Imagine a world without faith or religion.

[guillaumeb]

Let us call that world, in a moment of intentional irony, Utopia.

In this well named Utopia, no one has faith in a deity. The concept has never arisen.

What would this world look like?

Would war be unknown?

Would violence in all of its forms be unknown?

Would humans live in peace and harmony?

[True Dough]

1. Someone beat you to this...

[guillaumeb]

2. I wondered who would be the first.

Harrison was my favorite. Lennon was so open about his anger, and his struggles with it. But Lennon also went farther.

[MineralMan]

6. John Lennon was a genius in his own right.

Sadly, he was murdered by a religious idiot.

"As the trial approached, Chapman instructed his lawyers he wanted to plead guilty based on his assertion of what he had decided was the will of God. "

"Chapman said he chose Lennon after seeing him on the cover of the Beatles' album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He also recalled having listened to Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album in the weeks before the murder and has stated: "I would listen to this music and I would get angry at him, for saying that he didn't believe in God... and that he didn't believe in the Beatles. This was another thing that angered me, even though this record had been done at least ten years previously. I just wanted to scream out loud, 'Who does he think he is, saying these things about God and heaven and the Beatles?' Saying that he doesn't believe in Jesus and things like that."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_David_Chapman

How's that for religion affecting the world, Guy? Can you imagine that?

[LongtimeAZDem]

27. +1

[Major Nikon]

65. Yeah, probably best not to have gone there

[MineralMan]

71. Yes. If your argument is refuted in a Wikipedia article,

you should already know that stuff. That's why reading beyond religionnews.com and Patheos blogs is important.

[Lordquinton]

72. Oh, the angry atheist meme

Been a while since we heard that one.

[guillaumeb]

79. No, Lennon was obviously an angry man

dealing with his anger in a public way.

[Lordquinton]

81. What's the issue?

Anger is a valid emotion, certainly when dealing with the horrors that religion has brought us.

[guillaumeb]

82. I gave my opinion as to my favorite of the Beatles.

And I liked the song.

[Lordquinton]

83. And you brought up the angry atheist trope

Tone policing a man who was murdered by religious extremists.

[guillaumeb]

85. No, you claimed to find it.

Congratulations on your discovery.

[Lordquinton]

87. You repeated it even

Not really a discovery when you're throwing it out there for all to see.

My favorite part of this thread was when one poster actually performed your thought exorcise and you chastised him for "Pure imagination. Or, alternative fiction if you prefer that term." then later someone refused and you chastised him saying "And you apparently do not wish to speculate."

[guillaumeb]

89. Ok, claim a victory. eom

[Lordquinton]

91. Gladly

Now explain why you did the gaslighting you just admitted to.

[guillaumeb]

92. Claim another victory.

For whatever it is that you feel you won.

Another poster here uses the same tactic.

[Lordquinton]

93. What tactic is that?

Calling you out?

[MineralMan]

3. Can you imagine it, Guy?

I can. Tell us what you imagine it would be like. Give us your answers to your questions. We know you think you have the answers, so let's see them.

[guillaumeb]

17. I asked the questions of the readers.

Perhaps you missed that. Now, having made that clear, feel free to elaborate on how you would see this Utopia.

[marylandblue]

24. It's simple etiquette to answer your own thought questions

It's not like the 13th commandment or anything, but you'll get a better discussion if you start off with your own answers.

[guillaumeb]

43. This is a common pattern here.

But if you choose not to reply, I understand.

[marylandblue]

45. No, you don't understand this one at all, since I did reply

But you don't answer your own questions for discussion. They are just opportunities for other to answer so you can register your approval or disapproval, or just dismiss them with a supercillious falsehood.

[guillaumeb]

48. You replied with non-answers.

And I do so myself at times.

[marylandblue]

51. You didn't like my answer. I understand.

[thbobby]

4. No faith or religion?

Would that mean no 80-year war after Protestant Reformation? No Crusades? No pogroms. No justification for slavery? Hard to imagine.

[qazplm135]

33. you don't think slavery

would still have justification from the slavers minus religion?

Or that there wouldn't be crusades/pogroms of a sort even without religion?

