|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
Thread ▼ Details |
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: "Imagine no religion..." | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
“ Imagine No Religion .
. It’s easy if you try.” No more religion in the world would be impossible, of course, but it would be interesting. Instead of religion to guide the people along, they would need to reason for themselves and make decisions on a different basis”one that didn’t pit belief systems against each other in a succession of wars, which are proven to be endless. And religion sucks money from the pockets of its victims, too, who can scarcely afford it. But don’t tell them they can’t buy their way to heaven. Don’t tell them that Jesus is a bigger fraud than even Mohammed (or you, like Rushdie, could get a contract sent out on your life). Don’t tell them that more people have suffered and died in this world for the sake of religion than any other cause. Imagine no religion. Imagine a time when a POTUS candidate need not declare his/her belief if God to get elected. What a wonderful world that would be! Furthermore, in a world without religion there would be no need for atheism, and no need for all that fear and loathing about what happens to you after you die. Oh, what a wonderful world it would be! No more stress, no more disease, no more poverty, no more corruption of the little children . I propose a thread to imagine what would be possible in a world without religion. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
Larnl writes:
So true! I have also wondered about the distribution of wealth. Without religion to pick the pockets of the poor, they might not be so poor anymore. A large amount of the population would have to start thinking for themselves. People would have to do a bit of intellectual work to discover the best way through life. Many arguments about which 'truth' is the 'real' truth would end. The one thing that would happen in a world without religion would be a huge rush to fill the vacuum left by the dissolution of all the souls. In their places I would expect a bud to grow and flower in the name of The Golden Rule, which was always nipped in its formative stage by religio-politics. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
glaudys writes:
And do you suppose that religion helps to improve our value system that serves to "undergrid ethical, political and economic decisions"? If so, how? No more religion doesn't mean no more value system. And some sort of value system would still undergird ethical, political and economic decisions like whether to go to war in Iraq and what kind of welfare system (if any) to support. ”HM Edited by Hoot Mon, : addressed wrong poster "Vegetarian": An old Indian word for "bad hunter." ”Sarah Palin's bumper sticker
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
Larnl writes:
It's the first rule of karmic law”Don't do anything to anyone else you wouldn't want done to yourself”the rule the Christians claim to be their own. (But try looking it up in the Holy Bible.) What's the Golden Rule? ”HM "Vegetarian": An old Indian word for "bad hunter." ”Sarah Palin's bumper sticker
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
glaudys writes:
Well, for starters, there would be no need to continue the religious wars extending from the days of Canaan up through the Crusades and on to post-WWII Zionism. Take that out of the historical equation and what do you have left? What you have left is a whole lot of money to fund universal medicare and other social programs. No, I don't think so. But I can't see a lack of religion bringing about agreement between say libertarians and socialists on the role of government. There would still be sharp disagreement in the US over whether or not to institute universal medicare, for example. Or whether to use the tax system as an instrument of wealth redistribution. America was founded not on religious principles but on the separation of religious principles from state principles. In effect, America sought to "Imagine no religion." And it's been an uphill struggle ever since to keep religion out of politics. It's like trying to keep rats out of a dumpster. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
gluadys writes:
But I blame our thirst for oil on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Max Weber made it clear, at least to me, that today's capitalism is an outgrowth of the Protestant religion: to prove you are one of the electi you need to be financial successful. In other words, if God made you rich then that is proof that He has chosen you as member of His favored clutch. And, while a religious card may be played to help justify a war over oil, we all know the real reason is oil and if religion is not around to justify it, then some non-religious reason will be found. And there you go, right back to religion.
Actually, that is incorrect. It was founded on the separation of religious institutions from state institutions, a very different matter from separating religion and politics. In fact, it was quite some time before even the institutional separation was applied at the state as well as the federal level.
I may have to concede to you on that point. ”HYM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
gluadys, do you think The Golden Rule is a religious admonition?
