predict, what exactly a society without any religion whatsoever would be like. No precedent so far, you see.

It could be much better, but could also be much worse. I have no idea, frankly. Neither do you.

For all I`m aware of, we could be worshipping the mighty Steamo the Locomotive by now.

[Fallen Hero]

Whoa, chill there.

It`s your own opinion, no need to be Firebrand Preacher about it.

So you think religion is inhibiting the world... Cool. A fair amount of people hold same notion.

Personally, while I think that religion has serious detrimental effect on the science and society, I would not dare to predict, what exactly a society without any religion whatsoever would be like. No precedent so far, you see.

It could be much better, but could also be much worse. I have no idea, frankly. Neither do you.

For all I`m aware of, we could be worshipping the mighty Steamo the Locomotive by now.

Or even worse worshipping a leader.

We can not predict how it would be without something because you have to consider that object to imagine the world without it.

[Googlist720]

Well there would be less wars, perhaps. Also, maybe less fighting in general. The world wouldn't probably be separated as much as it is. At least this is my personal opinion. :hmm: Thats really something to think about.

[for the love of google]

From what I understand the natural order of everything is chaos. Religion attempts to tame that chaos with fear. Without religion there would still have to be a way of taming the chaos, most likely it would be with fear of some kind. That is really the only way I've seen to successfully manage chaos in large numbers.