Would the world be better off or worse if there were no religion?

Originally posted by Deadline
Thank you for reinforcing my point. You probably think you weren't doing that.

I do kinda agree with that view, in some ways, and I think your point may only be valid semantically, i.e. what you call it doesn't matter if it is the same action, however that's not the discussion, rather it is if one popular view of the world would not exist (not just the name) how would it influence the actions and lives of people in it.

Originally posted by Bardock42
Well, I can see how his post could refute your point, in that you may claim that it is people who did that bad things under the banner of Nazism, yet the world would be a better place if Nazism didn't exist (I don't agree btw, I think the 2nd World War was immensely useful in making the world a better place, admittedly at an enormous price)

I do kinda agree with that view, in some ways, and I think your point may only be valid semantically, i.e. what you call it doesn't matter if it is the same action, however that's not the discussion, rather it is if one popular view of the world would not exist (not just the name) how would it influence the actions and lives of people in it.

So do I (in a way refutes my point), but Nazism isn't a religon. Also it's a bit of silly argument to make. Nazism didn't come into existance from nothing, one of the main reasons was because of Europe boycotting Germany. It's just simplistic to say the world would be better of without Nazism.

In India in 1829, the British (who at that time were almost 100% Anglican Christians) outlawed suttee. Suttee was the practise of new widows throwing themselves on their dead husband's funeral pyres, and therefore committing suicide by burning alive.

^That counts for something. It could be argued that in this case Christianity righted another, older religion's wrong. (In this case, Hinduism's endorsement and mandate of bride suicide through a pretty barbaric means).

So we can sit here all day and talk about bad and good things that have been done in the name of, or because of religion.

Christianity didn't right anything in that case; CHRISTIANS, may have, but it was the removal of a belief that solved that. AKA, increasing secularization solved that problem. The Indians didn't suddenly replace their older belief with a christian one--it simply became absent.

And by extension, Christianity did. When India was under Muslim rule for like 300 years or so, it was never banned. The Mughals apparently saw nothing inherently horrible about suttee. But the Christian British did, and swiftly put an end to it. The connection can't be denied. If the Brits had adhered to another faith, they most likely would not have banned it.

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
And by extension, Christianity did. When India was under Muslim rule for like 300 years or so, it was never banned. The Mughals apparently saw nothing inherently horrible about suttee. But the Christian British did, and swiftly put an end to it. The connection can't be denied. If the Brits had adhered to another faith, they most likely would not have banned it.

interesting fact:

many of the muslim leaders in India argued that "dhimmi" status could actually cover non-"book" based religions, because they were able to tax the population.

It proved easier for them to bend their theology so that the Hindu could keep their practices and pay the Muslim rulers, rather than attempt a forceful conversion.

Originally posted by inimalist
interesting fact:

many of the muslim leaders in India argued that "dhimmi" status could actually cover non-"book" based religions, because they were able to tax the population.

It proved easier for them to bend their theology so that the Hindu could keep their practices and pay the Muslim rulers, rather than attempt a forceful conversion.

The Mughals only allowed Hindus to practice because they were hopelessly outnumbered. It was just a CYA move. They "bent" their theology (a sin in Islam) and sold out to the religion of the masses all in the interest of saving their own behinds and to fatten their pockets.

But in other places Muslims conquered, like North Africa, Persia and Indonesia, the native folk-religions were totally wiped out. Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and other Muslim countries still have Christian minorites, because Dhimmi-tude only applies to Jews and Christians. The Mughals basically sold out, and eventually paid for it. Because religious unrest helped to crumble their empire, since they failed to convert everyone unlike the Muslims in Indonesia. A lot of historians say that the British Raj never would have been established if the entire Subcontinent was Muslim, because they wouldn't have been able to divide the population.

the $$ probably didn't hurt

I'm sure the imputus to convert the Hindus was sort of reduced as the dumptrucks full of cash rolled up

The Brits could have followed suit and taxed them as well, but suttee and other Hindu practices revolted them. The Christians weren't gonna turn a blind eye to a moral issue in exchange for cash, like the Muslims did.

Muslims could have taxed the Buddhists in Indonesia and made a lot of money, but instead they adhered to the Koran by converting them. Because the jizya doesn't apply to non-book religions.

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
The Brits could have followed suit and taxed them as well, but suttee and other Hindu practices revolted them. The Christians weren't gonna turn a blind eye to a moral issue in exchange for cash, like the Muslims did.

Muslims could have taxed the Buddhists in Indonesia and made a lot of money, but instead they adhered to the Koran by converting them. Because the jizya doesn't apply to non-book religions.

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
The Brits could have followed suit and taxed them as well, but suttee and other Hindu practices revolted them. The Christians weren't gonna turn a blind eye to a moral issue in exchange for cash, like the Muslims did.

