How do you think the world would be if:

AX: Atheism Never Existed and vice versa; religon never existed.

Do you think that if Religon/Atheism never existed, we would all be brains in a jar that use telepathy or do you think we’d be in the stone ages?

So what I’m trying to ask is a hypotheitcal situation where Atheism somehow would never, ever exist and vice versa.

Do you think we’d advance in technology if atheism/religon ceased to exist.

Nah, we’d just make up something else stupid to waste our time fighting over.

So neither the believe that there is a god nor the belief that there isn’t a god exist? You mean if everyone is agnostic? I think that would be very difficult to see what would happen given how much the need for an explanation of our existence is part of our nature.
So everyone is basically agnostic.

I was almost done with redacting the first half of my post when I realized this is much more difficult to answer than I previously thought. I want to know if in the “lack of Atheism” scenario there is also a heavy indoctrination of the population. I need to know if the scenario allows people who are not following the mainstream religions.
The implications of this is that those people would be the ones to challenge scientifically inaccurate views that were held in the past. It’s hard to see a scenario in which everyone follows the Abrahamic religions and still a scientific view of reality that challenges their faith gets accepted – otherwise we’ll constantly get the “Galileo vs. The Church” scenario ad nauseum. That area of science has only managed to make a break through because of movements akin to the Age of Enlightenment who made scientists realize that those widely spread “Absolute Truths” were not actually truths per se.

Hmm, if Religion had never existed? I’ve gone back and forth through this in my mind in the past few minutes (of course I had a baggage of thinking on this a priori) and what it seems like is that the world would be far more advanced in terms of technology. I am myself a Secular Humanist, so I see it as highly probable that we would have reached a more peaceful world than we have today.
One of the reasons I think that we would be much more advanced is that we would not be conformists from the very beginning. We would not settle for “God did it!” explanations, thus allowing for a much larger amount of desire for understanding – thus boosting our scientific progress considerably. I can’t even begin to imagine what we would have accomplished at this very same date with such a scenario.

What do you guys think of my views on this matter? If you have any contrasting views please challenge my points in a respectful way so we can have a healthy and peaceful debate. :)

I would normally think it foolish speculate on how humans would develop in these situations, as humans who had been altered to not be capable of developing religion or vice versa would be completely different humans, likely with different goals and characteristics, and the success of their society should not be based on what we know about our human society.

However, I will speculate that a society with only religion would in some ways be technologically deficient, as scripture would be assumed to be universally accepted and never challenged, meaning that any naturally occurring events associated with a deity would never be researched for accuracy and thus they would be unlikely to progress far in that field; that’s not to say they could never progress, as there are past civilizations which were almost universal in belief and made scientific innovations. However, a society where there is no religious conflict could be assumed to be much safer and pragmatic than one with, and it is possible that a society completely united in religion would be more cooperative and hardworking than one where only atheism existed, as there is no perceived “ultimate good” that unites atheists. Then again, conflict is often an inspiration for development, and the atheist society could keep on advancing through competition while the religious one was blissfully ignorant. It’s hard to know.

I really, really, really don’t understand what dis/connection there is between the Bible and the technology.
What I mean is this idiotic assumption (I have no idea on what it is based) that all science we know now, CONTRADICTS the Bible.
Maybe stuff like evolution and age measuring (and even that CAN be merged, if one WANTS – I DID) – but certainly NOT medical or social or technical stuff.
I see NOWHERE in Bible a law against computers, autos, spaceships, schools, doctors, etc etc etc.
Please, show me any.

Originally posted by somebody613:

I really, really, really don’t understand what dis/connection there is between the Bible and the technology.

See: A.D 1-1400 (or thereabouts.)

What I mean is this idiotic assumption (I have no idea on what it is based) that all science we know now, CONTRADICTS the Bible.

Maybe not all of it, but there is a lot that does.

Maybe stuff like evolution and age measuring

And geocentric orbit.

(and even that CAN be merged, if one WANTS – I DID)

You did?

– but certainly NOT medical or social or technical stuff.

No actually, there are still parts in there that science contradicts the Bible with.

I see NOWHERE in Bible a law against computers, autos, spaceships, schools, doctors, etc etc etc.

Wait, it has to for that?

tenco
The claim is that BIBLE is a contradiction of SCIENCE (not that CHURCH is an enemy of SCIENTISTS).
Two different things.
And the former is totally FALSE.

It’s completely irrelevant whether the Bible is scientifically accurate or not if some people who interpret it are going to derive inaccurate ideas from it anyways, which is what affects humanity. The Christian Church has a very long history of holding false ideas as “Absolute Truths”, which held back scientific progress immensely. This in itself does not mean religion is suddenly bad, or that the Bible is false – it only means that in a world where religion has never existed this drawback would have never occurred. This is the reason why I theorized that scientific knowledge would be far more complete and advanced. What are your thoughts on this?

AX: Atheism Never Existed and vice versa; religon never existed.

there’s a problem with this axiom. if atheism never existed that means that people would never have renounced the Pagan gods, and most religions today, especially the popular ones, would also have never existed.

so, skipping that one, if religion never existed (which means “atheism” is meaningless), oh boy…that means we wouldn’t have any emperor-gods neither, no tribal priests or shaman… there’s no telling how different the world would be.

so i’m really going to have to skip both scenarios. goodnight.

