I’m having conflicting thoughts about religion in shaping human history.
As an atheist, it seems obvious to me that if there were no religion from the start, the world would have been a better place than it is now. 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.
My whole conflict arises from the fact that “fear is a better driver than education and reasoning.” As no system is efficient and perfect, the absence of religion would have caused more crimes. Religion promotes fear (the concept of an afterlife, hell) if you do something wrong. If there were no religion, humans may have committed numerous crimes without fearing consequences. You could say that it is due to religions that numerous wars have happened in history. But that is a tiny percentage of the whole population. Most people lived happier with religion as it introduced morals ,ethics and consequences for wrongdoing(big factor). One would think and question before doing something wrong.
You could also say that if we were non-religious from the start, we would have had better education, reasoning, different type ethics and morals etc. But as I said earlier, no system is efficient, and since non-religion doesn’t promote fear if you don’t get caught by others, there would be more crimes without fearing consequences if they don’t get caught by others, which was easy in the old days.
So, I’m thinking if religion did better in the early days.
And I know that nowadays it’s a different story, and non-religion is obviously better.
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.
I want to add to this. I’m not a psychologist, but I have heard a couple times about the term “third place”. It’s this concept that most people have a “place where they live”, a “place where they work”, and then a “place where they socialize”. It has been theorized that the modern working-age population is having trouble with stress and mental health in large part due to the dearth of “third places”.
The “third place” can be, for example, a restaurant or bar that you frequent (think the pub from the TV show Cheers), a book club, a sports club, or, crucially, a church or place of worship.
For Christianity at least, knowing that you were going to see and socialize with the same group of people (who share at least 1 major interest in common with you) every Sunday is apparently quite good for mental health. So, although I am no proponent of certain Western religions in general, I do think their decline has contributed to some of the mental health crises. How much? I cannot say.
That’s a really good point. Lemmy has sort of become my Third Space and Reddit before that. I moved away from home for 5 years then moved back and then covid hit. I haven’t had anyone to hang out and socialize with other than my wife and kids in a long time.
I used to be active in the kink community and we’d go to munches, which were really just a bunch of people united by a sort of bohemian stance towards sexuality getting together and talking about mostly anything else. Religion or secularism was mostly irrelevant. I really miss the kink community for that reason more than anything, you know, particularly deviant. But also being transgressive was fun, too.
Online just doesn’t hit the same.
Fun fact, spirit in the sky was made by a Jewish man who just liked the sound of gospel music and didn’t believe any of it. White Christmas is similar, Irving Berlin was also Jewish.
Sometimes creative people just want to make good art and in largely religious societies they can make their art more relatable or consumable by incorporating that religion
Edit to add: Michelangelo never even wanted to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He … made it clear from the start that he resented the commission, which had been imposed upon him by the imperious and demanding “warrior pope”, Julius II.
Some absolutely beautiful things have been made in the name of religion, but underneath that I believe you see the beauty and creativity that the human spirit is capable of shine through, and those amazing people deserve credit much more than an invisible sky man or hierarchical power structure for supposedly inspiring it
Spirit in the Sky goes so hard with that riff. Definitely one of my favorite songs to roll the windows down and drive too fast to. Thanks for the fun fact!
Oh absolutely, it’s such a good one. You put it perfectly, one of my favorite things was listening to it while driving these twisty country roads near my grandparents house when I was younger ( a little faster than I should :P )
Edit: spelling
It’s pretty naive to think we wouldn’t have just found a different excuse to burn people alive.
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.
You really nailed it. I’ll take it one step further though - religion as a concept is not the problem. Having gods, holidays rites and rituals - that’s all good.
It’s religion as an organization, when it gives people power which they can misuse when we start having problems.
Your way of saying it is way clearer though.
I feel the need to disagree with you a bit here. The belief in a god or higher power can drive people to do terrible things, regardless of any form of organization or power structure.
Though I would also argue that the concepts of “religion” and “organization” cannot be separated. To be considered a religion, one would expect an organized set of doctrines, values, etc., likely taught by a spiritual leader or practitioner. The heirarchy of student and teacher is intrinsic to religion. The enlightened, and the lost.
Further, faith/religion based views on the world are, in my view, inherently “unscientific”. If you already feel you have the answers to lifes big questions, what motivation is there to continue research? Or even worse, could they end up wasting resources on religious pursuits.
Anyway, just my 2c.
I can see why you have that position, and it is absolutely valid. What I reacted to is the idea of it being faith vs religion - but if you have faith/believe in a deity or something divine, that would by definition be a religious belief, no? But this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an organized religion like Christianity. This is what I was getting at with my poorly worded comment.
