What would the world be like without religion?

Pretty much like it is now. If you mean “What would the world be like if no one was gullible enough to delude themselves about gods and call it religion – then very different. Less conflict, more acceptance and tolerance.

I think it might just be better.

More overpopulated.

past the singularity.

check this picture: http://www.funnypicture.ws/files/picture/76427965.jpg

I like that diagram but how exactly do you measure “Scientific advance”? What exactly qualifies as 1 unit of “SA”?

It would have been a lot less uptight for sure, and the angst would not have been a monopoly but rather a free market.

People would find something else to be passionate about, like…..which species of frogs is better.

Religion is the easiest answer to what we cannot really understand. (or sometimes, we just don’t want to understand).

People need this safety net anyways, thus for me a world without religion is pure utopia.

Personally I try to make change in the world and eat healthy as the world is the only place I shall exist.

@SheWasAll_ I don’t want to misinterpret what you’re saying. Are you trying to say that (in our existence) nobody is passionate about anything except for religion?

Secular

There would be cults with charismatic human beings worshiped as gods.

nicer. less people hospitalized each year from injuries sustained while running to hide from a jehovah’s witness.

An extra 6,000,000 Jews; plus other assorted people lost in the Holocaust and other genocides over the centuries. No need for an Israel, Palestine or anything else, so no wars in the middle east and other places around the (crazy) globe.

As the late great John Lennon said: Imagine no religion, no possessions… the world would simply be a better place.

I used to have this discussion with my son. I still think the sneetches with “stars upon thars” would find a reason to hate the sneetches without. It seems to be human nature to divide the world into “us” and the “others.”

we’d have replicators, free energy and we would have colonised space.
fabulous

I don’t think it would be much different. Religion does have a black history, but I think of it more as a banner under which evil congregates than a cause of evil. People will always find a way to exert power over others for their own immorral ideals, but religion happens to be a particularly soft target. The world would undoubtedly be somewhat better without religion, but it would still be far from perfect.

@NewZen An extra 6,000,000 Jews
Judaism is a religion last I checked. An extra 6,000,000 people*

@Sarcasm I’m not saying it’s the only thing, but you gotta admit it’s one of those universal things that people get fired up about

empty hopeless and desperate

@deni , That is one silly video. Dogs would not be fluffy without God? God causes hurricanes to avoid Christians? Tell that to the victims of Karina.

I think we have a need for spirituality, which is currently fulfilled mainly by religion. Without religion, this need would have to be fulfilled by humanism, by caring for one another without trusting some higher power to intervene. Those who claim that secular humanism is a type of religion are not entirely wrong. It is not a religion, but it does foster spirituality.

Religion and nationalism are the great causes of war. Without those two things, well, as John Lennon said, just imagine http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/humannature/imagine.html

Without the leashs of religious morality? We would surely have killed each other off by now.

@filmfann
that must be the reason why the least religious countries have the highest crime rates…

oh wait… it the other way around. there goes your theory.

@ragingloli Source please.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

“Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

I think the idea that because religion exists we can’t have universal acceptance is completely false. Acceptance is about acknowledging one’s differences and still co-existing peacefully. It is not about getting rid of those differences.

@ragingloli From this site France has a similar crime rate to most other European countries and in common with them crime has increased considerably in recent years; the number of reported crimes has almost doubled in a decade: an estimated 18m offences are reported to the police each year, 5m of which result in an official crime report and 1.3m in legal procedings, 650,000 in court, although more than half of these cases are dropped.

There goes your theory.

@filmfann
compared to the great satan’s crime rate…

C’mon folks. Obviously the answer is this.

@andrew That’s hilarious and pretty much goes along with my philosophy that it’s human nature, not religion alone, that’s the problem.

@janbb Once again, I think South Park is the most brilliant, subtle satire on television, wrapped in a poop joke.

@andrew agreed

I would love to say better but unfortunately people are suckers for a ‘good’ story (even though the religious books are so very, very not good and completely unbelievable but that is just my opinion) so if it wasn’t religion it would be something else messing up the world.

@Sarcasm Judaism is a religion, Jews are an ethnic group, so an extra 6 million Jews. Except that Hitler didn’t kill the Jews because of religion alone. We kill because of fear and because of money. Religion is just a nice wrapper to convert money into fear and motivate people. The ones with the money who start the wars will find another way to create fear and justify their wars. I think we might have more scientific advancement, and some particularly ugly chapters might be erased from history, but we would still have wars, the world would not be much different. If the middle east were populated entirely by atheists, as long as Jews and Palestinians still had separate ethnic identities, or even separate governments, they would still be fighting, it would just be more obvious that it was a war over water.

