Do you think the world would have been a better place if there were no religions?

It's not possible. Every night people looked at stars, watched the patterns, and made stories about how and why we're here. It's completely woven into humanity and every part of culture and art form.

I'm an atheist, and obviously a lot of evil things have been done in the name of religion, but I think there are some incredible things that have resulted from it, too.

People were given solace in times of sorrow. They were given a hope for justice in times of tyranny. The art of the Sistine Chapel, or Buddhist temples, or incredible songs that resonate because of their religious imagery. You wouldn't have Hallelujah or Spirit in the Sky, and on the other hand you wouldn't have Imagine - or at least it would hit different. Some addicts rely on it to help them fight addictions.

Some religious traditions helped with sanitation and preventing the spread of disease in a time when we didn't have other tools to make people understand.

So in the end I think religion has done and continues to do tremendous harm and is mostly an evil force, but there are some incredibly beautiful and important things that came from it that are worth celebrating.

It’s pretty naive to think we wouldn’t have just found a different excuse to burn people alive.

As long as there's an unequal distribution of power there's going to be humans who are going to abuse it. If they don't use god as an excuse they'll use the glory of the nation or numbers on a spreadsheet

Faith and Religion are two different things. Yes, I think the world would be far better without Religion. But faith gives people strength to overcome challenges that otherwise may destroy them. Faith doesn't require you pay anything, money, time, etc into it. Faith is a personal thing between that one person and whatever they happen to put the faith into. Faith doesn't require you to kill someone else because they don't share that faith. Faith doesn't require you study some fairy tale written by storytellers thousands of years ago. Religion is the opposite of all that, and for it's survival requires you to spread the virus by any means necessary.

Even today, I know some people who dedicate themselves to helping their community or open source, in the name of religion. It gives them a zen and feeling of purpose.

I also know people who have no friends or support. They're locked up in their apartment, letting themselves rot day in and out. If those people were religious, at least they would be going to church.

Atheist btw.

I don't think Religion created our problems, I think we did. I think Religion is just our brains trying to maintain sanity. We can't fathom "infinity", we can't fathom the times before or after our deaths. I think religion was just created by people who need to attribute something to that, so they can get their minds off of it.

It has been used as a weapon, for sure, but I don't think there's any getting rid of it. I think naturally we gravitate towards it due to our need to understand the world around us. When we get to something we can't wrap our heads around - it's easy to just explain it away with a story. Others will dive even deeper into understanding it (science and the scientific method)

As a life long atheist, the simple answer is no.

The longer answer is:

Humans have a brain that is effectively an extremely good pattern recognition engine, we are wired to find meaning in things, we anthropomorphize everything with no regard for logic or sanity.

Humans are hard coded to make religion or religion adjacent things.

To imagine a world without religion, would mean that we are talking entirely different brain structures, basically we wouldn't humans anymore.

In saying the above, I think religion has had its time, it has had a good run. It now causes far more problems than it solves. Having a belief system based on an imaginary sky daddy, really doesn't add much to the modern world.

Side note: why do people anthropomorphize their food, it is really messed up.

Humans are pretty terrible and we'll find any excuse to justify our terribleness. One of the parts of the French Revolution was the Dechristianization of France. While this may sound like a good thing, which should lead people to live their lives based on reason, it also led to violence against priests. And the lack of religion did nothing to stop the Reign of Terror. In short, it was less an atheist utopia and more just humans finding different excuses to be terrible to one an other.

Similarly, the Soviet Union was founded on the Marxist principal that "religion is the opiate of the masses". This meant that the Soviet Union was officially athiest. However, unlike some of the French Revolutionary governments, the USSR largely tolerated religious practices. At the same time, the officially a theist state got up to a lot of horrible stuff.

At the same time, there is an argument to be made that Christianity helped reign in some of the worst excesses of monarchs during the Middle Ages. It's important to remember that people really believed this stuff. Kings really did think about their immortal soul and what they would be forced to answer for on "judgement day". Fear is a powerful motivator and it may be that, for all their terrible selfishness, some monarchs may have been led to moderate the worst of it based on that fear.

