in your opinion, if there were like no religion on earth how do you think life would be different- i guess by no religion, i mean like if christianity, muslum, and all the others, so you take away religious wars, basically these things would never "happen"

do you think it would be better, more chaotic, more free will?

i just thought about this today and i figured it was a good question to ask yourself sometimes or something

1/26/2006 12:42:09 PM

1/26/2006 12:43:03 PM

It seems to me that this question is basically impossible to answer. Human civilazation for as long back as we probably know has been fundamentally shaped and changed by religion.

1/26/2006 12:45:41 PM

This is a tough question. There are time when I'm inclined to say that religion cannot NOT exist. It's just a natural product of humanity. But am I really thinking about religion, or am I thinking about spirituality? If spirituality or religion is inevitable, how does organized religion play into that? Is organization also a natural product of man? Could we have had faith, spirituality, etc.. without forcing it on our neighbor or going to some building to practice it?

My uninformed answer to the question:

Religion/spirituality/faith are all evidence of our heightened sentience. So if religion never developed as an idea, it's absence would likely be the result of a lack of sentience, and without that sentience, humans would not be humans. We'd just be animals.

?

1/26/2006 12:49:59 PM

Living life in peace?

1/26/2006 12:52:06 PM

chaotic.

lots of folks out there are sheep, theyll do whatever someone tells them. its just the fact that the church got to them before the democratic party did. or the other way around.

1/26/2006 12:52:39 PM

if man had a third hand, would woman have a third breast?

1/26/2006 12:59:49 PM

perhaps stronger nationalism to fill the same void.

1/26/2006 1:00:38 PM

^ Most likely.

1/26/2006 1:05:27 PM

Worse IMO, and far less advanced. Just about every major religion ever invented believes in both a higher power and a "hereafter" of some kind (be it heaven, reincarnation, etc)...renounce all of those, or assume they never existed, and the overwhelming majority of mankind would have no purpose in life.

1/26/2006 1:40:33 PM

tgd, I think that could be an ill-conceived answer. Humanity lived without belief in a higher power for a long time - longer than they've lived with organized religion for sure or .. They "worshipped" the land, the sky, the stars - their love for the world around them kept them going. 'course, they sort of thought of it as a higher power itself, so I think this is all sort of hard to debate

far less advanced, but perhaps for the better. without the ideas of predetermination and manifest destiny, alot of innocent people could have stayed away from violent, useless deaths, though

course, it depends on what you mean by religion. Really, I think the same drives that created religion are the same ones that caused us to become conscious, develop speech, love, etc. If you mean organized religion - I'd say that if I had a time machine and could go back and somehow stop all of them, I wouldn't hesitate. Modernity be damned.

[Edited on January 26, 2006 at 1:56 PM. Reason : .]

1/26/2006 1:54:32 PM

^
I mean "religion" religion, not necessarily organized religion. A belief in a higher power, a belief in an afterlife (even if it's just the "coming back as ant in the circle of life" motif).

And yes organized religion has been the cause for plenty of suffering, but that's been far outweighed IMO by the progress it helped provide. I mean just look at the creation of the USA and what it represents. It's no accident that for nearly 6000 years of recorded human history, a substantial % of the populace starved to death...and now starvation is pretty much wiped out except in areas where corruption or conflict create it.

[Edited on January 26, 2006 at 2:01 PM. Reason : ---]

1/26/2006 2:00:41 PM

religion is a derivative of biological imperatives

it is symbiotic with the development of our species



if you are implying what a humanist/post-religious modern era would look like, please specify

1/26/2006 2:01:12 PM

^You just said almost exactly what I said, except better! I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who thought of it like that. And DirtyGreek did too!

Quote :

"course, it depends on what you mean by religion. Really, I think the same drives that created religion are the same ones that caused us to become conscious, develop speech, love, etc. "

[Edited on January 26, 2006 at 2:29 PM. Reason : SSS]

1/26/2006 2:16:41 PM

while im not religious really i do agree it has helped us along quite a bit.

just looking at the here and now though it brings a lot of ppl together in a positive way and allows some people a more positive outlook on life.

1/26/2006 2:43:49 PM

I don't think you can divorce human history and religion; it is afterall only natural that man would wonder and question where everything comes from and what drives and defines the unknown. It is only natural that some form of code of ethics and religion would have emerged. Even in our post-modern society, in supposedly secular nations, we have large number of people searching for some sort of spirituality, agnostics who are uncomfortable with ruling out the possibility, or individuals clinging to atheism as strongly as any religious dogma.