@gussnarp Judaism is a religion,

Only to those who are orthodox – to the rest it is an ethnicity. I dated several Jewish girls when younger – none of them even knew where the nearest synagogue was located. They had never been religious – just like many Christians.

@DarkScribe That was sort of my whole point. After the comma: “Jews are an ethnic group”. We’re saying the same thing, I just think that Judaism only makes sense as the name of the religion, not the ethnic group. We don’t put ”-ism” on the end of ethnic group names.

without religion, there would have been no jewish religion, which means the ethnicity based on it would not exist either.

@Sarcasm Many people are multiplying because of religion. Yes religious wars and the holocaust have killed millions, but more people might be using birth control if it were not for religion. Pretty much every religion encourages birthing as many babies as possible within a marriage. Generally people who are less religious and more educated have fewer children.

@gussnarp Jews are an ethnic group in my opinion, but there are many opinions on the subject. @ragingloli is right that without the religion the ethnic group would not exist. I also think we would not be an ethnic group if everyone had not hated us so much over the years. Basically, from my perspective, non-Jews, especially the ones who hate us, look at all Jews as Jews, period. Doesn’t matter if you are religious or not. Doesn’t matter if you never practiced or stepped in a synagogue. If you were born from Jews, Hitler is still putting you on that train or in the oven. So it is not only a religion. Now where it gets confusing is there are two distinctly different ethnicities within Judaism (again this is how I see it, it’s not like it is written down in an encyclopedia necessarily) anyway, the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi’s (well that is in an encyclopedia, the two groups) definitely have some distinct difference coming from different areas of the world. They differ from kosher rules, different foods, different languages, and more.

I’m not sure, but anyone who thinks that there would be less murder and mayhem aren’t very observant of humans. We will kill each other for all sorts of stupid reasons, religion just makes thinking up reasons a little easier.

Humans are a self-destructive species. If it wasn’t for our ability to replicate ourselves via offspring, I think we would have died out by now. I don’t have much hope for the human race to make it out of the solar system, as we can’t even get along on this one little blue planet. I’m sure we’d really muck things up beyond our own little sun.

how much worse could it be? I say we give it a trial run for 10 years and see how it goes.

As an atheist who recognizes that all of human development can be attributed to natural selection and survival of the fittest, I must also recognize that religion is a part of evolution. What do I mean? Religious thought and action has obviously played a major role in the survival of the human species. Therefore, religion has provided an advantage to humans. At the core of this evolution is the simple concept of faith. Call that faith what you may, you can’t deny faith’s role.
Arguing about the particulars of different religious dogma is pointless. On the other hand, arguing that “religion” is harmful is patently false when considering the broader sweep of human evolution.
My conclusion:
Atheism must include broader and deeper faith-like aspects in order to make a difference—in order to bring more than 10–15% of the population along. Proceeding with atheism in a faithless vacuum will never bring the majority of the population along. Fighting millions of years of human evolution is not going to work.

@davidk So are you saying atheists need to come up with some succinct guidelines that define us? A list of beliefs that let people know that they are part of a group who has common beliefs about life, death, morality, etc.

@JLeslie I think that he is saying that atheists need to come up with something that replaces religion, not just physically, but mentally, psychologically and holds up to the unblinking eye of evolutionary wishful thinking, aka faith.

You can’t have faith in science, but you have to find something to replace the attractiveness of gods. Too many people think in an either/or mode. God or the Devil, etc. We have to ‘evolve’ beyond that.

@Psychedelic_Zebra Having been raised an atheists I find comfort in accepting I don’t know everything, that there is some randomness to life and it is not a punishment when I fall on bad luck or become ill. I do not feel a need for faith. I think God is attractive for those who have heard of God and his magical qualities, but if you never heard of it/Him/Her you never miss it.

@JLeslie atheists don’t need the replacement; the believers need something to replace religion. Having been raised by religious parents (okay, one parent), the all-pervading completeness of religion in one’s life does not simply go away.

Even now, having been an atheist for a couple of decades, the training I received as a child is still there, and I would go back to being a Christian in a minute if I could convince myself that Jesus really loves me and was killed to washed away my sins with his blood. I know too much history to go back, but if I ever get Alheimer’s I see myself being a God fearing Christian again, because it is simple and comforting, and convenient.

The best way to put it is, if you take my personal vehicle away from me, you better give me something better than public transportation, no matter the benefits of how I am saving the environment. Having my own car is convenient, same as religious belief. That’s best way I can think of to explain it.

People believe for a lot of reasons, but the most common one is that is how they were taught. To get rid of religion, you better find something just as convenient to replace it with. Not everybody is happy with an uncertain future, hence the need for the comfort of religion.

