We got scared

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Sammi79

What would happen today if we (as a civilization) abandoned scientific thinking, and all that it has given us? It is surely hard to imagine how different life would be.

What would happen today if as above, we abandoned religious thinking and all that has given us? Would the world be much different?

Opinions welcomed...

Regards, Sam.

I think a modern civilization that lacks either one would eventually descend into chaos. History bears witness to this. Extremist views and abuse of power have led both sides to this antagonistic stance. A far better path would be to understand the opposing philosophy completely. In the past religion has been a hindrance to scientific progress and there are still some very backward notions out there. By the same token atheistic/scientific thought has been very dismissive of religious belief, and some suggest society would be better off without it.
The modern western democracies we have today are a result of these two philosophies even though they have been in disagreement. Knowledge has great value. I don't have to believe something to understand it. This is how you keep the extremists from ruling the day.

I think that the sooner we dump all religion, the better off humanity will be. Religion requires dogmatic belief and dogma is the enemy of rational thought and facilitator of extremism.

Morality, ethics, humanism and charity require a sense of community, not the worship of magical beings. Spirituality comes from within every person and not from works of fiction passed off as holy books by irrational fanatics.

[Buddahaid]

No denying we live in a blend which uses religiously derived moral signposts. The Ten Commandments are nothing if not sensible rules to preserve the peace within communities. So would man be better off without Religion? I don't think we can help ourselves but have it in some form or other. I'm not a God fearing man because I refuse to worship a system of fear and feel it's all greater than the pretty box we've built up so far. We seem meant to scratch our way out and look around.

[TLAM Strike]

Consider this: Who do you want to lead us?

(say to have Executive powers incl. command of nuclear weapons, and power to wage war)

Requirements to be POTUS: Native of USA, 14 years in residence and 35+ years old. Elected by minority of population.

Requirements to be Pope: Technically none; must be Catholic upon assuming office. Selected by a group of Cardinals of the church.

Requirements for PhD (US): about 7 years of study, a 400+ page dissertation that "contributes to human knowledge"; that then must be examined by experts and defended by the candidate to the experts satisfaction.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Consider this: Who do you want to lead us?

(say to have Executive powers incl. command of nuclear weapons, and power to wage war)

Requirements to be POTUS: Native of USA, 14 years in residence and 35+ years old. Elected by minority of population.

Requirements to be Pope: Technically none; must be Catholic upon assuming office. Selected by a group of Cardinals of the church.

Requirements for PhD (US): about 7 years of study, a 400+ page dissertation that "contributes to human knowledge"; that then must be examined by experts and defended by the candidate to the experts satisfaction.

Who is calling for a theocracy? All I am saying is that religion was unfairly blamed as the root of humanity's problems. Once again, it isn't the root of the problem. Humanity is the root of humanity's problem.

In regard to Sammi's question of a world without religion, it becomes a personal matter. With religion you have man and god, who drives man to transcend his nature. Without religion you only have man with his cruelity, selfishness and murderous nature; a nature that he celebrates. We need to look no further than this forum. Look at the discussion of a possible war with Iran. Man takes tremendous pride in his machines, particularly his killing machines. And it is not only you all, I do it too. It is all that man is, and it is all that man seperated from god can be. For me, that is far too bleak a world to live in. In my eyes it is a comfort to know that, in the end, there is light in the darkness and hope in the world to come.

Science offers me many things; things that I enjoy and are an intergal part to my daily life. Science is of value to me and value to man, but it does not offer me that.

Nonsensical Hyperbole, pure and unadulterated.

Religion = cruelty: the Inquisition being only one of many examples.

Religion = selfishness: the treatment of the masses in the majority of Catholic countries where Church owned wealth benefited the Church without regards for the principles of Christian charity espoused by that same church.

Religion = murderous nature: witness the slaughter of Christian Armenians by Islamic Turks, Orthodox pograms against the Jews, and Catholic slaughter of Mezo-Americans.

Religion does not allow men to transcend anything, it engenders fear and superstition that aids in producing atrocities and mayham. It retards civilization and we need to outgrow it, totally, completely and unequivocally.

Of course the faithful will spin the record in an attempt to show that these cases and all the others were man exercising god-given free will but it's really hard to see how that helps the victims, who presumably were shot, burnt, impaled, beheaded and starved because god wanted them to be. Or does free will only apply to perpetrators of violence and abuse?

[Buddahaid]

I do not believe man is base without religion, there are just base men.

[u crank]

Not to belabour a point here but there has to be a clear distinction between what God wants and what man does. It's easy to blame religion for the crimes listed but you could also blame greed, politics, racial hatred, and ignorance.
And rightly so none of this helps the victims, but to think that these crimes happened because God wanted them to is a clear misunderstanding of both God and human nature. People with religious beliefs do commit crimes. People with no religious convictions or knowledge of God also do these things and both groups have been doing so since day one. Sadly, that's what we do.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

Nonsensical Hyperbole, pure and unadulterated.

Religion = cruelty: the Inquisition being only one of many examples.

Religion = selfishness: the treatment of the masses in the majority of Catholic countries where Church owned wealth benefited the Church without regards for the principles of Christian charity espoused by that same church.

Religion = murderous nature: witness the slaughter of Christian Armenians by Islamic Turks, Orthodox pograms against the Jews, and Catholic slaughter of Mezo-Americans.

