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General => Archive => Political and Religious => Topic started by: Chino on February 08, 2011, 02:38:19 PM
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Lets just pretend beliefs in a god never came about in human history. Where would the world be today? I'd imagine many of the past wars over the last few thousands of years would still have taken place, but what about today? Would the world be more peaceful? Would it be worse? your thoughts?
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(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pkCuc34hvD4/hqdefault.jpg)
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This kind of question is more or less impossible to answer.
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This kind of question is more or less impossible to answer.
So is any question about the existence of god....yet these threads and discussions abound.
I dont think it is possible for humans not to have developed some type of belief in god.
There are just too many people that need to feel comfort and purpose, and are unable to rely on themselves for it.
They need to create it in an external source greater than themselves that cant be refuted.
JMO.
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This discussion will be impossible to have because the religious will come in and make posts like BrotherH's implying all of our morality comes from a higher plane, and then the atheists and agnostics will argue that our morality comes from our own desire not to have bad things happen to us, and neither side will ever budge.
Anyway, I don't think history would change overmuch. Without religion, the leaders of the world would find something else to point at about the enemy to enrage the general public into supporting war, like "Those guys over there wear stupid hats" or something.
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My question: does religion just simply not exist, or is something physically different about us that is the reason? Like our brain can't do certain types of abstract thinking, or our nervous response to "spiritual" things is different?
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My question: does religion just simply not exist, or is something physically different about us that is the reason? Like our brain can't do certain types of abstract thinking, or our nervous response to "spiritual" things is different?
To man's knowledge there is no god.
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https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pkCuc34hvD4/hqdefault.jpg
:lol
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I simply have a hard time imagining a pre-industrial society that isn't religious.
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(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pkCuc34hvD4/hqdefault.jpg)
LOL
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Human nature would have to be decidedly different for religion to not occur naturally. With those totally different humans, it's hard to say how their society would be.
rumborak
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We'd have a damn hoverboard by now that's for sure.
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We'd have a damn hoverboard by now that's for sure.
brb burning local church to the ground
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John Lennon would be god.
Or what that South Park episode depicted: The Atheist Union vs. The Union of Atheists (or whatever it was called).
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(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pkCuc34hvD4/hqdefault.jpg)
I guess I'll start it off...so, how is it that if there was no religion, we would have no speeding limit and drugs would be rampant?
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(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pkCuc34hvD4/hqdefault.jpg)
I guess I'll start it off...so, how is it that if there was no religion, we would have no speeding limit and drugs would be rampant?
Also, I gather that it must be religions fault we can't park wherever the fuck we want.
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I'd say faith is born out of a knowledge of our own mortality. And a religion is a group of people who want to be arbiters of peoples faith. I think both of these are unavoidable human characteristics and thus there isn't a way where they couldn't exist. At the time at which these ideas were formed, there is no way we would possess the scientific method and knowledge to doubt the claims.
A better question would be if we only had one religion, would the world be a better place? Assuming it's based around a good moral code, then it might be. But there will always be the split between believers and non-believers, and as another said, who knows what justification warmongers will come up with in place of a clash of faiths.
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really good question, I will have to keep thinking on it.
I generally try to form a distinction, though, between religion and faith.
Religion is man's attempt to bring God to us. Faith is man's attempt to seek God.
The fruits of each are wildly different.
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I suspect there'd be little difference. As I see it, religion is irrelevant with regard to ethics. While there are plenty of people who choose to be just because of their religion, there are just as many who choose to be assholes for the same reason. Same thing with us heathens. As for history, there are plenty of times and places where religion was either non-existent of starkly dissimilar to any religion we now know, and they had the same tendencies towards violence, bigotry, and greed as everybody else. I'd say that human nature is far more influential than religion ever was.
One area where we might have seen a big difference is science. The Catholics really did keep down a lot of research that they didn't like. To be fair, a ton of things were discovered and/or created because of religion, but I suspect they would have occurred anyway.
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A meaningless hypothetical with too many damn variables to even hazard a wild guess.
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Maybe. But think of it, if we're able to prognosticate this one, we should be able to tell who the new drummer is!
rumborak
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We could have all the women we wanted?
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I honestly think humankind would be technologically and scientifically more advanced. Over the centuries religious beliefs have got in the way of many scientific discoveries.
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I don't think that's on the whole part true. Sure, you can cite examples in certain fields (biology, or even more significantly, geology, which was completely strangled by the religious beliefs of its own practitioners) but for the most part scientific inquiry in pre-Industrial societies didn't happen because there were not that many institutions with the resources or desire to conduct it. Up until the Renaissance, there really was no benefactors to be had for scientific research (outside of alchemy) in Europe. I don't think that religious beliefs or institutions have been all that influential in stemming the spread of scientific knowledge. Have they hampered scientific literacy? Yes, and that should be criticized and remedied. However, I don't think the argument that religious beliefs held back technology or scientific progress to be, on the whole, all that convincing.
