Question

I have a question for the fellow agnostics and atheists.

What is Not in Question
Religion is bad, it feeds ignorance, has brought violence, atrocities, abuse, exploitation and outright fooling to fellow human beings for thousands of years. We all agree on this.

There is no doubt that Christianity and Islam brought mayhem of killing and atrocities to achieve this goal but imagine what we would be fighting today, had they not done the world occupation across continents.

What I Want to Ask About

QUESTION 1 - Have the religious crusades of Islam and Christianity and their defeating all thousands of voodoo, tribal, primitive religions around the world NOT made our job of fighting 1 or 2 major enemies easier? Else, our Enemy Would have been bigger and in thousands. We would be fighting this today what they did in the name of Gods:

Human sacrifices including of children
Higher animal sacrifice
Cannibalism
Higher ignorance
Higher exploitation of humans

QUESTION 2 - Maybe science and human progress was unstoppable, but don't you think Islam and Christianity brought scholarship, progress, charity at least a little more than the primitive, jungle, voodoo, tribal and scattered religions would have?

#religious #religion #children #agnostic #atheism #humans #world #god

St-Sinner 9

Answer 1

"Have the religious crusades of Islam and Christianity and their defeating all thousands of voodoo, tribal, primitive religions around the world NOT made our job of fighting 1 or 2 major enemies easier?"

I do not see the religious as our enemies, I see them as victims of the worlds longest running con.

" at least a little more than the primitive, jungle, voodoo, tribal and scattered religions would have?" I do not know by what method you view these older religions as "primitive"
Because of what . . .

Human sacrifices including of children--Judges 1, part and parcel of Abrahamic faiths
Higher animal sacrifice--Again, part and parcel, of all three, but evolved socially into money or final human sacrifice and money.
Cannibalism--Part and parcel of Christianity in the sacrament, Catholics even believe the cracker and wine transform into flesh and blood in you (transubstantiation)
Higher ignorance--as compared to what, believing in magic blood is less ignorant?
Higher exploitation of humans-- all three religions texts endorse and support slavery, and Christianity has been used on both sides of the Chattel slavery argument in the civil.

So NO, I do not think the conquest and slaughter of indigenous peoples around the globe makes "Our" job easier, nothing justifies genocide.

Answer 2

No. 2. No.

Answer 3

Wow, what a pair of loaded questions. When you say that Christianity and Islam defeated other "primitive" religions, don't you mean they typically used violence to eradicate competition? Also, human and animal sacrifice are depicted in the Old Testament. Cannibalism--let's just agree that it is wrong and move on. You are very unclear as to what "higher ignorance" and "higher exploitation of humans", but I think all religions are guilty of pushing ignorance over knowledge and exploiting others for their own gain.

Religions have held back humanity, not helped. Seriously! I honestly feel this post is click bait and a bit insulting for this site.

Answer 4

Those "voodoo" havent dissappeared, they still survive. They just don't get reported as much. Doesnt mean they arent actively being practised.

It's very very hard to destroy a religion.

Often a religion copies or absorbs a practise. Often atrocities get forgotten or rewritten. 500 years from now no one will know that hundreds of children were raped by priests and they won't understand why it was accepted practice.

But it's not accepted practice, you say, but 500 years in the future they'll just assume everybody was cool with itb just like we think all the horrible practices from past was endorsed by the majority. But the reality is more like most people were against it, but it happened any way.

Answer 5

The problem is and always has been our incredible creative imagination we're ready to create anything fantasy we don't care what it is if it sounds good we like it that's just human were very creative and we haven't got the foggiest idea of what we're doing

Answer 6

I do not agree that all religions are “bad”. Religion in one form or another has been a way of life throughout human evolution. The seeds of religion were also the seeds of all kinds of human creativity.

There are various religious groups that spread nothing but peace, joy and wellbeing. For example, I am a Religious Naturalist—we have our own association. You can read about it on Wikipedia.

