Would the world be better off without religion?

The world would, no doubt, be much better off if everyone learned to value logic and reason over fear and superstition.



Scary, eh?

50 years???
Christ, I'll be 69.
Oh well, thats not a bad age is it? 69?

echi-

Going on the evidence of your avvie there might be a body of opinion that holds that it is perfectly reasonable and logical to put you quietly to sleep.

Queenie-

It doesn't all suddenly blow in 50 years. It's a gradual process. I think the 50 years is meant to signify when the process is complete. I think the article envisages some large scale evacuations and struggles for resources at a fairly early stage.

But I just looked out of the window and I can't see much to disturb my complacencies.

Thanks for the etymology of the word religion. I never stopped to think about it.

When you consider that the ancient Celts swore by the gods my people swear by, or, acknowledge that they hold the same gods at the foundation of their oaths or promises (contracts), we have here the positive side of religion.

However, the negative side is that people bound themselves together against those who worshipped other gods, or, the same god with a different name.

I was a sun worshipper until I got sunburn.

(In response to original post).

This is a very theorectical question, because as long as humanity exists as the humans of today (i.e. without being turned into cyborgs or genetically modified or anything like that) exist, so will religion.

Plainoldme, Spendius' etymological report that...
"religion" comes from the latin word "religare", meaning to bind together" may be read in at least two ways.
(1) religions bind (unite) people into religious communities "against" others. "This is the church I go to and that over there is the church I DON'T go to".
(2) a more genuine meaning is that religion at its deepest, most spiritual, level, binds the individual who is religiously accomplished with the Universe or Reality, the ground of his true being (which is not his alienated ego self). In this sense genuine "religion" (religio) is mystical-psychological rather than ideological-political in nature.

And thus, JL, I am not so sure the world would be better off without. I have pervasive repulsion to the vile depths of human behavior that has been triggered by, supported by, propelled by, steamrollered by, religion.
but, not every minute of religious sensibility is responsible for all this.


Religion and economics are well mixed. Sometimes conflict seems entirely religious and is in fact more a matter of economics.
Does that make economics evil?

Agreed, Osso. I was referring only to the fundamentalist forms of "religion". The higher forms that I refer to help make human life, like love and art, worthwhile.
Economics is not inherently disruptive of civil life, but it CAN be very disruptive; consider Halliburton. I believe it needs to be regulated to some degree; it should be neither overregulated nor underregulated. Finding and maintaining the golden mean in this regard is a worthwhile goal.

Nods.

The guy whose quote I'm using as a signature has more to say on this, and this is a person whom we can assume is attached to his country a great deal.. There was a snippet from him that intimated to me that the differences in their area are economic and not so much religious (though not not religious), with - my words - religion as another layer.

I dunno, I think what makes me most stirred up is that we aliquot people into pressure groups. Given information, people are complex in the receiving of it, and complex in the responses. Human opinion is infinitely more varied than reported on a tv.

Would the world be better off without religion?

I don't think there is any rational way to confidently answer that question.

The usual "NO " answers here make some reference to the wars and intolerance spawned by and done in the name of religion. In that vein we could also properly ask, "Would the world be better off without nations and governments" -- given all the wars, persecutions and suffering they have created. The answer - using the same logic - should surely be the same. Despite this, a moment's contemplation of the chaos that would attend such a world reveals the incompleteness of the logic.

The 20th century witnessed the emergence of governments and systems that themselves denied religion, claiming there was no higher power than the state or the governing party. They very quickly demonstrated the unconstrained evil that can flow from a human organization that acknowledges no superior power or principles ( no matter how noble may be its founders intent and declared purposes) - even ones, as they were, aided by the best then available human science and analysis.

We then are left with a dilemma. Religion has lots of bad and unpleasant side effects. But then so do all the human systems so far developed to replace it. Indeed, so far they have proved to be much worse. Human governance, unconstrained by the idea of a power higher than government - some source of transcendent values and limits - is left with the potential to declare anything permissible.

We are thus still left with the problem of evil. This, of course is what historically spawned religion.

This is one of the more pungent loads of crap which you have left at this site. That there is such a thing as evil, and what it may be, is a completely subjective judgment.

The earliest provenance of organized religion for which have any record comes from the temple societies of the middle east. Given that many of the gods of these temple societies were soon to be condemned as evil by the adherent of other cults, it would difficult, nay, impossible to assert that anyone was concerned with a concept of concerted evil until sectarian rivalry reared its ugly head. What can be stated with certainty is that organized religion in the temple societies served to marshal human resources as they had never been marshaled before, and that the principle beneficiaries of the efforts were the priests and acolytes of the temples.

Snake oil, O'George, you're peddlin' snake oil . . .

Well that was jacks or better.

Once again you have evaded and trivialized a fundamental idea - the heart of the matter - in favor of some pedantic and peripheral historical point.

I didn't deny or even minimize the defects of religion or the self-serving aspects of its ministers. Nothing in my argument is disputed, denied or altered by your exposition of "original" religion and the sectarian rivalries that soon followed.

Evidently you are unwilling to call such self-serving, hypocritical, sectarian behavior 'evil' -- or for that matter the analogous human behaviors that have infected authoritarian secular, governmental or political systems -- despite the human horrors they created. OK by me. Then come up with another word.

If alternatively, you object only to my last sentence - concerning what it was that spawned religion - then we don't have much of an argument. You are just making a big deal out of a secondary point.

Nice to just talk for some time.

Outta here.








To explain, trading of slam dunking doesn't interest all of us, whichever side any of us agree with

Set is just having some fun.

Georgeob1: "We are thus still left with the problem of evil. This, of course is what historically spawned religion."

It seems obvioius to me that religion (especially the Abrahamic religions) spawned the notion of (absolute) evil.

<nodding at JL>

Before religion, people faced animals and other humans who posed danger to them. No supreme evil there.

Perhaps. However whatever it was that motivated the evils of Stalinism and Naziism or pol Pot or Mao -- it wasn't religion. A central element of the horrors of these regimes was that none of them recognized any limitation - religious, theocratic, ethical or traditional - on behaviors or actions they might take in pursuit of their "revolutionary" goals and principles. As a result there were no effective inhibitions on the worst impulses of their leaders.

You can call that anything you like.

So, religion started in the 20th century?