All that said, I'm not sure how much differently history would have played out, without religion. As I led with, humans are pretty terrible. Many wars may have had a religious veneer, to get the people to go along with them, but they were more often about power, control and ego than religious conviction. Religion provides a convenient excuse to define "the other". The othering of people creates a permission structure where we will not only tolerate, but often gleefully engage in, truly horrible acts against "the other". And it doesn't require religion to do it. Take a look around the Lemmyverse and you'll find videos of Russian soldiers being blown apart by drone dropped munitions. And the comment sections will be talking about how "they deserve it" or making jokes and light of another human being ripped apart. And these comments will be defended because of the horrible actions of the Russian Government and some Russian soldiers. Russian soldiers have been placed firmly in "the other" and so we can celebrate their horrible deaths, and be cheered on for it in many corners of Lemmy. No religion required.

So ya. I'm not a fan of religion, nor am I religious myself. But, I have no illusions that religion has a lock on people being terrible to each other. It has absolutely been involved in making it happen throughout history. But, I am skeptical of the idea that history without it wouldn't have been just as filled with humans doing terrible things to each other. Human nature tends towards tribalism and the creation of "in groups" and "out groups". With those in the former more than willing to do anything and everything to the latter.

There would be no religious wars, honor killings, more freedom, no religious leaders abusing their powers, no waste of labor and money on religious things, etc. It may seem that we would be more educated and have better understanding.

Removing the word religion from this excerpt wouldn't remove any of these problems. We would still squabble over territory, resources, and ideological differences. To give a non-religious analogy: if a time traveler went back and killed Hitler, Germany would still retain all the problems from WW1 and the Weimar Republic that were ripe for a dictatorship.

As an atheist, I think it was necessary for human development.

Fear is an extremely motivating force, and without the threat of a "hell" for disobeying/ hurting society, it wouldn't motivate people to cooperate. Additionally without the allure of heaven, it wouldn't motivate people to work harder, together.

Without instruments of science, the world is would be a complete mystery. Religion existed to give it history and meaning, to give people a place and meaning in life. It feels much more comforting to believe you are the beloved child of a greater being, crafting you by hand, instead of an insignificant creature on a wet rock floating endlessly in the void.

Today I think it is obsolete to an extent, as science has taken the latter role (understanding), and one should not need to be threatened with eternal damnation to stop being malicious. Today religion is now more frequently used for means of brainwash and control rather than betterment of society, which is why I decide not to partake in it.

Humans are volatile by nature. If it wasn't religion it would be race I'd it's not race it would be accent and if not that then something else. Everyone one could be gray blobs and there will be someone saying "Actually We’re the Grayest and the Blobiest”.

Peace will only be achieved when humanity is unified and if that happen we stop being human and something else.

No, it's not religion that makes people self-centered assholes that like to kill, rape and pillage. Religion is just a handy excuse to hide behind.

However, structured religion does hold back scientific progress by prohibiting to question the status quo.

Without religion, the world would be pretty much the same, but maybe we would get disintegrated by advanced laser tech instead of being shot with a bullet.

Even without religion exising, I think people will still eventually gravitate towards something similar. It’s a part of human nature that we are still yet to break away from as a species. Sure, atheism and agnosticism are becoming increasingly prevalent now; but it’s still a very small minority globally and it will probably never become the norm.

Yes, 100%

Yes. At the very least we might be more honest about why we keep slaughtering each other.

I'm a mortician/postmortem scientist, who used to run the WSU Funeral History Museum. Based on my research, I don't think humans could exist without some type of religion/code/customs. As long as there has been death, even in ancient/prehistoric times, humans have been doing specific procedures, to say goodbye to their fallen loved ones.

There's writings in almost every culture that teach us about what these civilizations believed, and some are beautiful, while others are kindof terrifying, but it all wrapped around people trying to cope with death.

Even if we found out complete proof for what actually happens when you die and after death, some people are still going to prefer their religion's ideas because it brings them more peace. Death seems to be the clinch pin for all religions, and I honestly don't think we'd have religion, if we didn't understand the concept of death. People just want something to believe in.

Now, the garbage parts of religion are created by people seeking power, money, and control, and as long as there's those who desire to conquer others, religion will be made up and used as a scapegoat, as to why certain people deserve power.

Belief in the divine likely comes from our brains' hyperactive agency detection system: our brains err on the side of seeing agency where there is none in order to keep us alive.

If a branch snaps behind you and you react as if someone did it but it was really nothing, you're fine. But if it was a human or other animal and you react as if it was nothing, you might be food.

Property crime is largely a factor of poverty, but also social inequality. If you lack a need you will try to fulfill that need. If you feel like you're unfairly "less-than", you're much more likely to engage in prohibited behavior to correct that. But also if you have power or wealth, your brain becomes less capable of empathy making it much easier for you to criminally hurt others - the rich do most crimes.