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A meaningless hypothetical with too many damn variables to even hazard a wild guess.
Basically this. We lack the perspective of an outside frame of reference, because of the fundamentals of human nature as people have pointed out.
All other things equal, I would say that there probably wouldn't be much of a difference in overall "progress", be it social or scientific. Historically, religion has both promoted and inhibited scientific advancement. It has both added to and detracted from social circumstances and "quality of life".
I suspect there'd be little difference. As I see it, religion is irrelevant with regard to ethics. While there are plenty of people who choose to be just because of their religion, there are just as many who choose to be assholes for the same reason. Same thing with us heathens. As for history, there are plenty of times and places where religion was either non-existent of starkly dissimilar to any religion we now know, and they had the same tendencies towards violence, bigotry, and greed as everybody else. I'd say that human nature is far more influential than religion ever was.
Agreed, in practice.
We could have all the women we wanted?
You can have this now, if you got game.
-J
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A more reasonable question would be what if humans never conceived of a spiritual realm, so that nothing ever needed supernatural explanations and the mind was never separate from the body. A worldview of complete monism, where everything is interlinked. I suppose there would still be legends of heroes and monsters and such, as well as beliefs of racial supremacy.
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The world would be a far less interesting place. The concept of god (along with the negative) has brought many positive things to this world. :)
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The world would be a much better place, with less conflicts and wars.
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The world would be a far less interesting place. The concept of god (along with the negative) has brought many positive things to this world. :)
It certainly tends to make the average museum a helluva lot more interesting.
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The world would be a much better place, with less conflicts and wars.
Maybe, but certain groups of people (say Blacks, Asians, Irish, Spanish-speakers, fans of metal, pro-skub, anti-skub, etc) would still be targeted because of their differences. I know this phrase is overused, but the more things would change, the more they would stay the same. People would undoubtedly fill the void left by an absence of God with acts just as atrocious in the name of some other cause.
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People would undoubtedly fill the void left by an absence of God with acts just as atrocious in the name of some other cause.
Personally I think religion has done more good overall than bad, but I don't think I buy this either. Metal music doesn't promise an eternity in paradise for following its teachings.
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That's because metal is already heaven on earth.
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It seems an inevitable creation of man, to answer inevitable questions of man.
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I think the world would be a better place, and as for the people who believe morality comes from religion, they'd probably have the same morals.
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Two scenarios involving the lack of religion:
1) If there was no God, and humans were left to their own devices, then religion would arise, as evidenced by our present world. You would have to alter human nature to ensure that religion did not exist.
2) If there was a God, and he didn't give man religion or any reason to believe in him, then false relgion would arise from man, or no religion would exist at all.
In both cases, false man-made religions rise out of human nature. So the entire question revolves around a non-human civilization.
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The world would be a much better place, with less conflicts and wars.
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For the most part, wars aren't really fought over religion itself. They're wars of the cultural circles they draw. We're glorified cavemen, we have tribal squabbles, and we choose whichever common denominator suits us best at a given time.
rumborak
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Two scenarios involving the lack of religion:
1) If there was no God, and humans were left to their own devices, then religion would arise, as evidenced by our present world. You would have to alter human nature to ensure that religion did not exist.
So, you're saying that we are not already left to our own devices? I think what your describing is what is the case currently. We've been left to our own devices to explain what the hell dropped us here on Earth, with a few key choices to make based on products of our own knowledge that we have ourselves proclaimed to be deciding factors in eternal damnation and the likes of that. I would say we are quite left to our own devices already, but I see no reason why it is an absolute in human nature for religion. Every religion has influences in a previous one and would not exist/would be severely different if the ones before it had not existed. So, back at the very root of it all (way, way back) if we had never gotten the idea of eternal life and eternal damnation and whatnot to stick so heavily wouldn't we be at least possible to have a much different perspective? Such as an agnostic one, for example?
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But those are inevitable consequences of human nature. We ask questions and we fear the unknown. Regardless of belief, religion is a vehicle to provide answers to our unanswerable questions and put our fears of death and the unknown at ease.
Were history to start all over and take a different course, the details might differ, but the overall result would not, I think. Maybe parallels of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam would not exist. But ethics would probably evolve and develop in a very similar fashion, we would still philosophize, and we would still kill each other and commit atrocities alongside acts of good and self-sacrifice.
-J
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But those are inevitable consequences of human nature. We ask questions and we fear the unknown. Regardless of belief, religion is a vehicle to provide answers to our unanswerable questions and put our fears of death and the unknown at ease.