They'd be based on other things...prejudice would still be around, us v them would still be a primary human psychological paradigm.

[marylandblue]

35. Since crusades and pogroms are religious in nature, I think we would not have those particular forms

When the only difference being fought over is religion, then that particular type of conflict with it's peculiar vehemence and unending enmity would not exist. The Jews have faced 2,000 years of anti-semitism based solely on religion. Without religion, it's unlikely we would have found a similar group to hate for so long and so irrationally.

[qazplm135]

36. they are religious in nature in the sense that

we have given those specific names to religious based wars fought for reasons that could as easily be not religious.

The Crusades were primarily fought to recover Christian holy lands from Muslim invaders.

Now just switch that to recovering ancient home lands of the Shibari people from the interloping Mufasa people and you'd have the same thing.

A Pogrom is deliberate persecution of a religious OR ethnic group. So that one is not necessarily even "religious in nature."

Then add in that as someone posted below the VAST majority of wars have been fought for non-religious reasons and sorry but I don't get the argument that either type of conflict would have not come into be or wars would have less vehemence or unending enmity.

Race, ethnicity, pure rivalry. The French and English were fighting from 1337 on and off until 1453...then more wars followed all the way up to 1815. Territory and power fueled those wars much more than religion did. The Huns, Alexander, Genghis Khan, the Cold War, the two WWs, on and on...brutal, long, bloody, wars fought over enduring rivalries or arguably even worse, constantly switching power alliances in some cases.

We'd have had almost as many wars with just as much cruelty.

And on Jews, certainly much of the enmity was either religious-based or cloaked in religion, but neither Hitler nor Stalin did their anti-Jew pogroms because of any real religious reasons.

[marylandblue]

37. Whataboutism and illogic.

Last edited Sat Dec 15, 2018, 04:24 PM - Edit history (1)

A war of Christians from Western Europe, who never held the land themselves, to "recover" it from Muslims who took it in a religious war from different Christians to begin with somehow would have happened anyway? How does an English monarch "recover" land neither he nor his ancestors held to begin with EXCEPT by calling them 'Christian."

I don't know who the Shibari and Mufasa are. Search of Shibari turns up a bondage technique and Mufasa is a character from the Lion King. Never said there would be no other wars for no other reasons.

Study the history, etymology and most common usage of pogrom and you'll get a different answer. The first thing called a pogrom was in Odessa in 1871, against Jews, during HOLY WEEK. But I guess without religion, people would have found some other week to randomly attack their culturally and ethnically similar neighbors.

Hitler did not engage in religious persecution of Jews? That's a new one on me. Hard to see how that even works without religion being at the heart of it, even if he had other excuses. But Jews are used to persecution for all sorts of reasons other than being Jewish. So have at that one. It would be joke if it weren't so tragic.

Stalin did not, so far as I know engage in pogroms. He did move lots of people around, shoot and starve many but pogroms were really more of Tsarist thing.

[guillaumeb]

44. Speaking of Stalin:

Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?

Timothy Snyder
March 10, 2011 Issue
Who was worse, Hitler or Stalin?
In the second half of the twentieth century, Americans were taught to see both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the greatest of evils. Hitler was worse, because his regime propagated the unprecedented horror of the Holocaust, the attempt to eradicate an entire people on racial grounds. Yet Stalin was also worse, because his regime killed far, far more people, tens of millions it was often claimed, in the endless wastes of the Gulag. For decades, and even today, this confidence about the difference between the two regimes—quality versus quantity—has set the ground rules for the politics of memory. Even historians of the Holocaust generally take for granted that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, thus placing themselves under greater pressure to stress the special character of the Holocaust, since this is what made the Nazi regime worse than the Stalinist one.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/03/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/

War is an aspect of tribalism. And we both know that leaders can think of many reasons to start a war, but power is at the base of it.

[qazplm135]

47. wait a minute

first of all you don't understand the meaning of the term whataboutism clearly.

second, are you seriously arguing that there have been no wars fought to recover or gain lands that either belonged to one group or another or someone argued belonged to them.