Religion is just using this evolutionarily beneficial flaw in our brains to justify the unjust social hierarchies which drive crime. So in a roundabout way, religion puts upward pressure on crime.

This is a hard question. I think that we would be better off if more people adopted secular worldviews. But throughout history? I don't think we can simply say "what if there were no religions" -- we'd have to be completely different creatures for it to have gone that way. But I do think we'd be better off if we were that kind of creature.

It's interesting that every group of people, basically ever, has started a religion. I'm no anthropologist, but as far as I know, every civilization to have ever existed has formed one. Forming a religion is as natural as forming a language. Clearly, it's a thing we do. Lacking an explanation for our questions, from "what are rainbows?" to "what happens when we die?" we will apparently just fill something in. Everyone did it.

For us to have not formed religions, we'd have to be more comfortable with uncertainty. We'd need to have been better at accepting that we don't know some things, and we can doggedly look for answers, but we shouldn't insist that we know something before we really do. And I think our species kind of sucks at that.

If we were better at accepting uncertainty while still pursuing answers, we'd all be better off. And maybe, as a side effect of that, we wouldn't have formed religions.

When Og and Bog saw the sun come over the hill one morning, and Og was like, "Hey Bog, how do you think that happens?" Bog should've said, "I don't know. Maybe someday, someone will know." Instead, Bog went off on some real bullshit, and now here we are.

If there were no religions I'd figure that human race is one where tribalism can't catch on as well, in which case there would probably be a lot less organized violence like wars.

Individual crimes are always going to happen with or without religion. Crimes generally have real tangible punishments and there are still criminals. Imaginary punishments aren't going to do much to stop them.

Depends on what you define as a religion. Violently forcing beliefs onto others - yes we would definitely be better off without that. Hierarchical structures of power - also yes.

Trying to explain the universe around us by anthropomorphizing natural phenomena? I'm not so sure. It could be seen as useful in the sense of philosophical exploration.

As inspiration for art - it was immensely useful.

Religion is just a tool. A tool is only as good as the person using it.

No - probably not.

Religion, just in and of itself, isn't really the problem. It's just the most notable example of the underlying problem, which is probably best summed up as aggressive tribalism.

People have a compulsive desire for self-affirmation - for assurance that they embody whatever qualities they consider the indicators of "good" people. And by far the easiest way for people to assure themselves of that is to associate those qualities with a label and self-apply that label. That gives them a fellowship of label-wearers who are invested in the same belief, which establishes a feedback loop in which they all assure each other of how [good/right/strong/smart/etc.] they are, and a ready-made set of outsiders they can individually and collectively condemn. And that last is the real problem - since few if any people truly embody the qualities they wish to believe they do, the easiest and most effective way to assure themselves they do is to focus on some designated set of others and on the assertion that they fail to possess those qualities. That allows people to assure themselves that they are at least more [good/right/strong/smart/etc.] than these other people over there.

That's clearly a toxic and antagonistic dynamic that really just serves to divide people up into warring factions, and since it's at least somewhat irrational yet crucial to people's self-affirming self-images, it's a thing that easily gets entrenched and, whenever possible, codified, so that it can be forcibly imposed.

Again, religion is certainly the most common and historically destructive vehicle for that, but it's far from the only one. Most notably, it's also the dynamic underlying virtually all ideology and a great deal of philosophy, not to mention a great many less significant distinctions, ranging from sexual preference to diet to sports fandom.

Now - in the first place, I would say that it would not have been possible to have a world without religion, since the practical purpose of religion is to provide answers to questions for which there's insufficient evidence or knowledge to support nominally legitimate answers, and that lack of evidence and knowledge was an unavoidable part of our history. From the moment that somebody wondered what that big bright thing up in the sky was and somebody else made up an answer for them, religion was inevitable.

Beyond that though - if we were to imagine a world in which religion somehow never came to be, we'd just have had a world in which people would've focused that much more on the other ways in which they divide themselves against themselves, since that desire for self-affirmation exists anyway.

And truth be told, I actually think that's part of the problem with our current world - that a great many people have just shifted from what would in the past been a self-affirming faith in a religion to a self-affirming faith in an ideology or philosophy or political affiliation or some other tribal distinction - that much of what we're seeing today is the same toxicity just based on more secular divisions.

Not that religion has become less of a problem - what it's lost in overall market share, it's undeniably gained in the fervor and aggression of its remaining adherents, but it's also been joined by a wide range of other divisions, each destructive in the same general ways, even if not necessarily to the same degree.

