A world without religion?
Some atheists think that a world without religion would be a much better world: more peaceful, more enlightened.
I'd say that this is just wishful thinking.
The underlying assumption is that humans are peaceful by nature and that they are induced to war and violence by religion. That by nature they are smart and rational, and only deluded by religion have they become so stupid and mean and irrational.
That is really stupid : to believe that people are "enlightened" by nature and they are only held in "darkness" by religion. It is the same stupidity that led some conservatives to believe, in the run-up to the Iraq war of 2003, that all people all over the world are democrats by nature and if you just remove dictators like Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi, the oppressed will welcome you as liberators and become like "us". We had to learn it the hard way that the world is not like that.
A world without religion?
There would be as much violence as before, only people would fight - as they are already doing - for other reasons and causes.
There would certainly be not more "Enlightenment" - whatever that is - because people would believe in other things not supported by "evidence" - as they are already doing - : conspiracy theories, fake news, gossip, urban legends, tales, etc...
The world is as it is because humans are quite prone to violence - given the "right" conditions and circumstances- , and people are also sometimes quite stupid, prone to tribal instincts, cognitive biases, group think. And some of them are psychopaths, narcissists, con-men, parasites, bullies etc... whether there is religion nor not.
5
Enjoy being online again!
Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.Create your free account
11 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.For sure, wars are the result of political will, even under the guise of religious imprimatur, and human nature appears to lack none of the aggressive impulses seen so clearly in our nearest relatives, chimpanzees, but perhaps taking away the sense of righteousness and sanctioned indignation that comes with organized religion might change things for the better. Of course, nationalism is readied and waiting in the wings, as we've seen these last few years, should religious zeal falter.
moNOtheist
Level 7
Aug 9, 2019
0
A lot of people don’t do bad things because of religion. It’s a two edged sword
abyers1970
Level 7
July 31, 2019
0
Are you stating this as a hypothesis or fact. For something unknown, you seem to have a large degree of certainty.
Heathenman
Level 7
July 22, 2019
1
@Matias Well, why are you so certain that "never has been, and never will be a world without religion"?
Just because it always existed, doesn't mean it always will. This is the start of the good bye era of religion. In Britton, France, Germany, Russia, and N. Korea religions are a minority. In the U.S., the non secular groups are growing, this while religions are declining.
Your right, you didn't say never. My bad. I apologise.
You do seem convinced though, it will not happen in your lifetime. I don't turn a blind eye to the probability your wrong.
Should any intelligent life be found outside this solar system, watch the next day as there is a mass exodus from religion.
Most scientists suspect it will happen soon.
If there is a change in tax laws for non profits, watch half the churches disappear.
It isn't going to take a crap shot like those examples to make a more visible ending of religion in your lifetime. The majority of millennials in this country, either don't believe, are on the fence, or don't subscribe to organized religion.
Sure things seem bleak. Everyone is bombarded by bad news. It doesn't mean that bad news is the majority. It just means it sells.
Globally, rapes and warfare are in decline. This even with all of the oil, Muslim and Christine bullshit conflicts.
A Madmax future is for those who swallow Holiwood. You apparently do.
Don't get me wrong, I am not abject to pessimists. They are a much needed devil's advocate.
I don't value your comments as that of a devil's advocate. They come across more as unread and slightly schizophrenic.
I found it very intersting to discover more about certain social animals. Jane Goodall's research with chimp was the first, followed her research of wild African dogs. The most recent was a program from a number of years ago about meerkats. In each species, violence was a regular aspect of their lives. With chimps and meerkats, these creatures have regular violent clashes with neighboring clans (tribes, groups, or however their social groups are identified). These clashes have resulted in the deaths of some members of either group. In the case of chimps, the conflict appeared to be over territory. One group wanted to expand their territory to include a partular food source, so they moved in an attacked and killed any chimps from the rival group. Meerkats clashes also appear to be about territory and maintaining boundaries between them. Internal struggles can also be violent. Chimp violently display for hierarchy and dominance. Those that don't submit to the hierarchy can be attacked to re-establish the current order. With meerkats, the matriarch may physicslly punish a daughter who covorts with a male from a rival clan. If she has a litter, the matriarch may adopt them or may kill them if they compete too much with her own pups. African dogs are similar. If a subordinate female has a litter, she is likely to be shunned from the pack by the dominant female. In the case Goodall studied, the dominant female would sneak over to the litter of the subordinant female when she was away hunting, and kill one of the pups. She did this until one pup was left and that one she brought back to her own litter.