I mean just this in the last century you have Hitler and the Sudetenland. You have Hitler trying to clear out Eastern Europe for a Greater Germany. Your knowledge of history is embarrassing. The Roman Empire fought a ton of wars to try and reclaim lost lands. Just staggering.

Neither of those are real people, it was a hypothetical example. Are you serious right now?

No, Hitler didn't care about the Jews as a religion. He cared about the Jews because they provided a convenient target. He cared about them because of some other reasons, but it wasn't primarily a religious concern for him. Again, learn your history.

Stalin didn't engage in Pogroms? He didn't actively seek to kill Jews? Really?? I'm done, this is a waste of time.

[qazplm135]

52. yeah no

first of all Judaism is BOTH a religion AND an ethnicity.

"Jews are an ethnoreligious group, meaning that Jewish identity is both ethnic and religious, or for some, only one of the two. Most Jews share a common national origin in the ancient nation of Judea (which is where the word “Jew” derives from). This has been the conclusion of the majority of DNA studies. Of course Jews have been mixed a lot with various other populations, but a substantial portion of their ancestry is nevertheless Levantine Judean."

Recognizing that Hitler attacked them for the latter and for HIS own personal reasons does not make me anti-Semitic.
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/why-did-adolf-hitler-hate-the-jews-1.5088390

I trust you will believe an Israeli source, yes?
"In Hitler’s mind, all the groups that he saw as foiling Germany – Bolsheviks, socialists, social democrats – became identified with Jews, because indeed, Jews were so prominently represented among each of them. His political theories blended with increasingly technical racial theories that imagined the Jews, along with other groups like Slavs and Gypsies, as biologically inferior to Aryans, the white northern European race that pure Germans were presumed to belong to."

And definition of a pogrom?

"po·grom
/ˈpōɡrəm,pəˈɡräm/
noun
noun: pogrom; plural noun: pogroms

an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jews in Russia or eastern Europe."


"Definition of pogrom
(Entry 1 of 2)
: an organized massacre of helpless people specifically : such a massacre of Jews"


"In many Russian pogroms in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the mob attacked Jews — burning their homes and synagogues. Thousands of Jews were killed during these attacks, and many more fled them by emigrating to other countries, including the United States. Pogroms against Jews occurred in countries other than Russia, including Argentina, Romania, Poland, and Libya. Other ethnic groups, including Armenians, were also the target of pogroms in the early twentieth century."

"organized killing of a large group of people, esp. Jews, because of their religion or race"

So stop embarrassing yourself, and stop calling another poster a fucking anti-Semite because of your own historical ignorance.

[Adsos Letter]

53. "...first of all Judaism is BOTH a religion AND an ethnicity."

Last edited Sat Dec 15, 2018, 10:41 PM - Edit history (1)

Absolutely.

If Hitler's attack on the Jews were based only on religion then conversion would have spared a Jew from consignment to the camps, or other persecution. I don't believe that it worked that way.

[qazplm135]

70. Agree except

My own quote isn't fully accurate...It can be one, the other or both.

A person can be:

1. A follower of Judaism but with no ties by blood

2. Ties by blood but not a follower of Judaism

3. Both 1 and 2

Otherwise concur, it wasn't about their religious beliefs.
And Hitler wasn't really strongly religious and some of the beliefs he did have were, well, weird.

[safeinOhio]

5. Working out well for me.

My locus of control is internal, not an external being. But, what ever floats your boat.

[guillaumeb]

18. I asked some questions.

Feel free to speculate.

Or not.

[Act_of_Reparation]

7. I imagine a world without flamebait.

[MineralMan]

8. Not here, though.

I can't imagine that at all.

[guillaumeb]

15. Like this derivative one?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1218300978

[Act_of_Reparation]

73. You reap what you sow, Billy.

[trotsky]

9. So what you're getting at here is that religion doesn't make us any better.

We are in complete agreement.

What religion CAN do, however, is make us worse.

[guillaumeb]

16. That might have been what you read into it.

China is one current example where the leaders are determined to make a country without religion.

[Major Nikon]

67. China has over 4 times the population of the US with a similar land mass

I suppose one could "imagine" such a country without such a homogeneous religiosity as having less violence and social ills, but it would take a significant amount of delusion to do so.