Muslims could have taxed the Buddhists in Indonesia and made a lot of money, but instead they adhered to the Koran by converting them. Because the jizya doesn't apply to non-book religions.

no, totally, just any time I've been taught it in a class, the tax incentive from the indian population was one of the big reasons that was talked about

obviously it isn't the one single reason.

Theres been Laws since the cavemen days and look what happened.
I find very weathly people want religion..who knows they might want to control your minds... Islam two women = one man. maybe thats where men got the idea for a threesome?

I'm happy for the bump, I have some things to add.

First we have to separate personal good/bad from societal good/bad. I'll be focusing on societal below.

Second, we have to determine whether or not the good/bad has its root cause in religion, and is specifically caused by religion or religious belief. Or if the good/bad is simply inherent in us, and religion is simply one manifestation of our natural tendencies. And in what ratio between those two options, since it's not 100% either way.

Originally posted by Digi
...I do think the world would be slightly better sans (organized) religion. But the improvements would be minor. Religion is a product of human nature. It's goods and ills are our own, and wouldn't disappear with religion.

This was more intuition than researched when I wrote it, but once I delved a bit deeper it turned out to be mostly true. Turns out there's no good evidence to suggest that religion creates within us the impetus for harm more so than many other factors. For an extreme example, social, economic, and political factors have been found to contribute far more to the likelihood of suicide bombing than religious factors, even when those involved are a part of a specific religion.

What religions do is create an insular community, or in-group, that people naturally gravitate toward. Such in-groups, as a by-product of their very nature, create an in-group/out-group mentality. But, stripped of religion, we are no less likely to form such groups, and can even observe such behavior in a religion-less environment like, say, primate groups.

I use these anecdotes to represent the larger point made at the onset, a point that is backed by further evidence (which I can provide sources for, for those interested, but synopsis is usually in order on the forums).

So. Would the world be better off without religion? It's almost an invalid question. For religion to not exist, we'd have to change human nature to an extent that we wouldn't be looking at the same cultural or biological context. It serves a need in our basic nature (backed by both social and biological studies, some of which I pulled the anecdotes above from), and if religion didn't exist, institutions similar enough to religion would exist that would produce a largely similar society.

There's also some evidence to suggest the opposite, that a belief in a higher deity suppresses endeavors that would be strictly for personal desire that may cause others harm. I could not find as much documentation on that particular idea, but my central idea that religion isn't accountable for evil that isn't already ingrained with us is much more widespread and backed with evidence.

...

I do believe that there's still a host of reasons why a religious worldview is not a particularly desirable one for personal and societal reasons. But the idea that religion creates more bad than good in the world on a societal scale is not one of them.

Originally posted by Digi
Coconuts would continue to rape our populace either way, so let's focus on the real threat coming from the tropics....

...I also don't remember ever writing this. In browsing this thread, this elicited a huge 'wtf' from me.

😮

I've kind of revised my thought on this. I think the world would not have been better off until now with no religion. However, I think that now we are at a stage where it IS time to remove religion and go to the next stage of development of values.

I think we're well past that phase as well, so we're in agreement there. But, again, I don't think that violence in the world would be noticeably less if we actually made that transition. An absurd amount of progress would need to be made, not just religious, for us to collectively overcome our natural agressive and in-grouping tendencies.

I think this whole trend I envision from the old model of ethics to the new model that will exist had an early transition point in the 60s and many of the movements springing from that era were symptomatic of it. However it was a false start, it didn't get enough people and wasn't matured properly and ended up as the New Age type movements. However, I think we could see another embrace soon, maybe feeding of the energy of these revolutions taking place.

Originally posted by King Kandy
I think this whole trend I envision from the old model of ethics to the new model that will exist had an early transition point in the 60s and many of the movements springing from that era were symptomatic of it. However it was a false start, it didn't get enough people and wasn't matured properly and ended up as the New Age type movements. However, I think we could see another embrace soon, maybe feeding of the energy of these revolutions taking place.

That would be cool to see. It's bit too early in the process to say I can see it as a likely outcome, but it's interesting food for thought. Hopefully the original desires of many of the revolutionaries, which revolved around the need for freedom, won't become lost when the eventual power shift takes place, in Egypt or anywhere else (because there have been some fledgling movements inspired by the current turmoil).

Originally posted by Digi
Second, we have to determine whether or not the good/bad has its root cause in religion, and is specifically caused by religion or religious belief. Or if the good/bad is simply inherent in us, and religion is simply one manifestation of our natural tendencies.

Well, Death Terror is giving it a concrete name. I prefer to just refer to it as "our intrinsic nature" to leave in other possible explanations. I don't doubt that fear of death is part of it, but part of it also derives from our tendency to gravitate to social groups, or the cognitive dissonance that arises when we can't rationalize the world around us, or other factors I'm not thinking of.

We'd find a different reason to kill each other.

/thread.