Empty.

I have no idea at all what it would be like...you could probably make an argument for there having been no Crusades, religion inspired terrorism, scientific dark ages, Inquisitions and all that but mankind has hated each other long enough to want to kill each other for other reasons like greed and conquest. Perhaps that there would have been greater advancements in science through the dark ages etc

i think your right..... serves me right for posting withiut really thinking through my example!!

but think about art, so much art is based around religion.... without that to inspire us, what would it be like, would it even exist in a form we would still recognise....
culturally we owe a lot to religion, it helps define a lot of different civilisations, whether we want it to or not. etc etc

Since the primary source of most conflict in human history has been religion - although it should be noted that it's mostly those darn monotheists and their "YOUR God can't exist, because that would mean that MY God doesn't exist" attitudes - the only thing we know for sure is that religious conflict would be removed. But since religion is almost a proto-science, it's hard to see how you get to any level of civilised society without religion filling in the knowledge gaps for the early civilisations.

So if you're suggesting a world where there never was any religion, I think that's too hard to predict. Could go any number of ways. A world where people had moved past religion is much easier to see, since by that point a universal sense of morality would have become relatively fixed without religious dogma to mess it up.

What a fucking stupid thing to say.

Now let me explain, i've been reading a lot about this, and i have my conclusion. God only exists from the curiosity of all origins. And the main thing that keeps a belief in god real, is out of fear of no afterlife, and most religious ppl believe in one. Pretty much every religion (i don't count atheism in this next statement) are primarily centered around the god and his blessings and how this life is some sort of test or worship that will be taken onto the next life. Christians have heaven/hell, Jews have heaven, Muslims have something similar to wut christians have, Hindus live their entire lives based on good or bad karma, which they believe ultimately determines their fate after death also, similar to muslims and christians, although muslim's goal is mainly to be kind to nature rather than karma, and christianity is pretty much all of those. Ancient Egptians believed that once u die, ur spirit would go to the Fields of Aaru, and work on the fields for ur protection, and ultimately reach ur reward for an afterlife. Ancient Greeks/Romans believed in similar concepts that the majority of these religions believed in, that is you would be judged upon ur life's goods and bads to gain entrance either to a heavenbound or a hellbound afterlife.

My thoughts from all of this is that, the only reason that religions still prevail is because ppl are scared of their deaths. The only reason why religions have all of these other parts within them is merely support the "you go to heaven when you die" part. and hell was created to make heaven feel like a struggle, so it won't look so easy, thus making it more realistic.

That's why i support my thought of why if we never were to die, there wouldn't be any religion. The only question left to be answered would be how were we created, and that would no longer be a religion, rather a mystery everyone would work together towards finding out, rather than arguing over unproven hypothesises to the points of conflicts and oppression

Edited by user 06 September 2010 16:58:42(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The difference though is that religion is basically absolute. Either your religion is correct, or it's not. If someone else practices a different religion, there is doubt in your mind, perhaps your religion isn't the true religion (largely talking monotheism here) - but your religion claims that it is. So that means those people of other religions are angering your God and therefore you must stand to his defence. Since we're talking about countries based on fairy fundamental Muslim values vs. countries based on fairly lax Christian values, it's certainly the conflict of ideals, but those ideals are defined so strongly in the culture, in the religion, that they are seemingly immutable.

A political system can be toppled, but religion is too viral, too widespread. It's in the blood of the people, in their history, their cultural bedrock. The major monotheistic religions are, by definition, in opposition to one another because they all claim their particular interpretation of the "one true God" is the only correct one. Without religion, there would still be conflict sure, but there would be no religious conflict (not just talking about war either), and I'm not sure how you can claim religion isn't on some level the root of some substantial portion of armed conflict throughout history.

But doesn't that require a position that there will always be the same amount of war, and that in removing one cause another will fill its place? That seems like a leap of logic to me. If we had a world without coffee, that doesn't necessarily mean people would wake up in the morning saying "I can't get any work done until I've had my morning caffeine pills."

I'd imagine there'd just more people focusing on other stuff. Just because there's no religion doesn't mean we have no morals.

I think without religion, we'd still get all the positives that religion gives through other means (culture, community, etc) without the negatives (wars in the name of religion, radicals, etc). Although without faith, I can see there being more suicides than there is now, since I know plenty of people who've had their life turned around solely because they converted to a religion. And it'd probably be much more difficult to get people to have morals. I think back in very early civilization, people were only not killing and raping all day because they were promised with heaven and threatened with hell (or whatever the religion had back then).

It's a really hard concept to think about.

It would be way better then it is now because people wouldn't bitch about trying to convert you and we wouldn't have as many wars because pretty much every war is started because of religion