[trotsky]

74. #Whataboutism n/t

[guillaumeb]

19. I asked some questions.

So far, not one responder has attempted to answer them.

[LongtimeAZDem]

57. Probably because nobody felt like taking the obvious bait

Last edited Mon Dec 17, 2018, 09:47 AM - Edit history (1)

Superstitions and religious belief are natural stepping stones in human development, so to include a premise of "the concept has never existed" requires a complete absence of humans as they exist in this reality.

Given that you're smart enough to know that, and people here know that you are, the thread can be reasonably interpreted to be nothing more than an exercise in yanking everyone's chain.

[trotsky]

76. Bingo.

the thread can be reasonably interpreted to be nothing more than an exercise in yanking everyone's chain.

Nailed it there.

[guillaumeb]

80. If you think it is,

how many posts in this group would you classify in the same way?

[trotsky]

75. Because everyone can see you posted flamebait.

You aren't looking for answers, because your questions weren't sincere. You are looking for validation in beating up a straw man position.

[DetlefK]

10. The world would be better in multiple aspects:

1.
Religion divides society into those who have the correct religion and those who have the wrong religion.
Without religion, this permanent hostility, otherness and partisanship would be gone. There would be less social/political tensions and therefore less conflicts.



2.
Religion has held back the advancement of science.
The evolution of modern science (the "scientific method&quot came from a combination of several historical and philosophical coincidences happening over a very short period of time of no more than 2 centuries. (~1500 - ~1700)
A main obstacle was that research was done with the philosophy that if theory and experiment contradict each other, the theory is correct and the experiment is wrong. And that theory was based on Bible, greek philosophers and famous Christians one happened to agree with.

Imagine what the world would have been like if the occult experimentalists and alchemists of the Renaissance had been free to draw conclusions from their experiments. Imagine, them not being forced to interpret their data according to church-approved doctrine.

Imagine what the world would be like if the philosophical and scientific advancements that happened in 1800 had instead already happened in 1600 or even earlier. Science would have at least a 200 year headstart compared to now.



3.
Europe would have been spared the 30-Year-War. (1618-1648)
A war between a catholic international alliance and an evangelical international alliance that devastated Europe for 30 f**king years.
And it began because the people of Bohemia were Evangelicals and were tired of being oppressed by a catholic ruler. (Actually, it's more complicated, but that's the gist.)

Imagine WWI or WWII... except 5 times longer.
Imagine the US Civil War... except 7 times longer.



4.
Without an oppressive church exploiting society, the question is whether Karl Marx would have developed his theory that the driving factor of history is the fight between different classes of society. Karl Marx was rabidly anti-church.

What kind of Communism would Karl Marx have invented if there had been no Church to draw his anger?

[guillaumeb]

20. Pure imagination.

Or, alternative fiction if you prefer that term.

So in a modern society without religion, or where religion is ferociously oppressed, such as China, all is better?

[DetlefK]

22. HAHAHAHAHA! You are changing the topic mid-conversation! HAHAHA!

The topic is what the world would be like if there hadn't been religion. You specifically asked for alternative history.

The concept has never arisen.

The topic is not what the world would be like if we first have religion and then decide to eradicate it.

[guillaumeb]

78. So we would have to press the reset button?

Violence is a human characteristic. Perhaps a general hominid characteristic.

So if religion had never existed, what would be different in human behavior?

[DetlefK]

84. re

1. Less groupthink, as laid out above.

2. No normalization of obeying unproven doctrine.

3. With less emphasis on the spiritual, a faster evolution of philosophy towards materialism and experimentalism.

[guillaumeb]

86. I disagree.

Patriotism is also group think.

It validates wars, and genocide, and massacres of civilians.

[DetlefK]

88. I said "less groupthink", not "no groupthink".

[guillaumeb]

90. But it is speculation that is refuted by actual history. eom

[DetlefK]

94. In actual history...

In actual history:

* The south-american civilizations slaughtered each other for prisoners that would then be sacrificed to appease the gods.