Religion does not allow men to transcend anything, it engenders fear and superstition that aids in producing atrocities and mayham. It retards civilization and we need to outgrow it, totally, completely and unequivocally.

Of course the faithful will spin the record in an attempt to show that these cases and all the others were man exercising god-given free will but it's really hard to see how that helps the victims, who presumably were shot, burnt, impaled, beheaded and starved because god wanted them to be. Or does free will only apply to perpetrators of violence and abuse?

Did Religion drive Joseph Mengele?
We know how the human body reacts to freezing because of his experiments at Dachau and Auschwitz which cost the lives of approximately one hundred people.
Did Religion drive Unit 731?
Their research on the effects of biological warfare earned many of them pardons and stays of execution after the war from the United States. The number of people killed by their experiments is estimated at around five hundred thousand.

Does the all embrace of science mean that human experimentation is permissible? If so, then what are the criteria? Prisoners? That's a start, but why stop there?

Science is not evil, Religion is not evil, mankind can be very evil.
At the reverse end of the spectrum we have many instances where Science has lead to fantastic advances in humanity which have benefited many without suffering to some...but certainly medically speaking, most of our advances are done on the suffering of humans and animals alike.
Likewise we have instances where religion has inspired people to make great sacrifices for the benefit of others.

Religion and Science have little to do with the evils in the world, we're quite capable of making them without their help.

Theists like to believe that one cannot be a moral or ethical person without having religion as a compass.

That is demonstrably wrong and cataloging a list of atrocity done in the absence of religion in comparison to atrocity done in the name of religion is nonsense. My examples were in response to the implication that without religion man is automatically cruel, a contention as ridiculous as it is false.

Religion is essentially the notion that an imaginary friend accounts for all that is good in the world but who gets a free pass on being accountable for anything that is bad. How rational is that?

[tater]

Well said, randomizer.

Theism is incredibly arrogant, actually. I am agnostic on deism, as it is an unknowable question. On theism, though, you have to believe that god has told your special group what he thinks. You, and your group alone, knows his mind. The whole universe was made for YOU.

It's funny, too. Bronze-age religious texts are "holy," but if some guy in a compound writes his holy manifesto tomorrow, it's a "cult." None of the holy books in the major religions have any proof they are what they say they are. The Bible (old and new test) are massively inconsistent internally. Thomas Paine shreds it using naught but the words within itself (Age of Reason).

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

Theists like to believe that one cannot be a moral or ethical person without having religion as a compass.

That is demonstrably wrong and cataloging a list of atrocity done in the absence of religion in comparison to atrocity done in the name of religion is nonsense. My examples were in response to the implication that without religion man is automatically cruel, a contention as ridiculous as it is false.

Religion is essentially the notion that an imaginary friend accounts for all that is good in the world but who gets a free pass on being accountable for anything that is bad. How rational is that?

That I can agree with you on, that at the end of the day it's down to humanity to decide, not scientists or priests.

What I'd like to ponder though is how the moral code of humanity has been built over the years? When did we first decide that smacking someone over the head outside of war was wrong? Does the Bible exist as our first written moral code or was there one in place before then?

What I'd like to ponder though is how the moral code of humanity has been built over the years? When did we first decide that smacking someone over the head outside of war was wrong?

Some sort of values are a requirement for human beings to live together and by extension in all probability always have been.

Start with the neolithic family, killing ones own children is a bad idea when it is expected that those same children will keep you alive in your dotage.

Expand to a family group, a tribe and the same rules, expanded by common sense and the requirement for the group to survive and civility and cooperation becomes more important.

Society expands into groups of families and now you have to learn to get along with somebody who is not family but may have skills or commodities that benefit your family. Killing them might hurt those closest to you and so rules are needed to regulate the social interaction within the community setting.

No god is necessary, merely self-interest.

Am not stating categorically that this is how societal norms begin but it is a possible scenario and one that fits the evidence as I understand it.

Gods were needed to explain the unknowable as it was perceived at the time, I would imagine that the linking of gods to good behavior probably grew out of some cause and effect coincidences that demanded explanation in the face of fear and superstition but that's just a guess.

[tater]

Murder was FAR more common in early human history than now. An insanely high homicide rate per year is now on the order of 0.03% per year.

For an average life span of ~35 years (spitball estimate for average human lifespan since we became Homo sapiens. It's probably high, lol.) that's around a 1% chance to death by homicide. Studies of paleolithic cultures that were extant into the 20th century showed that their lifetime death rate to homicide was 20-30%.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

Some sort of values are a requirement for human beings to live together and by extension in all probability always have been.

Start with the neolithic family, killing ones own children is a bad idea when it is expected that those same children will keep you alive in your dotage.

Expand to a family group, a tribe and the same rules, expanded by common sense and the requirement for the group to survive and civility and cooperation becomes more important.

Society expands into groups of families and now you have to learn to get along with somebody who is not family but may have skills or commodities that benefit your family. Killing them might hurt those closest to you and so rules are needed to regulate the social interaction within the community setting.

No god is necessary, merely self-interest.

Am not stating categorically that this is how societal norms begin but it is a possible scenario and one that fits the evidence as I understand it.

Gods were needed to explain the unknowable as it was perceived at the time, I would imagine that the linking of gods to good behavior probably grew out of some cause and effect coincidences that demanded explanation in the face of fear and superstition but that's just a guess.

That makes perfectly good sense and I'd go with that.
How about spirituality though, where does that fit in? I'm not talking about organised religion but peoples individual beliefs.