the world without god....
 

This is no religion troll.

But what would this world be without any pursuit to appease god? If all thru history there was no "fear" that our actions had repercussions? No, I don't deny that religion has brought many many deaths but would the horror of our history be lower or greater?

Opinions????

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/t...aps-64183.html

An interesting discussion in the thread linked above. Covers the question you asked and a range of topics regarding the influence and/or incompetence of religion, specifically in the past.

Very intriguing link I will read fully when I wake up to go to work.

I'd like to say the world would be a better place, and it probably would, but when I think about it I'm not entirely sure anymore. Why?

Because without religion what could people lean back on when life gets tough? People? Friends? Family? Some people don't have these things, but a common interest, or belief, brings people together and religion does indeniable work here. Would religion have been exchanged with something else? Perhaps. Power trips would definitely still be around, they'd most likely just find another way to justify their means of war to feed their powerhungry ideals.

Not to mention that religion itself sparked a lot of philosophical debates and gave room for people to question grand ideas and pull us forward in regards of this. In a way you could maybe even go as far as saying if it wasn't for religion we might not have seen greats such as Aristotle, Kant, Socrates and Plato as much as we do as the likes of them questioning these things skyrocketed curiosity and science when the world became more open minded and modern. Would they have pondered upon the meaning of life if religion wasn't around and life just... Life? One could wonder whether psychology would eventually delve into these things as well, but it might have taken longer time as there might have been slightly less demand for proof as it would ''make sense'', and math/science might not have been at the point it is today. There probably would be focus on eternity and physics, but would Newton sit under the tree and ponder upon the falling apple or not? Would he have taken a different path as the world would have been different and have different influences on what we consider/ed to be great thinkers in todays society? Would there be someone else in his place that people would have given more attention to instead as the entire mindset of the world population would have been different taken history into account. The whole world would have been different if religion was never part of this world.

I don't know, I'm not at home and just scribbled these thoughts down... I have to come back to this at a later notice and see if my words even hold any relevance at this point. Interesting subject nonetheless.

The world would be the same place, if there was no religion there would be another excuse to kill people.

Religion doesn't kill people, people kill people and they would continue to do so with or without religion. Although I do think religion gives extremists something to base their psychopathic tendencies on, nearly every religion says 'believe this and nothing else, anybody who doesn't believe this is inferior' and that is a dangerous way of thinking, especially when every organised religion is incorrect.

I would like a religion free world, not really because it would stop horrible things being done, but it would stop those horrible things being justified, if there is no religion there is no justification for horrific acts, but it will not stop the acts themselves, also religion needs to go because it just simply isn't true, it can't be...and believing a lie just isn't something we should embrace.

It's a good angle on a typical question, nice shit.

To me, even the debate in God is more about us debating what our perception of God is, without being able to effectively communicate or come to the conclusion that really we are arguing about our perception rather than the truth.


Witty brought up some good points that are often overlooked --- for just as much as religion does to minimize certain folks from doing horrible things, it also does the reverse in a world of polarity.... It allows 'divine' justification of some of the most atrocious mass-murders and genocides.

So to me, the world would only seem different for a very short while during a transition from believing to not believing --- then it would balance out again, and be the exact same as it is today.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

... so even if the world never believed in God again, they would rally around 'apex' beliefs, and "create through division" (created in the image of their creator, as we do), and whatever the most overarching belief systems are re: life/death and life after death, will have the same effect.

Thus, the only change would be in our perception that change existed, in my humble opinion.

The world today is less fearfull of 'god' these days.

Look around. People have become self rightous to the point
Where they dont need a god. They believe themselves gods.

I don't think it is anything to do with self righteousness and more to do with logic and education, even if there is a divine creator, there is no logical reason to believe it, there is no evidence at all and science has disproved many things about most religions...it wouldn't really make much sense to look at that and think 'I still believe' because what are you believing other than blind faith you have been taught since birth and indoctrinated into?

It is ok to hope and even suspect there may be a creator of some sort, but until there is proof than any logical person should not blindly believe it, that is the epitome of brain washing, and I think rather than thinking we are better than previous generations, we simply live in a time when these things have been disproven and exposed to be illogical and unscientific to the point it makes more sense not to believe it.

10 years ago this type of talk was blasphemy.

Now its common and excepted.

He, asked what the world would br like without god.

Today is that world.

Dont question my faith your irish condom tip. ;)

If today, it was announced that religion is nothing but false hope and god doesn't exist

It would be an all out war and bloodshed, gauranteed

It isn't that world though, I wish it was....but religion still plays a HUGE part in daily life all over the world, it still influences millions upon millions of people, we now have the freedom to question it and to expose it as illogical, which is something that isn't debatable, people can believe in God but logic is not on their side, it is blind faith and that's not something I believe anyone should have in 2013...when most religion began we didn't have science, it was the science of the day...people looking for the reason we are here, that information wasn't available so they had to come to their own conclusions that were not based on logic or fact but on belief and faith...the word faith itself means believing something that can not be proven...it makes more logical sense to believe what can and has been proven, and I think people are realising that slowly but surely.

It is faaaarrrrr from a religion free world tho.