* A celtic grave has been found of somebody who had been executed. They had drilled holes through the flesh of his forearms while he was still alive and "sewed" his forearms together with thin hazelnut-branches.

* The animosity between Jews and Christians began with the problem that almost all of the christian holy scriptures were in fact jewish holy scriptures. This lead to a need of the Christians to otherize the Jews, to save the legitimacy of Christianity as a valid distinct religion. This lead to two millenia of economic and religious discrimination, and finally to racist discrimination and the Holocaust.

* The Inquisition, which was born during the Reconquista-period in Spain. They tortured and executed people who had the wrong faith.

* During the Renaissance, esoterics such as Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella were imprisoned and sometimes burned at the stake. Which is a shame because once you cleanse their ideas of the supernatural superstition they are actually very progressive.

* The Thirty-Year War. 1618-1648.
At that time there was a Cold War in Europe, of Evangelicals vs Catholics. The Evangelicals were France, Britain and half of the provinces of Germany. The Catholics were Austria-Hungary, Italy and the other half of the provinces of Germany. (Though catholic, Spain stayed neutral this time.)
There was peace. They lived separately but equal.
The people of Bohemia were Evangelicals with a tolerant catholic ruler. But when he died of old age, the Habsburgers insisted that by right of some international contracts they had the right to pick Bohemia's next king. And they picked an extremist who began cracking down on Evangelicals in Bohemia right-away.
The people of Bohemia protested and demanded the right to elect a king. They picked the duke of the Rhineland-Palatinate, a young, open-minded and idealistic Evangelical who had just married the daughter of the King of Britain. The duke was talked into accepting the crown, with religious arguments.
And with both power-blocs claiming the same crown, a bloody war broke out that lasted 30 years.

There is a line from Berthold Brecht's "Galileo Galilei", which is set during that period:
"In Germany, they slaughter each other with Bible-verses on their lips."

* Then, after WWII their was this tiny problem with the founding of Israel and the resettlement of the european Jews to Israel and how muslim Palestinians already lived there and how these two have been at war ever since.

* 9/11

* And then there was ISIS, which co-opted a secular revolution against Syria's dictator, thereby delegitimizing any opposition to the dictator.
Oh and ISIS also executes people who don't obey their cherrypicked version of Islam. And they enslave the Yazidis and have almost completey wiped out this ethinicity.
And they have destroyed precious archaeological artifacts.

[guillaumeb]

95. I would not and have never denied the role that religion played.

And many of these leaders claimed a religious motivation for their wars of conquest.

[marylandblue]

25. In that case, yes.

There would be no religious opposition to the Chinese, therefore one less thing to oppose. One less thing to fight over. Which means less fighting overall.

[Major Nikon]

68. Kinda funny how you must point to the most totalitarian examples as your proof of concept

Why not point to countries like Sweden that are as irreligious as China?

Then try asking your question in reverse. Do you think Sweden would be better off if they were more religious?

Do you even bother to think about how the most violent places on earth also tend to be the most religious while the least violent places tend to be the least religious? That isn't a coincidence, Gil.

[msongs]

11. humanity's most oppressive hate group gone? oh no, then it's back to plain old

human failings without justification from the invisible sky beings

[MineralMan]

12. Where have you gone, Guy?

There are questions awaiting answers. We're all on the edges of our assorted and various seats. Have you nothing to say?

[Voltaire2]

13. Hey hey hey

Where have you gone, Guy Amen
A forum turns its lonely eyes to you
Woo, woo, woo <<< actual lyric!
What’s that you say, Mrs Robinson
Quipping Guy has left and gone away
Hey hey hey
Hey hey hey

[MineralMan]

14. Oooo...

[guillaumeb]

21. I posed some questions.

And you apparently do not wish to speculate.

[DetlefK]

23. Waitwaitwait. You just ridiculed me for speculating because you didn't like my answers.

In post #20.

So, are we supposed to speculate or not?

[guillaumeb]

38. Yes, but I answered another post by another person.

[DetlefK]

61. Irrelevant. You have two contradicting opinions when talking to two different people.

Your OP is "What if there never had been religion".

I gave speculative answers how certain events in history would have gone different without religion. You derided it as mere speculation.