Had it not been any of the major religions or philosophies that are currently dominant, it would have simply been something else. Maybe Confucianism or Buddhism would have spread across Europe. Maybe Zorasterism or one of the brutal Aztec religions would've become the dominant force. Perhaps it would have been something else, but I am absolutely sure that something would have emerged. I am also sure that someone would have taken one of those creeds and waged war or inflict human suffering in its name.

1/26/2006 2:59:06 PM

In this thread, we are more thoughtful than Graphead, Lokken, nastoute, cyrion, Supplanter, GoldenViper, and TGD!

[Edited on January 26, 2006 at 3:10 PM. Reason : sss]

1/26/2006 3:09:12 PM

how does it feel?

1/26/2006 3:11:53 PM

If religion never existed, the world would be completely different.

We wouldn't recognize those beings as typical humans. Everyone would either be very dumb (like animals) because there is a point of intelligence where people naturally wonder about religion. Or, everyone would be very smart (like me) because their comes a point where you realize religion is mostly irrelevant.

1/26/2006 3:21:27 PM

^^
haha I know right



[Edited on January 26, 2006 at 3:22 PM. Reason : ---]

1/26/2006 3:22:00 PM

Alot better off, IMO. And far more advanced. Religion is for the lazy minded, for those who donot wish to think for themselves and wish to be led by "Holy men". Why try to find out how the universe came to be when you can just atribute it to an almighty god or pixie fairy, etc. Can't find cures to certain diseases or aliments FOR PEOPLE ALREADY HERE because the religious zealots get their bra strings in a bind over the loss of an embryo because their bible/whatever tells them its wrong. Have to deny certain people a LEGAL right to marry, because their bible tells them so. And the list goes on and on. Not to mention some of the greatest atrocities in history have been because of religion. Religion promotes discrimination against "not our kind of people" and DeathWorship. So yes, humanity would be a whole lot better off without religion.

1/26/2006 3:27:18 PM

Quote :

"very smart (like me) because their comes a point"

i just found it funny. of course I know you were being sarcastic about the "smart like me" thing, but still, it was funny

1/26/2006 3:37:48 PM

Quote :

"Protostar: Can't find cures to certain diseases or aliments FOR PEOPLE ALREADY HERE because the religious zealots get their bra strings in a bind over the loss of an embryo because their bible/whatever tells them its wrong."

w/o religion you'd be getting killed by plenty of more primitive diseases before you even had to worry about stem cell research

1/26/2006 3:40:24 PM

^^ Give me a break... I haven't had breakfast yet.

1/26/2006 3:53:47 PM

Is the question about being without religion, or beyond religion?

The way I define religion as a basic human desire for understanding makes it inseperable from the human experience, so without religion doesn't make sense. Beyond religion would only mean in this sense having the most progressive religion.

I'm really just repeating sentiments that have already been stated, but that I find fairly compelling. Man desires understanding and realizes this search in different ways... its only when it stagnates, when people think the answer they have is good enough and start calling it unquestionable doctrine that things get bad.

A desire for answers is alot of what religion is, a desire for answers lead to Galileo's discoverys, and a stagnated desire (perhaps rising from a particular type of organization of religion) stifled his answers. Science in some sense is the least stagnated (most willing to accept change when it see something more reasonable) organized religion around. This would make it the most progressive religion I mentioned earlier which was the best I could do in finding a beyond-religion state.

I'm defining religion fairly broadly here in calling it "a desire for answers & understanding"
which ignores some other aspects such as a desire for happiness (which might lead some organized religions towards doctrines on an eternal & happy afterlife, whereas a scientist seeking happiness might be driven more towards helping others & themself through medical break throughs), but I don't think my slight mislabel is enough to defeat my point.

1/26/2006 4:48:10 PM

I know this is another post close after, but I wanted to make a distinct point.

My first post in this thread saying increased nationalism was to answer how I think people from a sociological point might fill their everyday lives, a more narrow answer.

My second post was to define religion and its correlation to the development of man throughout humans history. I only added my second post because it seems most people in the thread have taken drunknloaded's question in this more broad sense. But both readings of the question are interesting.