Answer 7

Religious extremists Christian & others, consider women & children as property, Christian ministers & Catholic priests sexual abuse of children and other crimes are rampant. They traded human sacrifice for enslavement & mass killings of natives of countless cultures, declaring persons from cultures other than Christian to be inferior or subhuman until they submitted. The other culture’s texts & recorded knowledge was obliterated, burned or destroyed as satanic. Then, when no record remains of the generations of knowledge going back 100s or thousands of years, the Christians declare conquered people as “ignorant”. The Aztec & Mayan cultures for example, were destroyed in exchange for conquest for riches. Christians were burning, stoning & torturing their own christian followers in Europe (for hundreds of years), as witches or as heretics. How is this different from human sacrifice? Killing indigenous folk hundreds at a time, even thousands, while claiming to be good christians, I do not agree. Destroying the history of other cultures, forcing them into slavery, & then calling them “saved” when they have no choice but to convert. Churches turning a blind eye to institutionalized abuse, saying that this also does not exist. All I see is propaganda. If you erase history, then rewrite it, that does not make it truth.

Answer 8

You're an idiot! Read, 'The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire' by Richard Carrier. If you want to gain some understanding of the historic role science played in the age religion.

Answer 9

If you are overrunning the carrying capacity of the land you inhabit, as did the Mayans, brutal war & what we consider brutal killings are probably necessary.
Applying the relatively civilized thinking of today to far different cultures is Always a mistake!

Answer 10

No. They did not. In fact chrisitanity deterred educatin, particularly science. I refer you to Galileo and the church.

g

Answer 11

I think all the tribal jungle voodoo would have died out without the horrors of organized religions due to the rise in population and greater connectivity in the world. I,m not talking about modern communication but hundreds of years ago when ships sailed to other countries to do trade with what ever goods being traded. I think if one culture or country that had no ridiculous beliefs what so ever did trade with another culture that worshiped frogs or what ever to make the sun rise the next day, I think eventually they would figure out that these people that just left on this ship does none of this and the sun still rises for them. So it seems the smarter ones of this culture would eventually figure out that what ever it is that they are doing is nothing but a waste of time. So no ridiculous dilutions needed.

Answer 12

I would love to comment about your questions but so many others here have answered them perfectly. All I can add is an old Mark Twain quote, "Religion was created when the first con man met the first fool". Which that does explain the largest portion of its existence. But it has been proven though the scary thoughts of a life after death was used to control people. That was thousands of years ago, why can't everyone agree to drop this shit? We all know better now thanks to science so lets move on!

Answer 13

I think that absent religion there still would have been violence, war, atrocities etc.

If humans were inherently good these things wouldn't exist whether we had religion or not. In reality, humans are inherently animals and like all animals we protect our own and compete for resources.

Answer 14

Islam once believed in science and discovery, then a fanatic came along . That there was a different view is evident in the Nag Hammadi codices.
Human nature dictates that one group will seek to hold power over another. P.T. Barnum's there's a sucker born ever minute (btw or for example, this phrase has never been proven to have actually been said by P.T.) held true then as much as it does now.

"To anyone familiar with this Golden Age, roughly spanning the eighth through the thirteenth centuries a.d., the disparity between the intellectual achievements of the Middle East then and now — particularly relative to the rest of the world — is staggering indeed. In his 2002 book What Went Wrong?, historian Bernard Lewis notes that “for many centuries the world of Islam was in the forefront of human civilization and achievement.” “Nothing in Europe,” notes Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, “could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600.” Algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, nadir, zenith, coffee, and lemon: these words all derive from Arabic, reflecting Islam’s contribution to the West." -[thenewatlantis.com]

It was humans using religion as a means to control the masses while amassing vast fortunes.

Answer 15

I think the religious crusades and partial success thereof has made it easier for folks like us to be where we are today. Despite the tragic cost I think it is better then the alternative of thousands of fragmented and isolated tribes.

I think that kind of answers both questions.

Answer 16

Another reason why these two "Abrahamic" religions are dominant is because the fictional character they believe in resides outside of the natural world, so you cannot prove its non-existence, its impotence, or its lack of knowledge. So they just cling on a feeling of security rather than facing reality.

The adherents of religions have a problem that is deeply embedded in conceptual faculty of their brains, they cannot grasp the concept of reality and refuse to use reason instead of emotions to guide their actions. If you are fighting bad ideas, go to their root - their epistemological root - which drives these ideas into existence. I would argue that it is the morality of sacrifice (formally known as altruism) that was first described by Plato in The Republic and later by Karl Marx. This means that not everyone who leaves religion is rational. As a matter of fact, there are many agnostics and atheists who seek to destroy others and are guided by the "need" to sacrifice others to achieve their goal, see the works of Nazis and communists who can only achieve their goals through the use of force on unarmed victims. Religion and collectivism are just two sides of the same coin, the same epistemological coin.

