I’m having conflicting thoughts about religion in shaping human history.
As an atheist, it seems obvious to me that if there were no religion from the start, the world would have been a better place than it is now. There would be no religious wars, honor killings, more freedom, no religious leaders abusing their powers, no waste of labor and money on religious things, etc. It may seem that we would be more educated and have better understanding.
My whole conflict arises from the fact that “fear is a better driver than education and reasoning.” As no system is efficient and perfect, the absence of religion would have caused more crimes. Religion promotes fear (the concept of an afterlife, hell) if you do something wrong. If there were no religion, humans may have committed numerous crimes without fearing consequences. You could say that it is due to religions that numerous wars have happened in history. But that is a tiny percentage of the whole population. Most people lived happier with religion as it introduced morals ,ethics and consequences for wrongdoing(big factor). One would think and question before doing something wrong.
You could also say that if we were non-religious from the start, we would have had better education, reasoning, different type ethics and morals etc. But as I said earlier, no system is efficient, and since non-religion doesn’t promote fear if you don’t get caught by others, there would be more crimes without fearing consequences if they don’t get caught by others, which was easy in the old days.
So, I’m thinking if religion did better in the early days.
And I know that nowadays it’s a different story, and non-religion is obviously better.
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It’s not possible. Every night people looked at stars, watched the patterns, and made stories about how and why we’re here. It’s completely woven into humanity and every part of culture and art form.
Yes, 100%
Hasn’t the question been settled by the Beatles? *Imagine no religions, we’d all be in peace ohohoohoho, you may say Iama dreamer. *
But we may still find other reason to fight
No, because religions are a guide for a person or a group. It is also a compass to detect good and bad. That there are people with bad intentions who misunderstand religion is another issue.
Eh, looking through the comments (and its so nice to see that folks really giving some good thought to their comments on such a hot button topic), there’s not much I can add.
I fall into the “humans will find excuses” camp. I also think that religion isn’t a bad thing, per se. Even organized religion doesn’t have to be destructive at its extreme. But it’s also inevitable that the section of humanity that craves power and control is going to use whatever avenue for such that they find.
Since all religions are susceptible to zealotry, I don’t think we’ll ever be free of religious zealots, which means there’s always going to be people insisting that other people follow their religion’s rules, or else.
Now, that isn’t exclusive to religion, but it’s the obvious example of that kind of thinking. You can look at pretty much any bloc that’s belief based and find zealots. Politics, whoooo boy! Veganism. Even fandoms of cartoons have zealotry in a way, though it tends to be a much less invasive kind, akin to music genre fanatics; it’s more gatekeeping than proselytizing. But you do run into the kind of obsessive fandom where if you don’t like it, you suck; and you have to watch/listen/read.
Now, it may seem strange to connect religious zealotry to fandoms, but it’s the same underlying way of thinking. People are just prone to wanting to control other people, and will use any excuse to do so.
That proclivity is present even in people that think they don’t think that way, and actively try to weed it out of themselves. Ever catch yourself thinking "the whole world would be better if they all insert personal belief here? That’s the underlying kind of thinking that can snowball into the bigger kind of problem. Doesn’t even matter if it’s true on a factual level, it’s the way it’s thought about and approached that’s the key. If anything, a belief being highly factual and demonstrably true makes it more likely to turn into zealotry.
So, better without religion? Eh, nah, not imo. Just different in detail.
As an atheist, I think it was necessary for human development.
Fear is an extremely motivating force, and without the threat of a “hell” for disobeying/ hurting society, it wouldn’t motivate people to cooperate. Additionally without the allure of heaven, it wouldn’t motivate people to work harder, together.
Without instruments of science, the world is would be a complete mystery. Religion existed to give it history and meaning, to give people a place and meaning in life. It feels much more comforting to believe you are the beloved child of a greater being, crafting you by hand, instead of an insignificant creature on a wet rock floating endlessly in the void.
Today I think it is obsolete to an extent, as science has taken the latter role (understanding), and one should not need to be threatened with eternal damnation to stop being malicious. Today religion is now more frequently used for means of brainwash and control rather than betterment of society, which is why I decide not to partake in it.
Not really, religion makes rules and people follow them. The point is that, yes, we humans can create “rules”, but the question is who is going to create these rules, who are you going to choose as the rule-maker, and how are you going to make sure that everyone follows this rule because everyone has their own ideas or morals about it? Religion must and will exist. Even today, what we create as “rules” certainly come from religion, or at least are closely linked to it. People and their morals come from religion, there must be some power over people to make these rules. Let me give you an example, I am a human being who forbids eating apples, as another human being, if there is no consequence, why should I obey it? Because according to me or according to my morality there is no harm in eating it. And who is right in this situation? No one. Then who are we supposed to listen to? A power superior to us humans. I hope that answers your questions.
Religion is just a tool. A tool is only as good as the person using it.
Yes, but not just because of the lack of religions, but the lack of superstition that would require. Basically if everyone believed things based on physical evidence, rather than feelings, the world would be better. But, also, we as a species might not have survived our earliest days.
It’s pretty naive to think we wouldn’t have just found a different excuse to burn people alive.
i think if we stayed with the idea of God’s representing natural phenomena and being flawed characters vs single deity that is all seeing all powerful and a singular conduit and thus used by ambitious men and women to control the masses be it a pope or televangelist.
As we learned more about the ways of science I think they would have gracefully faded into the background and turned into the fables they are today.
If there were no religions I’d figure that human race is one where tribalism can’t catch on as well, in which case there would probably be a lot less organized violence like wars.
Individual crimes are always going to happen with or without religion. Crimes generally have real tangible punishments and there are still criminals. Imaginary punishments aren’t going to do much to stop them.
We’d certainly be better off in the education/intelligence department if we promoted skepticism and criticized faith or any belief without evidence, but to be fair the word “better” is more broad than that…
