So, what say you, KMCers? Would society (I'M talking world wide, just for clarity.) be about the same without having religion throughout its development?
No. Desire to know is what directly caused people to study philosophy and astronomy for hundreds of years.
Frustration of not knowing is what caused religion. Religion does not cause people to study, on opposite it gives answers making research and studies unnecessary.
It is not possible, because many people need to believe in something greater than themselves to get them through this life. Religion is used to reinforce faith, because faith comes from hearing and reading whatever religion a person deems fit to follow. So to sum this up, you can not have a successful society without faith.
That's not what happened through all of human history though. And your first statement is downright false, that notion has been attached to religion from anticlerical people, but religion and ignorance don't have that kind of straight forward relationship.
On the topic at hand: I think a society without religion that does well and develops correctly can happen. I just don't think it can be made from humans, since humans will always build some sort of spirituality, as their brains are geared towards belief.
As you know, I'm a God-believing Mormon who labels himself as an "agnostic-theist." but, I honestly think the world would be a better place if all religion disappeared, now. Unfortunately, I also believe humans are designed to believe in God (or the supernatural), for the most part, so we are stuck with religion. There is an area of study called "Evolution of Religion" and it is pretty solid, imo.
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Re: Successful society without religion?
If you could eradicate all religions from the world, it would simply be a matter of time before new religions would emerge from the popular culture. I don't think the two can be separated for very long. Creating religions are what humans do, and have always done.
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Do you mean like starting over? Evolving again without religion?
I think we wouldn't have a society without first having religion. The very first cities were based around religion. When you start to have a lot of people living together, you have to have a system of order and laws. It was religion that made society possible by imposing order.
Animals? Aliens? Robots? I'm personally against anthropocentrism, what can I say?
I think the latter is impossible, while technically I agree it could lime difficulties among people. For me the idea of having a single religion is not unlike having a single language. There are only advantages at speaking in the same fashion, but sadly that's not how idioms develop, they will always stray from others because of variations leading to important différences.
Arguably modern technology could help to establish simple thought, but we are not using it for that at the moment.
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No, ants and bees seem to have figured out a way to have a society without religion (as far as I know). But we are not ants; we are humans. Perhaps religion is a reflection of what we are.
There is always something "sacred" in our relationship with authority, our brains seem to accept laws and traditions as something beyond us, almost supernatural.
This doesn't mean it's actual religion when we talk about having a government, but we would consider such government, in it's value as a moral protector, pretty much as the same as a religion.
I think Derrida writes about how many superstitions were passed from the Church to the government when the original separation came to be. We have an incredible amount of leftovers, I'd argue that the reject of participating into the political life of your country has something to do with fear of becoming a pariah, a modern heretic. Politics -according to the acts of the majority- aren't something all citizens should practice, we need priests.