MineralMan wrote something off-topic. And your response was that you want speculation.

Why do you want speculations form MineralMan but not from me?



Your OP is obviously flame-bait and it seems to me like you were never interested in a discussion.

[Lordquinton]

60. If that's not the epitome of gaslighting

"What you wrote was pure speculative fiction"

"Why won't you speculate"

And somehow we're the ones who refuse to cooperate.

[Soxfan58]

26. There would be wars

Because the religion of greed would still be practiced.

[guillaumeb]

39. Indeed.

Greed is a common human behavior.

[marylandblue]

28. A world that never had religion would have people very different from ourselves

Religion deals with the irrational, the impulsive, matters of emotion and instinct. If we didn't have religion it would mean we wouldn't have the drivers of it. We'd be a much more rational type of creature. We'd see the truth of world more clearly. Current humans would find it quite boring.

[qazplm135]

34. the irrational, the impulsive, matters of emotion and instinct

all those things are basic human traits, independent of religion.

Religion isn't the disease, it's a symptom.

[ck4829]

29. Imagine the world 20 million years ago - Something like that

Religion and things like religion is what makes us human I think.

A basis of society, not the sole basis, but one.

It connects us to each other. It helps to create an idea that our world doesn’t end at the horizon.

[guillaumeb]

40. Very well said.

It is one aspect of tribalism, which is essential for human survival.

[DetlefK]

62. To the contrary: It disconnects us and it imposes an horizon on us.

Religion as a general concept only connects the people who share the same specific religion while enforcing separation from people who have a different specific religion.



And in religion the world does end at the horizon. That horizon are the infallible religious doctrines that determine what you are allowed to think and what you are not allowed to think.

"Blasphemy" and "heresy" are the religious crimes you get charged with if you dare to think beyond the horizon.

[Pandoris]

30. Considering that religion is

a reaction to the alleged existence of Elohim, perhaps it is more fruitful to imagine who they might be, and what the world would be like without them. If the Bible can be believed regarding that most basic claim, we know that there are several of them and that they have an information advantage that includes the knowledge of immortality.

[guillaumeb]

41. Welcome to DU, and this conversation.

Would you care to elaborate on that?

[Pandoris]

46. Thank you, and sure I would.

According to the Bible, the Elohim caused people to realize that they were going around naked, presumably like primitive hunter gatherers. So perhaps it comes down to whether one prefers a world of knowledge. Keep in mind that originally, religion also performed the functions of government and science.

[guillaumeb]

49. True.

Priests and priestesses served as givers of knowledge.

And secular rulers also like when religious leaders approve of secular leadership.

[lancelyons]

31. Religion and faith are not bad and are good. However many in today's churches

Many in today's churches don't walk in God's or Jesus's footsteps. Today it's more about power and cash.

[Mariana]

32. Do you really think this is a new thing? nt.

[guillaumeb]

42. Desire for money and power are both human behaviors. eom

[Voltaire2]

69. When was Christianity not that way?

[Tikki]

54. OK

The same
No
No
No
So?

Tikki

[juxtaposed]

56. one less thing to deal with in the morning at work.

[malchickiwick]

58. Lots of charlatans would have to get real jobs.

But since war and violence have much more to do with control of resources than ideology, those things would still exist. The powerful would simply have one less tool to employ, lacking a diety, in controlling said resources. Religion is simply a way for the powerful to maintain power and so they would have to create some new myth.

[gtar100]

59. The thought crossed my mind that if we consider other species, we might find an example.

As in, a world without humans and religions or discernible deities. But then, we don't acknowledge the internal experience of other animals or insects or plants other than their biological imperatives. With few exceptions, most people are content to observe behavior and environmental effects of other species rather than actually communicate with them - something considered laughable in these times. So if you can imagine people interacting as animals do with an overlay of our economics and our distinctly human social interactions, that might be a model. But no guarantee of peace and harmony.