OD
I second your last word. :D

if atheism never existed that means that people would never have renounced the Pagan gods

Renouncing the Pagan Gods doesn’t make you automatically an Atheist, even if there are no other popular religions around. You can have a set of beliefs regarding a higher being without it fitting in any big religion, or even a small religion – it could be the case that you’re the only follower of your religion. I have very little knowledge regarding the process of the downfall of Paganism, however I doubt that people just renounced the beliefs in any deity at all, only to then adhere to another religion.
However, I do agree that everything we post on this thread is highly speculative, since the amount of variables is incredibly high. I guess the thread is useful for some philosophical and sociological discussion, regardless of the accuracy of our predictions. I’m enjoying it so far!

well, that’s the original meaning of the word “atheist”. not believing in a Pagan god. the supposed omnipresent Pantokrator didn’t count.

so in essence Christianity (or any other Jewish sect religion) is a form of atheism, because their “god” of choice is too non-descript to count.

When I made this thread, I meant that the world would go by twice;

1. Religon never happened. All beliefs and philosophies that isn’t Atheism never existed.
2. Nobody ever questioned their God. The world lived in Religous harmony.

How do you think the world would be?

1: religion is not theism. so what about atheist religions or non-religious theism?
2: what God? your capitalisation would suggest you mean the Christian interpretation of YHWH. but that didn’t exist for thousands of years, so this hypothesis is…well, i’ve no idea what it means.

1: None of that, just atheism, no belief that’s atheism (or Nihlism I guess) exists.
2: Sorry, I tend to do that often. All beliefs that has a god of some kind are the only beliefs.

I think I understand what Octaganapus is driving at.

Humanity will always find reasons to commit atrocities and wage wars. So called religious wars have always been nationalistically or politically motivated. As far as scientific progress is concerned, I’ll never understand why we’re so quick to blame religion for the dark ages, when in fact it was barbarian hoards and worldwide plagues that brought human civilization to it’s knees.

It’s very hard to predict what would happen because you have to think about it back from the very start. If everyone was agnostic so many things could have changed along the way that things would probably be beyond our comprehension. You might say that without religion there would be less violence, division between the people, and no dark age but you can’t say that for sure. Religion is one of the biggest things that keeps people from killing other people… and also sometimes the biggest reason people DO kill.

1: so then you do have religion. you do have Taoism, Confusianism, Jainism, and even hero-worship or ruler worship, so long as it’s not mythified.

what about belief in afterlife? does that exist? or other non-deital spiritualism. white magic, talking with the dead…i mean…define your hypothesis.

if you mean none of that, so a complete lack of mythology, spiritualism, moral dogmas, etc… i don’t know, i think we’d be running rampant. unfortunately, there’d be no basis from which to grow a common, universal ehtical system (human rights). yes, i said that.

however, we would be very intellectually individualistic, so in that sense it should be interesting. but we’d be too busy keeping knives off our back to enjoy it.

2: again i don’t believe it would be possible without atheism for anyone to renounce the Earthly Deities and opt for a completely abstract Pantokrator. so i think we’d all be wearing feather chaplets, counting bones and dancing for rain.

IMO, we would win and we would lose if the concept of religion had never come up throughout our history.

Pros:

- Scientifically we would have advanced much more quickly.

Cons:

- Social cohesion would have been more difficult in humanity’s early stages. Crime rates would be higher, less respect for human life, etc. Whether this would carry through to modern day in a religionless world is hard to say.

- Art would lose some of its most brilliant masterpieces. Some of the work done by the religiously-inspired, particularly during the renaissance, is extraordinary, and that level of motivation may not have come about without religion.

- Our attitude toward morally ambiguous fields of research in the sciences would likely be more lax. I don’t believe that humanity needs religion to be moral, but I believe that, at one time, we often did. Science continues to be held back today for religious reasons, and in some fields I would argue that delaying gray-area research until the world is ready for it is sometimes a prudent course.

I dont even know what would happen… we would still find a way to bicker among ourselves

We’d find some other reason to pointlessly kill each other and accuse people of heresy. Humans will be humans, you know. And humans are assholes.

That’s actually a very good point.

-If religion never existed wouldn’t all the atheists have anyway found a way to divide themselves and bicker, fight or even kill for what they think is logically sound, wouldn’t some find ways to “prove” there hypothesis right and then they would just eventually fight over who’s wrong or who’s right.
-And if the whole world was religious…need I even say more, the possibilities of people dividing making their own religions and fighting over it, even killing whole other groups of people off to get their religion supreme are endless.

I guess the end result here is we just can’t and will never know…we could be an entire different race if things turned out like that, or we wouldn’t, we just won’t ever be able to tell.

We’d find some other reason to […] accuse people of heresy

i don’t think that’s possible. as soon as something is regarded so sacred that you would see criticism accused as heresy, you basically got a religion.

Atheism can not NOT exist, because atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods.

Religion is simply any spiritual belief.

If Christ never died for our sins, then mankind would be doomed to eternal damnation in the firey depths of hell, forever to be the play-toys of horrible and evil demons.

I am happy that Christ loves us soo much that he would endure pain and suffering so we can enter His Holy kingdom. :)

PRAISE JESUS