1/26/2006 4:52:38 PM

imagine all the people

1/26/2006 5:06:34 PM

Quote :

"do you think it would be better, more chaotic, more free will?"

Are you asking what would happen if suddenly there was no religion? Or if there had never been religion in the first place?

1/26/2006 5:52:04 PM

Full Blown Utilitarianism

1/26/2006 6:40:07 PM

i didnt think a lot but if i could test an experiment my thesis would be "life would be better if there was no such thing as religious"

1/27/2006 1:40:47 AM

Life would still suck just as bad, we'd just use different excuses.

1/27/2006 1:42:08 AM

religion will always exist. its impossible for it not to. mankind will always find something to "believe in," whether its God or science. end of thread.

1/27/2006 8:07:52 AM

FYI, it's kind of dishonest to say that without religion, we wouldnt have galileo's discoveries, etc. These were pretty rich folks who could afford education and afford to study way back when. In actual history, religion played a role in many ancient scientists' studies, but it's more likely that the simple access to education and the academic world allowed them to flourish.

1/27/2006 9:11:37 AM

the south would be a lot different

1/27/2006 9:39:27 AM

(depending on the ambiguity of your question)


it woudl be the exact same as it is right now.

i dont believe in organized religion.

i dont go to church. i dont pray to anyone. and i dont rely on a higher being to "guide" me through life.

[Edited on January 27, 2006 at 9:52 AM. Reason : /]

1/27/2006 9:51:35 AM

skokiaan:

Quote :

"FYI, it's kind of dishonest to say that without religion, we wouldnt have galileo's discoveries, etc"

Luckily I never claimed that. I said that the same kind of motivation that moves a religious person to seek answers could also move a scientist, and I was careful to define the way I was using religion wasn't necessarily an everyday sense of the word. I don't know how you read what I said, and took that meaning from it. Honest mistake I guess.

Supplanter"A desire for answers is alot of what religion is, a desire for answers lead to Galileo's discoverys..."

"I'm defining religion fairly broadly here in calling it 'a desire for answers & understanding' "





My point being that religion in this sense is inseperable from man, "so how would life be without religion" understood in the sense of how things would have been if religion never existed isn't a very sensible question.
(the distinction being the "never existed" sense vs the "everyday sense" saying how people might fill their lives from a more sociological viewpoint)

1/27/2006 10:22:23 AM

we can't take religion out of history

but we can end it NOW

I vote for this... at least for me, its not helpful

1/27/2006 10:47:26 AM

Quote :

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

-Voltaire

1/27/2006 12:41:37 PM

Quote :

"skokiaan: FYI, it's kind of dishonest to say that without religion, we wouldnt have galileo's discoveries, etc. These were pretty rich folks who could afford education and afford to study way back when."

Undoubtedly. But I don't really see the whole personal / political / economic freedom movements (that have produced the overwhelming majority of all scientific advancement) getting very far if their proponents constrained themselves to arguing utilitarianism.

1/27/2006 1:09:10 PM

Quote :

"we can't take religion out of history but we can end it NOW"

If we were to somehow magically dissolve all organized religions today and expunge all indications of their existence from humanity's collective memory, I'm pretty damn sure that someone will come up with a new religion and spread it across large chunks of globe real quick.

1/27/2006 1:26:29 PM

according to nietzsche, secularization in the 19th c. caused a general feeling of "weightlessness."

basically everyone got really depressed, nothing seemed real.

maybe humans need, on some level, to believe in the ethereal for "reality" to seem genuine, be it believing in god, in some ultimate archetype of love, or in an afterlife to make actions on earth seem purposeful.

[Edited on January 27, 2006 at 4:59 PM. Reason : oops]

1/27/2006 4:46:06 PM

this thread has only been done 10x - gg

1/27/2006 4:56:20 PM

If nobody thought there was something bigger than themselves, it would be a lot like the soap box.

1/27/2006 8:08:58 PM

^ therein lies the true religion of many on this board.

1/27/2006 10:43:28 PM

I want another cookie for my response to this thread. My answer is much better than all this other speculation crap. Chocolate chips, bitch!

1/28/2006 12:10:24 PM

you'll get what we give you woman

1/28/2006 2:04:09 PM

ahahahah

you know

if she would think about my response for a second...

1/29/2006 11:12:34 AM