It’s hard to tell how the world would be different, but I’m sure there are many aspects of life that it would have an effect on. Maybe there would be less violence in the world, or maybe women would have more rights. But if religion did never exist, people may not be as tolerant to other religions or have that sense of spirituality. I don’t know which is better because they are both good in some ways and bad in others.
Then we wouldn’t be human. Or organic.
I don’t think it would be possible for humans not to create some sort of superstition. Humans desire an explanation, even if there is none at the time of inquiry.
Great question @fingermask. Religion seems to have formed as we came together into larger groups. Something else would have had to take it’s place. Our curiosity and need for explanations would need an outlet. Something creative but without the belief requirement
Religions and nations are the two main pillars upon which power has built its legitimacy since the beginnings in Mesopotamia and so. they reinforce each others.
I know I link him a lot, but Richard just put out a post that looks at this from the angle of how science develops, or does not develop in some places. Basically, science is counterintuitive. I don’t think “spiritual” thinking gets in the way, because really we are part of a larger something, same goes for valuing kin and by extension our neighbors. A key component explored here is theoretical thinking.
If you are only theoretical and unempirical, you get flights of fancy, mythology, no real progress in understanding reality (think, Homeric Greece, Ancient Isreal). If you are empirical but untheoretical, you can accomplish a lot of practical craft knowledge, but you can’t really get at anything deeper. Science requires the productive unification of both, building on a method of formulating hypotheses (models; causal and structural theories), then developing reliable ways to test them for explanatory accuracy
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Well said !
Now I am not 100 % sure, but a magician or a priest see themselves as theoretical and empirical. He uses rituals and test them. His theology is a theory.
I agree that religion is a group phenomenon, but the groups can be of minimal technology hunter gatherers. We are not primarily rational creatures and what little rationality we have is slave to the passions, even here! We’ve been engaging in ritual, magic, song, music, drama, story, lucky charms, hyperactive agency detection for hundreds of thousands of years and since we were fish in several of those activities. We don’t have to learn to be afraid of storms. Our sense of the numinous is genetic.
If intelligence arose in silico rather than carbo, I imagine it would not have such numinosity gene analogues.
Most modern ones are, because they have to be to remain relevant. IMO, they rely on people’s weak understanding of the methods. They put things in the form a theory, but that doesn’t mean it is one. Carrier also has a link via the above post to a refutation of Alvin Plantinga.
Most people though, I don’t think care. Some are happy to just know there are logical arguments, but that doesn’t mean they have worked through them or understand them. When I have discussed anything logical with an individual believer, it eventually turns to some claim of “well, it’s what I believe”.
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Today religion is just part of civilization. One can look at it as a form of controlled knowledge that mostly the lower caste can relate to in a will die for way. Just look at the last election for how things would go without religion for the upper caste. A coup was attempted by the controllers of certain knowledge. That’s what it would be like without religion. The hope is that religion will have the morals used with the knowledge and we would not have to live in a dog-eat-dog world. China is officially an atheist nation. But not quite there yet. Should ask the Uyghur in China what they think.
I think it’s human nature that sake for the truth about the creator of everything, even in old times native people worship stone,wood, etc. But Today religion has a dual purpose relationship with God and Business.
I am not aware of a lot of crime in China.
Does China have a low crime rate?
With low crime rate, China is one of the safest countries in the world – Communist Party. With a major focus on maintaining public security, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has reported that the country has one of the lowest crime rates, making it one of the safest countries in the world.Oct 19, 2022
With low crime rate, China is one of the safest countries in the world – Communist Party - News Room Guyana
Unfortunately this is at cost of freedom of choice.
Not to mention, that the Communist government decides what a crime is and, while abortion is legal in China, most families could only have one child, until recently, without being heavily taxed for a second or third child. Long story short, the government keeps an iron hand on all its citizens. They have no freedoms.
But China has been a very religious country in its past, there are still religious people.
China is not an exemple of what could have happened if religion had never existed.
Religion are ideologies. They represent a first attempt to understand, explain and master the world.
As ideologies, they help the mundane powers to get the cooperation of thousands of people, to build states, to legitimate the powers and so. They were also a way to explain and enforce some basic social rules.
If they did not exist, other ideologies would have been used, probably less effective. But they would not have fueled wars, birthed inquisition and so.
Mixing this thread with some Mark Solms. Via cc, and some Jonathan Haidt, we need to acknowledge feelings and intuition. If you don’t, you have to enforce the purely logical with storm troopers. That’s why USSR communism failed. Or, think Farenheit 451
Indeed, but it was also marred with great violence in those days, whereas today religion is tolerated but not taught , yet there is less violence today than there was then.
I agree. It’s an interesting juxtaposition.
The government allows some certain religious groups, such as Buddhism, but not the Dalai Lama, Taoism, and some Xian sects.
Yes, cause Buddhism teaches you to suffer without complaint…
With no relgion man would not know love but instead would war all the time. Religion help man make the first understandings of the universe.
That is not true. Humans would know love even without religion.