What would the world be like without religion?

[sprinkles]

 

[Avocado]

This is a good example of blind faith.

I try to follow the scientific method, but I find myself constantly doubting what I know and I wonder how well I actually do it.

 

[violet_crown]

I try to follow the scientific method, but I find myself constantly doubting what I know and I wonder how well I actually do it.

You're doing it the way it's supposed to be done, darlin!

 

[Avocado]

You're doing it the way it's supposed to be done, darlin!

What I'll do is make these experiments to test things, and even then, I am not sure if I am drawing the right conclusion when I finish. Even if I test say, if light color effects plant growth, and I use 7 colored bulbs, 1 white bulb, and a window, careful to box in each artificial lighted plant--I can only say that the blue and violet plants get biggest. I cannot say why, really. I do these little tests all the time and it drives my mom crazy, lol.

 

[SpankyMcFly]

O M G



Then some politician would say we were "bringing democracy" and in the end they will thank us.

Then some theist would spin this on their tele-evangelistic TV show about how it was "destiny" to do so, maybe even foretold in some holy book somewhere.

Some warmonger would quip "preemptive defense", lest those aliens decide to invade us.

etc. etc.

 

[danseen]

No better or worse..

though I like Christmas presents, Scrooge, Easter eggs, deyas at Divali, and the Bible is crap but Noah and Daniel in the lions' den are good narrative wise...

so for every bad, there is a good.

 

[fetus]

*shyly enters into this thread*

I think a lot of terrible things are done in the name of religion. Religion can cause discord, fighting, violence, etc. But I wouldn't discount all the good it's done for people. Religious groups have done volunteering and charity work. Many people latch onto a higher power for comfort, or as a motivation to recover. Regardless of whether you believe such god(s) exists, religion has done a lot of good. Yes, a lot of harm, but also a lot of good.

 

[ceecee]

Religious groups have done volunteering and charity work.

True but too often it comes with strings attached. Which is totally defeating the purpose and can push people away that need the help. How do people with no religious affiliation or agnostics/atheists manage to give to charity and volunteer their time and resources? You don't need religion to be moral or help people who need it.

 

[Forever]

No different in my opinion.

 

[fetus]

True but too often it comes with strings attached. Which is totally defeating the purpose and can push people away that need the help. How do people with no religious affiliation or agnostics/atheists manage to give to charity and volunteer their time and resources? You don't need religion to be moral or help people who need it.

Oh of course, I totally agree that religion is not required to be a nice person or have morality. And yes, there are religious groups who tend to push beliefs on others, but many just go out and be nice to people. For instance, I've been on mission trips. We threw a block party for the kids in a disadvantaged area. There was cotton candy, a moon bounce, games, etc. The children were thrilled--and there was no preaching. Yes, we also took walks in the city and asked people if they wanted prayer. Not in a pushy way, just asking casually. If they said no that was it, we moved on and wished them a good day. A lot of people felt really happy that we would take the time to care about them. These were people in rough areas, and they tended to be overlooked or avoided. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of groups are preachy and all that, but a lot of them just genuinely want to help people, as good citizens and human beings. Their morality is just influenced by a god/gods, and that's what makes them religious groups.

Have you ever seen the Humans of New York page on Facebook? If you haven't, you should check it out. There have been people who say that God helped them recover from an addiction, that God was their hope when they had none left. Everyone can believe whatever they choose and should be respected for that. Regardless of one's own beliefs, it can't be denied that god (or the concept of god if you don't believe in the existence of one) has really kept some people afloat. I adopt a live and let live attitude. If somebody says that they made it through a bout of depression with the help of an invisible, benevolent, polka-dotted easy chair, then that's awesome. I don't believe in that easy chair, but I will wholeheartedly encourage that person to keep up believing in that as long as it helps them.

 

[SpankyMcFly]

Doesn't matter. Something else as powerful would exist in its place.

If only as a place holder and/or a starting point from which to venture into the black infinity of the unknown.

 

[draon9]

If there was no such thing as religion, I believe that it would be similar, but I think that there wouldbe more people being lost and abandoned and would try anything to give them more meaning.