Answer 17

The answer is Yes but not in the sense that those religions were better than the ones they conquered.
But in the sense that with the fall of the roman empire, the mediterranean area became chaos. And having this "supra-national" ("" because national was not a thing yet) hold back this fragmentation.
Having the same-ish religion was a corner stone to facilitate peace, to keep nobles and plebs unified (and facilitating exchange of territory without the need of genocides).

The latin spread with romans and church facilitate language unity: In europe if you walk village by village from Portugal-Spain-France-italy the language don't jump like US/Mexico border, it changes little by little (exept france that made a nice cultural genocide in any language out of paris dialect).

So Yes, the spread of this gigant religions were good to keep some unification and sense of cultural unity.
Religion and common culture is still a problem today for the acension of Bosnia, Turkey or Albania to EU due to majority/big chink of population having Islamic background. And the ortodox, slavic eastern europe was (and still is) a challenge.

Just by the existence of the 3 big realms (franks, Spania and HRE) europe was a lot more stable than other regions of africa asia and america.
Also the small numbers of Islamic states (one or 2 in the beginning) and late almost unification under Otoman empire made the clasic culture survive there while Europe was chaotic and reorganizing in the early middle ages until the catholic supra national power made it stable-ish.

Religion is a very primitive and unsofisticated way of stabilize a territory, and every state, culture, organization, ethnic group started as a religious or religious sanctioned state.
To deny it is to forget the history.

Answer 18

First, cool picture and great questions. To the first one, I don't agree. It would likely be easier for a giant dog to kill puppies than to fight two dogs of the same size.

The 2nd question is certainly a yes in some aspects. There is no denying the contribution the Arabic culture made to astronomy. There also have been many a scientist who has advanced science in many different fields, and those scientists were priests.

The question to me is the final balance. Do their contributions outweigh the damage of their willed ignorance?

Answer 19

"Did Islam cause the Dark Ages? . .Did Islam, not barbarians, destroy classical civilization?

Henri Pirenne and others have promoted the theory that 7th century Islam, not 5th century barbarian conquest, was the main force that destroyed classical civilization. The theory is that the "barbarians" preserved much of classical civilization in culture, if not in politics. But then in the 7th century Islam destroyed that culture in North Africa and the Middle East. And even the areas it did not actually conquer, in Europe, were cut off from what had been for centuries a vast area of free trade and civilization around the Mediterranean. These now-isolated non-Muslim areas became backwaters, without access to the trade and products they had long relied on, and they went into decline." . . Hence the dark ages period.

Answer 20

This question has me stumped. On the one hand, it would have been easier to defeat a large number of smaller atrocious beliefs, but on the other, the current fewer religions have made passing on their beliefs much easier. The total net adverse effect, particularly on things like FGM and ritual animal slaughter, may be exactly the same.

Answer 21

It's easier to fight a lot of small weak enemies than it is to face one or tow large powerful ones. I'd say our job would be much easier if we were up against a cluster of primitive religions that do wacky stuff like sacrifice and cannibalism.

Answer 22

Not really history paints a portrait of killing anyone with reason logic philosophy science that does not conform to the norms of religion.

Answer 23

There have been Shamans (medicine men) in all religions for thousands of religions and years, and still are. These Shamin's all take advantage of people, especially the poor. Religion was invented to keep poor people from taking from the rich.

Answer 24

What I see people call religion is a lot of old style governments that still have following in a traditional type of way.

Old testiment was about actually kill a lamb that was the fine for violating the law.

New testiment, Jesus character becomes the "living" lamb now lambs are no longer sacred but the tradition is kept in the last supper eating the bread/flesh and drinking the wine/blood.

Nation of Israel, to my knowledge, does not have a government any more of killing lambs as to pay a fine for violating a law.

United States of America, as prophesied, requires worship of the biblical god worship practice in general. God bless America and in God we Trust. Submit to Authority-666 pay taxes.


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