Lol no it wouldn't....that HAS been announced, the majority of the scientific community has announced that, it doesn't matter because religion is based on faith, and faith gives people the ability to say 'it doesn't matter what the facts are, God transcends scientific fact or logic'

So people would just continue to believe, regardless of what was announced...because religion does not rely on facts or knowledge and that is why it is growing less and less compatible with the modern world.

U tell that to th dudes in the middle east who kill for their god

...what?

I think you misunderstood my post.

What I said was just because someone 'announced' God doesn't exist, wouldn't mean shit...because their faith dictates that no logic is required, it is not relevant...they would just continue to believe what they believe....and that's why religion can not be placed on the same level as science, science is about facts and evidence, religion is about faith and belief in place of logic....somebody announcing something would do nothing to kill that faith, they would just say 'God knows better'...and continue to believe what they believe. Even if there was indisputable evidence that there was no creator of any sort, I think religion will still exist.

Your point that lots of Muslims kill for their God is true, but how is it relevant to your original post?

I believe this would happen if done now.

I had a whole paragraph written and then dropped my phone and lost it all and too agged to write another right now.

It wouldn't happen tho...nobody would believe it so there would be no reason for it to happen.

You could show them indisputable evidence and it would not kill their faith.

Is that a bad thing? Believe it our not I think it does more good then harm. If done now their would be bloodshed cause it puts more power behind right and wrong. If the belief never existed I think there would be a drastic change in society because life would be just live and die. I think selfish needs would trump all. In the early days it would have been total chaos but we would have learned thru history.

our best scientists are also the first to admit that our science, and our advancements in the field, is incomplete...

few things are more illogical than relying on logic when we've logically proved our lack of it.

...and as the ant farm hits the wall, they opt to keep digging for answers rather than looking beyond the glass they've just proven exists.

You're connecting morals with religion, that is incorrect.

The religious do not have a monopoly on morality, we decide our morals and our laws as a civilisation and a society, those who do not obey are locked up for the good of others...this is a way in which we behaved loooonnnng before any religion existed.

The world would be the same, insane people will kill millions and sane people will try to stop them, they just wont have any justification for their killing...you seem to be saying religion stops murder and bloodshed, but if you look around and if you look at history you will see religion has been a bigger cause of death than anything else.

religion has always been around.

religion wasnt always the guideline on how to live your life though.

in alot of societies religion was just answers for the unexplained. there wasnt judgement. i mean when you died you didnt need to stand in judgement for your sins, you just had to hope a family member gave you a coin so you could cross with the ferrymen. just one example.

morality is a human trait, you don't need a religion to tell you its wrong to cut peoples heads off, let there bodies rot, and then launch there bodies into cities with catapults.

its just wrong at a human level.

but people do it in the name of religion.

not saying religion is whats wrong. whats wrong is people. because people did terrible shit before religion. long before the crusades when the christians and muslims would trade atrocities, you had civilizations like the assyrians who would slaughter to slaughter. flay an army and cover a tower in there skins.

everyone looks at the greeks like they were a shining beacon of light. they were filthy greasy savages. 99 percent of them. only 1 of there cities and townships was "bright" and with it. athens. thats like saying america is a beacon of peace because the mountain men in alaska aren't killing muslims.

every society is savage at heart. religion plays no role either way. just my opinion.

Woah woah woah slow down lol few things are more illogical than relying on logic? That's such a twisted view, just because we don't have all the answers is no reason to abandon the logical approach, we are just great apes...we learn and we move forward. Religion claims to know the answers, science does not...science is searching for the answers and in that search has found evidence that suggests religion can not be true...religion has 0 evidence for anything.

Why would you believe something that has absolutely no evidence yet claims to know all the answers, over something that has much more evidence and is slowly but surely providing more and more answers? Things you can SEE, rather than just reading it from a boom written thousands of years ago.

I am a man of god but I will admit there are voids of questions I find unanswered. Like god created everything, then who created god? Was he just a lone being before the creation of all? But at the same time the big bang theory has a void of questions unanswered also. Like how can a act of total chaos create the vast creation of such an ordered universe? Our design is so near perfect like our ability to create life thru mating and there being an perfect birth-old then death design. Both have its unbelievable theory's but this isn't about whether u believe or not instead its a question what it would be like without the presence of a high power.

No people's selfish desires who manipulate religion is the cause of those deaths. Like said before if religion wasn't around human beings would find another means of manipulation to murder and kill millions. Morals would be skewed if not for an thought ever existing of repercussions of an afterlife punishment. Do u think most a scared of prison then hell?

I'm not writing off the idea that some higher power created the universe, because we simply do not and possibly can not know...but I am writing off the idea of an interventionist God, and I am certainly writing off the idea that any of the worlds religions are the right religion, because they have been shown not to be true on many occasions, but yeah...I think if religion vanished tomorrow it would not change peoples inner desires and perversions, and it would not stop genocide, it would not stop wars.

No no no you are connecting morals with religion again...religion does not grant you better morals, because as you said religion can be manipulated...it is the PERSON who has the morals, not the religion and not because of the religion...religion can and should encourage those morals but it is not the creator of them.