@Psychedelic_Zebra I agree with what you have written. I don’t mind people believing in God, I don’t see harm in it as an abstract idea. I find harm in religions that are hateful and feel their way or the highway. I don’t feel compelled to bring people to atheism. I just, as an atheists, don’t want to be prejudged as less moral, having poor family values, being less giving.

@JLeslie Well said!

@JLeslie Wanna come over for a slice?

Even more overpopulated

@JLeslie I agree with every point you make. I have been pre-judged as an atheist, as a man who created his own religion, as a bisexual, and as a true free thinker. I don’t mean free thinker in the atheist sense, I mean it in the sense that I have ideas about things that most people do NOT agree with. I am not changing my beliefs because they make some people uncomfortable. As long as I am not breaking the law, fuck em!

There are always going to be people that behave in ways you disagree with, its the nature of the game called life.

Causes of social divisions involves a myriad of factors. Causes of harmony involves a myriad of factors. Why questions would still be asked. How do we get along with each other would still be asked. Knowledge and wisdom would be rediscovered.

You’re looking at a world without religion.

Talking about religion and applying religious principles are two different things.

Just because someone talks a good game doesn’t mean they know what the f#$k they’re talking about.

@SABOTEUR That is not true. Religion rules the world. A man cannot be president of the US without being a Christian. No leader in the Middle East dares to profess a faith other than Islam in the strictest sense, with the exception of Israel – another religious country. Islam and Christianity together make up nearly half the world’s population. Whether or not you think they are following their religion the way they should, they are religious people.

Technically correct…and perhaps we’re speaking on different levels.

Anyone can call themselves “religious”, but calling oneself religious and applying religious principles to one’s life (as opposed to forcing religious ideas down other people’s throats) are two different things.

One can easily look around and see that religious or spiritual principles do not guide the world at present or there’d be no hatred, war, intolerance, bigotry, homophobia, rape, murder, hunger, etc.

What we do see reflected throughout the world is religion applied selectively ie. the vocal condemnation (by select individuals who identify themselves as religious) of anyone who refuses to accept deity their way.

@SABOTEUR Do you really, honestly think that religious principles would do away with evil in all its forms?

No, but it would be a good start. Conditions cannot thrive within an environment that is not conducive to nurturing and assisting it’s growth. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. Everything you see around you is a direct result of actions that preceded it. If religion wasn’t the cause of the insanity that surrounds us, it certainly has not shown itself to be the solution, either.

It gives one reason to question, what useful purpose does religion serve?

I’m reminded of the teacher who requested quiet from the classroom. Each student began telling other students to shut up. The more they told each other to shut up, the noisier the classroom became. Nobody realized that if each student took it upon him/herself to just be quiet, the result would have been immediate.

The very same theory might hold true in the application of religious principles. Again, what we have instead are select groups who seem content only to have everyone else fit their standards instead of working diligently to apply those standards to themselves, thus leading by example.

That is a problem, but I think the greater problem is with the teachings of the religions themselves. There are serious moral problems that arise from many of the world’s major religions, where even if the religions were followed to the letter we would still not have an ethical society. The problem is not so much that people are telling other people what to do. As I see it, the problem is that people are incapable of envisaging a scenario in which they may be wrong. The fact is that everyone is wrong, but some are more wrong than others. If people were willing to admit their faults more readily than they would gloat over their achievements, then we may make some progress.

A little experiment can demonstrate this principle quite nicely. The next time you are cut off in traffic, use the horn. Nine times out of ten you will get the finger rather than a wave in apology.

“What purpose does religion serve?”
It depends on your point of view. For the pious congregation member, it may provide an ethereal experience that rejuvenates them and add meaning to life. For the ambitious priest or mullah it may provide a path to power and a forum to influence others. For the politician, it may stop people questioning and provide a solid base of voters. For the partial congregation member it may serve no other purpose than to make friends. Religion serves many purposes for many people. Although there are very good evolutionary reasons why religion exists and survives so well, we do not need it to fulfil any one of these purposes.

@FireMadeFlesh: Well said, ma’am. I’m sure your parents are very proud of you.

@SABOTEUR Sorry if I’ve been ambiguous, but I’m a guy. My avatar is in reference to a song rather than anything specifically to do with myself. Maybe I should change it. My parents are proud of me, but also profoundly disagree with my religious views.

Oh…I apologize, sir.

Leave your avatar as is, if you prefer…

As for your parents…well…I guess that’s what makes them your parents…
...and you you.

I’d be extremely proud of you, but I am a bit insane so…