It seems like a world without religion or faith is imaginable for individuals - there's apparently no survival requirement to practice a religion or believe in deities, like the need for food, water, activity and sleep. Even among groups of friends, religion and a professed faith is not necessary, just shared values which don't have to include religion or gods. But it gets more complicated with larger groups like tribes and communities. How can groups like this survive if there is not an acknowledgement and and some form of celebration of the traditions that identify a place for the the group and its people in the wider context of reality? The only time I see people making attempts at trying to live without religion or faith is happening in our modern world - either by force of state (China, as an example... but that's more like suppression than absence of faith and religion) or through the influences of subcultures that embrace beliefs such as materialism that assert that life is meaningless, purposeless and doomed to entropy. The rise of materialism has not reduced war and violence but on the contrary may have only made us better at the effectiveness of our destructive capacity.

So what is needed to make the people of Utopia cohesive over generations, avoid war and live peacefully? They are going to have to share a common set of values in order to live and work together. Sooner or later it's going to come down to the questions of how did we get here, why do we exist, what is our purpose and all the things that religions address. Let's say they all agree on the premise that deities do not exist and they embrace the materialistic view in which life happened by "happy chemical accident", would they still not have to have rules like don't steal, don't kill, don't be a jerk... that sort of thing, to get along? Under what premise? Why? Survival of the species? Why? It's all meaningless and purposeless, right? The species will survive; that's not a concern for the individual and there are no second chances for the individual - that's an inevitable conclusion under materialism. So personal ethics can stop one from hurting others in the pursuit of personal gain without the need for the interjection of a deity... okay. But as soon as you come to an agreement with another on the ethical behaviors desired in one's Utopia, those ethics are no longer "personal". And philosophers will inevitably ask, what is the origin of the ethics we have embraced. Call it God, don't call it God; but from whence arose the shared, non-personal sense of ethics? Another biological imperative? Brain chemistry? Those are hardly complete answers.

I can see it working in small groups but not larger groups. Maybe somebody else can imagine a world without religion and faith but I just don't see it but I do see a lot of complications happening with the current attempt at it. Don't confuse this with an attempt to excuse religious beliefs and practices that hurt and devalue people. People abuse religions for their own personal gain precisely because religion itself is a power within interrelated groups of people and people are vying for that power. But religions do not manifest the same way everywhere. Cultures of indigenous people have survived thousands of years because of the common thread religious practices have had in tying their generations together into a cohesive story line that provides a sense of place, meaning and purpose for themselves. Economics and basic survival requirements just don't seem to be enough to hold people together for any serious length of time. I think it requires a common philosophy and, more importantly, common practices we can rightfully define as religious to bind people together into a culture.

[guillaumeb]

77. I agree.

Humans require tribalism because we are so dependent on the group for survival.

And religion, country, ethnicity, language, are all aspects of group identity. So the idea that there is any one prime cause of violence ignores the fact that vioelnce is present in every human culture, and in most cultures of any appreciable size.

And, as many have informed me, this is the Religion group, but the same logic applies here as well. Violence is inescapable. The story of Cain and Abel is a metaphoric explanation for this trait.

[Bretton Garcia]

63. I can't say "Jesus F***ing Christ" without religion

I realized not long ago that the decline of religion, Christianity, meant that many of my once-favorite curse words and phrases were obsolete.

Jesus! What is the world coming to.

[Bretton Garcia]

64. Christianity mandated the destruction of the earth

In Revelation. Maybe without Christianity, the world can survive, unharmed.

[Major Nikon]

66. I suppose if one is prone to dichotomy they would be satisfied that all the answers are no

It's rather like imagining a world without guns and weapons of destruction and finding comfort in those things with the realization that people would still kill each other anyway, so we might as well make it one helluva lot more efficient.

[old as dirt]

96. A world without religion would be...

...a world without culture, a world without history, a world without music, a world without dance, a world without magic...in short, a bland, dull, and boring place in which to live.

[guillaumeb]

97. Agreed. eom

[old as dirt]

98. The two videos above...

...is a dramatization of los Funerales del Angelitos, when an infant or small child dies, one of two fundamental stories that my wife told me about her religion (Catholic) when we first met.

When she was a child, they were still common, but they haven't actually been performed for more than half a century, now.

The above videos are a reenactment by a group of professoras, called las Cantaoras del Patía, in an effort preserve her culture and her religion.