My personal opinion (as a dispassionate atheist) is that religion isn’t the problem with human nature. In the U.S., for instance, we have some Christians who have strayed so far, I don’t get how they’ve even seen a Bible verse. But also, basically every major Civil Rights leader was a Christian preacher or woman of faith. There are similar situations everywhere. There’s Buddhists who are so non-violent they wouldn’t kill a fly and other “Buddhists” who commit genocide, which doesn’t even make fucking sense.

So, my view of religion is that it’s mostly not the thing to focus on. People can be organized for good or evil and there’s plenty of secular things where people define an identity. I suspect if religion never existed, we’d have all the same problems. I mean, we have soccer hooligans and it’s not because people object to 22 people getting some exercise on a lovely afternoon. (Or a miserable, rainy Wednesday night in England.)

i think if we stayed with the idea of God's representing natural phenomena and being flawed characters vs single deity that is all seeing all powerful and a singular conduit and thus used by ambitious men and women to control the masses be it a pope or televangelist.

As we learned more about the ways of science I think they would have gracefully faded into the background and turned into the fables they are today.

I'm not too sure being non-religious from the start would lead to better education. Seems to me that religion was quite a big driver behind early education. You'll also have some trouble separating history religion and science at that point, people told each other stories about things that happened or how they thought things worked. Some of those stories are rather more fantastical than they needed to be, but how would you tell if there's nothing to kickstart intellectual discourse in the first place?

And the whole religion stops crime through fear idea seems overly simplistic. It's the same reasoning that bigger sentences would lower crime, and so far that hasn't worked terribly well.

The answer (to me) is a resounding yes. I firmly believe that belief in the Supernatural is in-built into all of us. It’s an off-shoot of us being incredibly good at pattern matching combined with our need for parental guidance for so long and a fear of death -

To get past this, we need two things: A personal willingness to ask questions and follow the answers (which is a basic description of science) and we need a society that is willing to embrace these individuals.

That we aren’t quite there yet means we end up with leaders embracing religion, which is reinforced by the masses accepting their dogma. The whole thing about “religion creating morality” is BS and just another form of dogma.

It may be entirely simplistic, and it probably puts too much faith in human capacity, but I think we could move in that direction if we just prioritized learning and inquisitiveness. Note, this is not the same as making people go to college. Learning is a life skill…

You are wrong to think that religion is only about fear. The bigger part for the individual IMO is that it provides comfort.

Not really, religion makes rules and people follow them. The point is that, yes, we humans can create "rules", but the question is who is going to create these rules, who are you going to choose as the rule-maker, and how are you going to make sure that everyone follows this rule because everyone has their own ideas or morals about it? Religion must and will exist. Even today, what we create as "rules" certainly come from religion, or at least are closely linked to it. People and their morals come from religion, there must be some power over people to make these rules. Let me give you an example, I am a human being who forbids eating apples, as another human being, if there is no consequence, why should I obey it? Because according to me or according to my morality there is no harm in eating it. And who is right in this situation? No one. Then who are we supposed to listen to? A power superior to us humans. I hope that answers your questions.

No, because religions are a guide for a person or a group. It is also a compass to detect good and bad. That there are people with bad intentions who misunderstand religion is another issue.

Eh, looking through the comments (and its so nice to see that folks really giving some good thought to their comments on such a hot button topic), there's not much I can add.

I fall into the "humans will find excuses" camp. I also think that religion isn't a bad thing, per se. Even organized religion doesn't have to be destructive at its extreme. But it's also inevitable that the section of humanity that craves power and control is going to use whatever avenue for such that they find.

Since all religions are susceptible to zealotry, I don't think we'll ever be free of religious zealots, which means there's always going to be people insisting that other people follow their religion's rules, or else.

Now, that isn't exclusive to religion, but it's the obvious example of that kind of thinking. You can look at pretty much any bloc that's belief based and find zealots. Politics, whoooo boy! Veganism. Even fandoms of cartoons have zealotry in a way, though it tends to be a much less invasive kind, akin to music genre fanatics; it's more gatekeeping than proselytizing. But you do run into the kind of obsessive fandom where if you don't like it, you suck; and you have to watch/listen/read.

Now, it may seem strange to connect religious zealotry to fandoms, but it's the same underlying way of thinking. People are just prone to wanting to control other people, and will use any excuse to do so.