 

[Sunflower_Moon]

It would be one less, but one of the most major (if not the number one major) thing that would be causing so much hate and separation. I'm not saying I'm against believing in a higher power, but I'm against organized religion and dogma. I think a belief in a higher power should be personal rather than public, and shouldn't tell people what to believe, or think they're the one true religion. I think the human race would be much more peaceful without any form of organized religion...animals and nature do just fine, yet humans are the only ones who fight wars, kill each other, and have genocides over something like that, which are only unproven theories. Animals and nature only seem too kill for food, sometimes for mating, and sometimes territory.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

better.

isms are sometimes overrated

 

[indra]

religion is the intermediary state between the ability to ask profound questions without the experience to answer them

to steal what i read on facebook once

i guess what i'm getting at is by the very nature of progression, religion is born, making this question null

i would like to meet a race who skipped the religious/spiritual phase

perhaps they are stone people

 

[Chrysanthea]

A world without religion is a world without Humanity... So pretty damn peaceful I'd imagine.

 

[Frosty]

 

[Typh0n]

So, I've been wondering how the world would be like if religion would've never existed.
Now let's see...
If there was no faith in "God", people wouldn't have wasted their money building churches and donating to slimers who are just money hungry.
If there was no admiration of "God", people wouldn't have fought wars over trying to prove a point that cannot be proven.
If there was no belief in "God", people would have been more independent and technologically further advanced than now. There's a reason why technology drastically advanced in the 19th century and not sooner. Because people stopped believing in "God" and started to think. Innovation is a beautiful thing.

"God" is a mere concept of humanity, nothing more than a theory. "God" is just as real as the big bang.
Humans are stupid to blindly follow something they can't even prove to themselves that it's real.
Even more stupid is, that some become terrorists and kill people just to prove a pointless point.
Also, killing people in the name of "God" is a contradiction in itself, since, according to the bible, "thou shalt not kill".
So, since they are killing people, they are going against themselves and therefore making them nothing more than stupid terrorists.

Thoughts?

You forget that Abrhamic faiths are only the tip of the iceberg in the long history of religions. According to Paul Carus, in his work The history of the Devil, religions started with the "devil" , that is, the forces of evil, since mankind's first religious impulse is to control the natural elements that are a threat, I agree with this theory especially since belief in demons seems to go back further than belief in God, though it also depends what geographical location we're talking about. For instance, the ancient Sumerians, who lived in modern day Iraq, saw their gods as forces that would torment their existence, where the Egyptians saw their gods as beneficial. This is because of the fact that Egypt's main river is the Nile, which was beneficial to the Egyptians and their source of life, and so they saw all of nature as a reflection of the Nile's waters, and since the Egyptian gods were mostly symbolic of the forces of nature, that's how they saw their gods as beneficial. Whereas for the Sumerians, they were located on the Tigris and Euphrates, rivers which tend to flood violently and so they saw nature as destructive to their lives. The point is, while religion may have originated out of fear in some places, that's not always true.

To answer the question then, since religion isn't simply the Abrahamic faiths and didn't originate in one place at one time, but rather, in different places in a similar pattern, the world wihtout religion would be very, very hard to make sense of, until at least the invention of non-religious, non-mythological thought by the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers (which may have been the beginning of secularism) where meaning was sought after for its own sake without any of the trapppings of mythology. Later philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras rejected mythology, but not because they rejected religion, but because mythology was not understood by the common man, and too easy to understand for the initiate.

I find the question interesting, and I'd be willing to go further, but I also find the OP formulated his/her question so friggin badly (confusing religion with simple belief in God, saying/implying that religion is opposed to free thought, etc, I could go on...), I just feel like pointing obvious stuff out.

 

[Lark]

I think the attitudes to religion I've seen are interesting, I think they go to show that most of the time the left does as much scapegoating as the right, they just have a different target.

Also particular religions get singled out, I think this may be to do with them being identified with institutions rather than communities or individuals.

 

[Lark]

So, I've been wondering how the world would be like if religion would've never existed.

The extremely short answer to this, based on sociology and psychology, is that it wouldnt be much different to it is today.