The point is that these animal behaviors sound very much like human behaviors at various times in history. Neighboring kingdoms would periodically raid one another during the dark ages, and coups were regular events where someone would attempt to surplant one monarch with another - until they tried to get rid of them altogether. Violence was a means of expanding one's territory or establishing a hierarchy. Religion played its role as well, but it was another kind of hierarchy which was molded by changes in its power structure and its attempt to exert some kind of control over people and/or territory. Even today, we witnessed Russia expanding its territory by annexing Crimea and their attempts to do the same with the eastern provinces of Ukraine. We believe we have progressed so far from our animal nature, but we can find examples over and over where it just isn't the case. Only our need for justifications are more sophisticated and our means can be so much more deadly.
RussRAB
Level 8
July 21, 2019
1
To my knowledge neither chimps not meerkats devote massive proportions of the their GDP to setting up armies or even weapons factories.
@Gwendolyn2018 if you say so
@Gwendolyn2018 You seem to neglect the context. I didn't chuck chimps, meerkats, wild African dog, Russia and Crimea into the same pot. Check the post by RussRAB to which I merely reacted.
I attempted to point out that violence even within species is commonplace and a part of the natural order. Not too many centuties ago, humans didn't have as sophisticated weaponry but they still found ways go kill one another. Go back far enough, and the human technology is even more simplistic, but the violence still occurred similar to other species as mentioned.
We might hope that the advances in understanding, empathy, and knowledge brought on by becoming more civilized would counter these perhaps more primitive (animalistic) violent tendencies. Becoming civilized would seem to be a step above our violent past as a species. Sadly, based on @PontifexMarximus's response (which I didn't take offence to) this is not yet the case. Of course, we should also consider that our human family in the broadest sense can be found living in a very wide range of conditions - from stone age conditions all the way to our modern societies. Other than the degree of sophistication of our killing devices, can we really claim our violent and war like tendencies in modern societies are different in root motivations as those of rival clans from the Amazon or Borneo? Allowing for cognitive differences of other species (chimps, meerkats, etc.) as @Gwendolyn2018 points out, are the struggles over limited resources and the attempt to secure these resources for one's own clan that much different than many human conflicts which result in harm and death of members of their own species?
This discussion began concerning the role of religion and whether the abscence of religion would cause less violence and greater knowledge - a better world overall. Perhaps my response strayed from the subject. What I attempted to say was that I see the roots of violent behaviors coming from a source before religions - assuming chimps, meerkats and African wild dogs don't have some kind of religion (I would doubt they do). Religion then becomes a part of human culture and is subject to all the pressure of change that other cultural aspects are under. Religion can be an aspect of culture for promoting peace, or for committing atrocities. I keep coming back to the genocide commanded of the Israelites upon arriving in their promised land of Canaan. I would conclude that if we wish to reduce violence and advance knowledge we need to appeal to and advance the aspects of culture valuing them including those within religions as well as those outside of them. The notion that a world without religion being a better place does not consider any other cultural aspect other than religion that could or would promote violent and deadly behaviors among human beings. I don't believe this to be the case, and any number of nonreligious ideas can be transformed into something worth fighting and dying for and worth killing others for.
@Gwendolyn2018 - Yes, being long winded is something I should probably work on. 
@Gwendolyn2018 OK … for me it works
Humans created religion and created it for various reasons. Humans are often violent, using ideologies as well to kill. Look at the twentieth-century wars, based primarily on ideologies: capitalism, fascism, communism, nationalism, etc.
skeptic70
Level 7
July 21, 2019
1
I don't think it humans … certain manipulators are responsible and most of us are wimps and fail to resist in time.
I think if we had a world without religion some idiots would come along and invent one. A short time later one or two people from the first group would start a second group. After this went on for a while we would have what we have today. Maybe different names but the same old thing. People are sincere but bizarre. In my early church daze we had a man who left the church because they would not agree with him that he had died and was brought back to life through prayer. The church agreed with the prayer part, just not the resurrection.
DenoPenno
Level 9
July 21, 2019
0
Well … then we might as well tried without!
PontifexMarximus
Level 8
July 21, 2019
0
I pondered this myself for sometime. As dangerous as religion is, in it's absence humans will not magically become peaceful beings. We would simply find other reasons to hate, separate and kill each other. Religion is just one tool, it could be anything from race, gender, geological location... We will always find a reason
AmmarahGomez
Level 1
July 20, 2019
0
There will likely never be a world without some people committed to the total ideology of a religion or (in its place) total commitment to some political ideology. Simply put, there are simply some people who feel so weak, poweeless and lacking in knowledge that they will give up their freedom to think for themselves to have a false csense of certainty, power, and destination. Rrich Fromm describes it well in his ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM.
wordywalt
Level 9
July 20, 2019
0
Agreed. Cult experts identify political, economic cults as well as some vased on the paranormal and scisnce fiction.
A secular world would be more honest, in the sense of people would say "I killed him because I wanted to" as opposed to "I killed him in the name of God". There will be aways violence, religion or not, it's human nature.
IamNobody
Level 8
July 20, 2019
1
Enjoy being online again!
Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.Create your free account
Share this post
Categories
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.