The underlying issue for this kind of conversation is that when people say “religion”, most people think highly organized religions like Christianity or Islam and such. But what if a person has their own or (for lack of a better term) a “non-traditional” belief system that includes some sort of deity/deities? Is that not religion? Maybe i see the word with a wider definition that is wrong, idk,
Anyway, as other commenter said - religion can be absolutely used as a tool for power, or to have excuses for terrible behavior. Thing is, the people that do would just use another tool if no religion existed.
As for the scientific argument - we don’t know (or at least I don’t) but Greek philosophers and scientists didn’t live or work in non-religious environment. There was religion present and yet they built important foundations for science today. Same with people in Arabic world, afaik. Hell, there were scientists that were Christians as well. It boils down to one thing - if there is organized religion with people at top who use it as a tool for power.
So to summarize - no, I don’t think religion in general is inherently bad. It’s about what people do with it. And the problem starts at a point where you want and need other people to conform to your religious beliefs.
Power-hungry people need to make up rules to control others, religions are a convenient tool for that, but they’re not the only one.
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
Yes, agreed. Wondering and being amazed by what we don’t know isn’t the issue. The issue is the guy that says he knows, and that you need to follow his organized religion to keep you from perma-death.
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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)
I don’t know where I read it but IIRC religion is being used as a simple answer to very difficult and possibly uncomfortable questions: why are we here and what is our purpose?
It is fairly easy to believe that something, a god, created us instead of that the existence of humanity was just a fluke, a stroke of luck enabling us to evolve were we are now because it is just easier to grasp even if it is proven. That we evolved from simple beings into more complex organisms instead of just “being created”. Evolution creates so many quite difficult questions that it is easier to understand and believe that someone just wanted us to exist.
When someone is believing in a religion they also always have some form of " it won’t be over" scenario like when you die, there is nothing truly “the end”. You just won’t vanish and this can be terrifying for many because the following question could be, what sense does it make to live at all when our existence is just so insignificant in comparison to everything else?
So, in short, it is an easy too to make sense of things that almost everyone can understand it.
Unfortunately, things like this can and will be abused.
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.
This right here. If we didn’t have religion, practically the first thing we’d do is begin hallucinating about one. There’s a “religion”-shaped hole in every human brain, basically, even though things that we wouldn’t necessarily readily recognize as religious patterns could come to fill it, wholly or partially. Our pattern recognition/reconstruction and predictive modeling systems will always generate hallucinations that, like most heuristics, are fundamentally not reality but MAY nevertheless offer sufficient utility (or the feeling of utility) that the synaptic connections they comprise will end up self-reinforcing.
The amount of vigilance it would take to continually purge these cognitive patterns would be more expensive and exhausting than most of the potential dangers of letting them exist.
But it’s possible to mindfully decide to cultivate the features and aspects of what emergently congeals there such that it’s more likely to be harmless, such as certain hobbies, fandoms, habits, or ritual-esque behavioral patterns.
Reflecting on our experiences against an anthropomorphized hypothetical observer to gain insights we would otherwise miss shows up even in places like computer programming - see “rubber duck debugging” - sufficiently strict religious sects would most certainly decry this activity as idolatry to a false god, even if YOU clearly do not classify a rubber ducky as a god. Because, again, the root of religiosity is group consensus of a socially shared memetic hallucination. what they perceive becomes a component of their beliefs even if it doesn’t become a component of yours.
This leads me to often consider spirituality, magical thinking, ritualistic behaviors, and religiosity in general as a bridge between our animalistic impulses and instincts vs. our sapience, or whatever you might label “higher” cognitive functions that enable abstract decision differentiation.
I believe I’ve seen this position referred to as “post-theist.”
Religion hasn’t had its time so much as it is rapidly evolving along with the rest of society.
Religion does not have to mean sky daddy or even have to imply belief in the supernatural.
Religion isn’t really evolving fast enough. It is being out competed at every turn, the fastest growing religious position in a lot of places is ‘no religion’.
What are we doing instead, various fandom’s…
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.
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.
Indeed.
The primal element of Christianity is that we’re all born imperfect. (I like to say we’re thrust, painfully, from perfect security in the womb into a harsh environment where we’re utterly ignorant and dependent upon “others” which we can’t even comprehend).
If we were born perfect, from where would the problems of the world originate?
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.
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.
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.
Yes. At the very least we might be more honest about why we keep slaughtering each other.