And to your first point, I could argue that really the people doing good are manipulating the words just as much, but I will concede that you are right that people would continue to kill and murder with or without God, so how can you say having a God prevents it? People who have psychological disorders will find Any reason to kill and hurt, religion is the only reason where they can justify it, even if it is a manipulated justification, nothing else could even nearly justify genocide other than religion, there is nothing else someone could point to and say 'This told me if I kill I will be rewarded'.....you know what I mean? Good people are good people, bad people are bad people....religion has both good and bad, if you want to say it creates the morals then you have to say it also creates the immoral, otherwise your argument is soooo biased.

i hear you, but the high power you refer to is one who judges you based on what you do. and he judges with a human sense of morality. but it makes sense to the faithful because humans are created in his image.

but still i don't believe in none of it. if i'm a serial child rapist who eats old ladies, im gonna end up the same place as a nun. dead. in the ground. the long black sleep.

the whole big bang nonsense makes sense to a degree because its an explosion. we just conceive time as slow moving. but if i light a barrel of propane that explodes, the energy of the fire reproduces and burns throughout each flammable particle and the energy is ever expanding. we are just the microscopic flammable particles.

people who don't reproduce, didnt have an opportunity to spread there fire.

and it makes sense because we are destruction. people act like humans are the only destructive animal, what they don't realize is every animal is destruction. tigers kill shit. plants kill other plants. invasive species etc. all life is just the fire of the all burning out the resources of the propane tank we call life

Of course its biased but so is yours. I didn't create this thread to argue the belief in the existence of god but the impact of the non existence of said belief. I may have went off topic my bad.

Also I just want to say that your point about God has mysteries and the big bang has mysteries is kind of a false equivalency...the big bang theory certainly does ask more questions than it answers but we have visual evidence that the big bang theory happened, we have no evidence, visual or otherwise, for the existence of God. Also, the big bang theory is merely an explanation of what happened AFTER the universe came into being, it does not say how it came into being, and it does not say why...and it doesn't try to, it is a theory based on what we can see.

Sorry for getting sidetracked again lol

I think you're misunderstanding me...I didn't mean your belief i God was biased, I meant what you think would happen if religion didn't exist was biased...you can not say people have morals from religion and that's why we do good and just ignore the immorality that exists in religion too...it may be a manipulation of text, which again is very debateable because there is a lot of hate and evil in a lot of religious text, but even so the immorality exists and religion isn't stopping it...because it can't, because regardless of religion people will be good or bad, people will kill or they will not, I am agnostic and as moral as anybody...where did my morals come from?

Why am I not evil?

I have to actually do some work for a while lol I will be back

Lol pz bro.

This reminded me of George Carlin's bit about being a fan of entropy for some reason lol

But yeah, nature, by its very nature is destruction...everything is dying all the time.

I get ya after reading again. I do however feel that morals have unintentionally been given some guidance from religious beliefs. I think if the presence of religious morals was not present then the line between good and bad would be skewed to but a blur line that would be more easily stepped on. I agree that I am approaching the topic at a biased angle and may have from the jump of the OP approached as such. he reason u are not evil is because your morals were most likely taught. I know that I could be wrong but if I am right and u were taught that belief of morals passed on was probably at one point in time influenced by the morals of religious beliefs. I read on the link objective posted that during the time of the Nazi uprising that Germany fell to that way of thinking during a time of a religious belief down fall. Not to say that is true but it makes sense to me.

Hitler was not an atheist, though he didn't speak much about religion, he did write about it, Hitler had an ideology, he had a political vision and that was what pushed him above everything, he believed he knew what was right, and he truly believed it right to his core, it was nothing to do with religion but it was also nothing to do with lack of religion because he did have religion in his life.

I agree with you tho that religion does pass on moral guidance and ethical teachings but it doesn't hold the monopoly on them, you can be a good and moral person without religion in your life, it is not the only way morals are taught, and if it disappeared, morals would still exist, our morals would depend on our society as I believe they have always done...what is moral is simply what people choose to be moral, sex with children is now immoral and wrong because we have learned and we have seen that it is wrong, but years ago it was common practice, and still is in some places...religion has little power over that sort of thing, because religion existed when that was happening. Religion has a set of morals, but it does not include all of the morals we now have in our societies and in fact it has many things we now find immoral such as slavery and human sacrifice...because it was written by the men of that time whose societies and cultures told them it was ok.

IMO this is the exact reason why man invented a God.

I hear you bro, I do not see religion and science at ends the same way you seem to...

I see them as part of the same 'book of life', science starting from the beginning and working it's way to the end, and faith starting from the end and working it's way to the beginning.


I do not think accepting either blindly makes sense... I'm by no means at ends with either - I think the real truths are supported by both (and all) subject matters.


From created in our creators image -- to heredity and cellular mitosis
From seek and ye shall find -- to the uncertainty principle
from everlasting life -- to energy cannot be created nor destroyed

the most limiting factor we put on ourselves on this topic is by assuming faith and science were ever at ends... they just started from separate sides of the spectrum.

feel me a little more (at least than when i said illogical to rely on logic lol)?

I hate your pics, fag...

that wasn't even directed at you, pedo.