That proclivity is present even in people that think they don't think that way, and actively try to weed it out of themselves. Ever catch yourself thinking "the whole world would be better if they all insert personal belief here? That's the underlying kind of thinking that can snowball into the bigger kind of problem. Doesn't even matter if it's true on a factual level, it's the way it's thought about and approached that's the key. If anything, a belief being highly factual and demonstrably true makes it more likely to turn into zealotry.

So, better without religion? Eh, nah, not imo. Just different in detail.

Iran and Turkey would be a better place, that's for sure. Especially Iran was a free country, women rights and everything. Now priests control the country, and women are getting killed for not wearing their clothing "correct".

Also, the whole western world entered the "dark ages" which was a big push backwards in terms of living standards and science. That was because of religion, so we might be 100-200 years ahead now, if it wasn't for that.

We'd just find some other pointless form of tribalism to hate each other over.

Check out the Lucifer Principal by Howard Bloom.

We'd certainly be better off in the education/intelligence department if we promoted skepticism and criticized faith or any belief without evidence, but to be fair the word "better" is more broad than that...

What's the difference between religion and any other belief systems?

Yes Yes Yes!

Yes, but that's not possible.

Something i read during the beginning of the Iraq War put things in perspective. During the time of monarchies it was suicidal to challenge them . Religion provided a balance because you can't kill God. Kings and queens learned to work with religious leaders to help deal with the populace. Democracy made it less necessary. I don't know if any of this is true but it does make sense

What I would want is that some people wouldn't try to bend religion to their will. But anyway what are religions but something that has been shaped over time by people... Sigh, whatever.

I think the world would be in a better place if people stopped believing in fairy tales. This includes religion, Santa Claus, and every other useless nonsense.

Religion, specifically, set the world back by 1000-1500 years. Sure would be nice to live in a time when cancer doesn’t run rampant — but nah, let’s let the imaginary fairy grandpa solve everything for centuries.

It's tricky to say. Organised religion throughout history has been one of the biggest oppressive machines and cause of untold human life lost. On the flip side, religion has been the source (or at least financer) of an enormous amount of the most highly regarded artistry in our history.

The reason that isn't an obvious tip of the scale, is that if religion poofed out of existence, I'm almost certain that the oppressive machine would have just taken another form and still caused untold destruction, loss of life, and hatred. But I'm not sure the art would have still thrived as it did.

You don’t need religion to be a moral person, and you don’t have to reject religion to act amorally. But there is no perfect, universal, scientific morality. Cultures, communities, individuals will vary on what they consider a moral act, and morality can change with circumstance. When different moralities interact, there will be conflict. And the amoral (or rather those, who do not subscribe to the same morality as those around them) will always use others’ morality as a tool to manipulate, a curtain to hide behind, a weapon to wield, and a shield to defend with.

Religion helps communities to build a common morality in order to reduce tensions and foster fellowship within the group. But there will always be communities. There will always be disagreements, confusion, frustration, pride, loyalty, forgetfulness, honor, greed, hunger, struggle, disease, countervailing needs and desires, and mercy. The absence of religion would not stop people from seeking safe harbor and kinship in others, whether that is social clubs, fandoms, sports teams, political parties, activist organizations, etc. And when that kinship is endangered or perceived to be endangered, the absence of religion will not stop people from seeking to obstruct, forestall, eliminate, or revenge against whatever or whomever is perceived to be the cause.

I don't believe so. I believe religions are human creations and as such, they can't be awful if people don't have that awful side to begin with. If religions disappeared overnight or were magically erased from existence we would still struggle with the same issues, only with a different flavour. Perhaps there would be no lies on certain topics but I'm not too sure that would make a massive difference overall.

Yes, but not just because of the lack of religions, but the lack of superstition that would require. Basically if everyone believed things based on physical evidence, rather than feelings, the world would be better. But, also, we as a species might not have survived our earliest days.

Maybe, if there was a new better-fitting, revolutionary superstructure that would replace it

I think by its context, religion was the ideology of feudalism and the medieval times' economy (eg. Hinduism)...

And while it was progressive for its time, when the dawn of a new system came, its weaknesses were exposed...

Yes

You'd have to cut out the part of our brain that's responsible for religious thinking. So what does that do to humanity?

Religion exists because it's a way to control people you can't reason with for whatever reason. It's definitely a net negative now, and has been for centuries imo, but back at the beginning it was an important cornerstone of civilization

No. If it wasn't religion people would be assholes to each other about something else. Religion is just an excuse.

Hasn't the question been settled by the Beatles? *Imagine no religions, we'd all be in peace ohohoohoho, you may say Iama dreamer. *

But we may still find other reason to fight