Were history to start all over and take a different course, the details might differ, but the overall result would not, I think. Maybe parallels of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam would not exist. But ethics would probably evolve and develop in a very similar fashion, we would still philosophize, and we would still kill each other and commit atrocities alongside acts of good and self-sacrifice.
-J
I don't doubt that, if the altercations did not change the way secular government and society function, we would still find ways and reasons to kill each other. But, to me, the idea of eternal life in a place unlike earth, where "souls" somehow find a way to pass the time for the rest of eternity seems a bit of a stretch at best to me, so it seems entirely possible to me that if religion was reintroduced at all it could end up as something that would edge people on to kill each other a lot less, maybe if eternal salvation did not hang in the balance. I think ethics, however, would develop completely differently. There are so many points of reference where our ethics could branch out depending on religion. You have to remember that, while we've installed all of our ethics as derivative from our own thoughts, most of them were derived based on religion, so any presumptions about how ethics could end up could easily be turned inside out by that fact. As I said, there's no measure to where we end up, worse or better, with out it, but I wouldn't doubt the huge amount of influence religion has had on ethics and acts and the way the world has turned out in general.
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I don't doubt that, if the altercations did not change the way secular government and society function, we would still find ways and reasons to kill each other. But, to me, the idea of eternal life in a place unlike earth, where "souls" somehow find a way to pass the time for the rest of eternity seems a bit of a stretch at best to me, so it seems entirely possible to me that if religion was reintroduced at all it could end up as something that would edge people on to kill each other a lot less, maybe if eternal salvation did not hang in the balance.
But like I said, a fear of death is natural. It was not introduced by religion; religion is a *solution* to it. Yeah the details (souls, angels, "heaven" as we envision it, etc.) might very well differ. But the concept of an afterlife? That idea long predates "organized religion", especially as we know it. And I can see why: what an appealing thought, that we can live on forever with all of our passed family, friends, and loved ones in eternal happiness!
I think ethics, however, would develop completely differently. There are so many points of reference where our ethics could branch out depending on religion. You have to remember that, while we've installed all of our ethics as derivative from our own thoughts, most of them were derived based on religion, so any presumptions about how ethics could end up could easily be turned inside out by that fact. As I said, there's no measure to where we end up, worse or better, with out it, but I wouldn't doubt the huge amount of influence religion has had on ethics and acts and the way the world has turned out in general.
Sure, yours and my ethics are partially shaped by religion and what we've been exposed to. But how did those ethical ideas come about initially? Judeo-Christian ethics were influenced by ideas, societies, philosophers, etc. that came before them. And what about codes of ethics that developed relatively independently of the same influences, like some of the major eastern religions?
I think the *basic* guidelines for morals or ethics ultimately come from what we decide we think is best for humanity, and what we learn increases our survival and quality of life along the way.
-J
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People need to get out of their head that religion changes the ethical behavior of people. It doesn't, it changes their morals, but that's something different. The Ten Commandments are broken as much by religious people as they are by atheists.
rumborak
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If there was no religion I wouldn't have to deal with teeming masses of violent christians in their SUVs fighting their way through traffic to get to the church down the road from me every Sunday.
Also, some great classical music and art would not have been made.
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In order to properly answer this question you'd have to pre-suppose an answer for "What would fill the void? Humanity seemingly has an innate (evolutionary?) need for credulity or, in other words - a need to believe in bullshit! If the answer is simply *via other forms of supernatural belief* we'd pretty much wind up with a world very similar we currently live in. If, on the other hand, people actually started to use their brains and began thinking skeptically, rationally, and adhering to a *scientific method* way of thinking, conditions for an infinitely more liveable world would naturally ensue.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj9mtGnnszc
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj9mtGnnszc
Wow, I laughed my ass off when I saw that on T.V. Obviously it is exaggerated, but funny.
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The world would be a much better place, with less conflicts and wars.
Most 'religious' conflicts throughout history were actually over something else, with religion thrown in to make the conflict seem more 'noble'. Northern Ireland? The Irish were tired of being oppressed by the British. The Crusades? Trade routes/economic reasons.
Let's also not forget that the two biggest mass-murders of the 20th century were atheists. I'm not saying atheists lack morals or anything stupid like that; I'm saying with or without religion, mankind is a terribly violent species. It's in our nature.
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The world would be a much better place, with less conflicts and wars.
Most 'religious' conflicts throughout history were actually over something else, with religion thrown in to make the conflict seem more 'noble'. Northern Ireland? The Irish were tired of being oppressed by the British. The Crusades? Trade routes/economic reasons.
Let's also not forget that the two biggest mass-murders of the 20th century were atheists. I'm not saying atheists lack morals or anything stupid like that; I'm saying with or without religion, mankind is a terribly violent species. It's in our nature.
Ugh this agian...