”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
Bluejay writes:
One hell of a good question, Bluejay! Doesn't the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, if effect, displace religion with communism? In a world without religion we might not need either capitalism or communism. Someday I think we will evolve there, but we humans are still juvenile delinquents in our growth toward that level of maturity. I predict the evolution of religion will also follow suit: instead of the focus being on getting rich as hell and going to heaven, it will shift over to compassion, charity, and good will. The only thing standing in our way will be testosterone, so all the men will need to be castrated. And all the women will probably need to be lobotomized...Nah, it will never work. In the absence of religion, there would be a cascade of hedonism to fill the craven void. And that, as we know, is good business for capitalism. So, do you think a world without religion would also be a world without capitalism? ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
Bluejay writes:
I have to agree. Paleolithic tribes were not yet ready for a utopian democracy where reason and logic displace belief and spirituality (i.e., the primitive condition). It's an evolutionary thing. First we have the spooks and then we get the facts (i.e., from Jaynes' bicameral mind to fully formed consciousness). In a world without religion there would be no place for the spooks to hide. So the real questions becomes: If we abolish religion do the spooks go away? And if the spooks go away will something else replace them? I sometimes wonder whether religion is one of those aspects of humans that helped us create civilization as we know it. I want to believe that a purely practical mindset would be capable of producing civilization, but I can also see how such a mindset in a Paleolithic tribe could become bogged down in survivalism and resistant to change and development. "Imagine no religion..." could be taken to mean "Imagine no delusion..." ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
Nem Jug writes:
But I can't help imagining what a world would be like without institutionalized delusion. I want to know what would happen if religion disappeared from the face of the earth. Would humans revert to predator-prey relationships amongst each other? Or would we finally drop our penchant for natural aggression in favor of universal cooperation? Is the eat-or-be-eaten gene so fixed in the human population that we could never evolve beyond our natural instincts? Religion does not seem to help very much in that regard. But science certainly does! The utopia devolves in to a dystopia, as the delusions of granduer crumble in to oblivion. Don't be so naive to think that by destroying religion all social ills will all but vanish away. Think of this from a naturalistic stand point. If naturalism is all we have, then evidently nature has selected religious affinity for some purpose. That should seem bleedingly obvious given how pervasive it is, and how fascinated man is with spirituality, the supernatural, and the divine. Be careful what you wish for... You just might get it. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
Mod writes:
But we're going to evolve somewhere, and I'm guessing we'll leave religion behind when we do. I'm sure we can reduce this by engaging in Eugenics. We could start by neutering violent criminals and maybe provide incentives for pacifistic types to create more offspring. I don't think it's possible, and I don't think that it is necessarily a good idea even if it was. In an interesting book by Authur S. Iberall, Toward A General Science of Viable Systems (1972), he sees the evolution of moral code in five stages:
quote:That takes us to, say, Christianity. But what does the future hold for us beyond "the code of love"? (I might even say the code of religion.) Iberall goes on to speculate: quote:If Iberall's sequence is meaningful, it implies (I think) that religion will be left behind for something a whole lot better. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
NJ writes:
Depends on what he said. In Matthew 9:34-36 Jesus said:
Because conversely, what if everyone actually did live as someone like Jesus prescribed??? Can anyone really find fault in him, per say? quote:I'm no so sure what the Prince of Peace is prescribing here, but it is not what I usually think of as Christian family values. This would be equivalent to Newton coming by to revoke the laws of gravity. Science and the philosophy of science are both indispensible in their own right. But even as fundamentally good they both are, they both can go so wrong with a little manipulation.
Science, per se, is neither good nor bad in a moralist sense. Manipulation comes from those who would subvert the scientific method. But science has a filter for that; it's called the peer review. Religion has no such thing...until someone like Luther comes along. We have Luthers everyday in science, but in religion they come along once every millennium or so. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
LR writes:
Why would you want to call atheism a religion? Wouldn't that be like calling a vacuum a material object? The answer rests upon whether atheism can be legitimatly called a religion. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
Doesn't this bring into question the value of delusion in society? Is mass delusion good, bad, or neutral for social order? And is the abolishment of institutionalized delusion necessary for human progress? Bluejay writes:
Where are these places? But, in places where religion has really done little harm beyond maintaining a weird, superstitious mythology, the same effect wouldn't be seen. ”HM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fosdick  Suspended Member (Idle past 5531 days) Posts: 1793 From: Upper Slobovia Joined: |
LR writes:
There is no "afterlife" in any biological context. And since I don't own a soul there is none for me in any spiritual context either. That leaves only a literary context, which may actually work. Mark Twian's death has been greatly exagerated ever since he died. Atheism, like other "religions" is a world view. It is a system of beliefs (No God, no afterlife (all atheists believe in no form of afterlife???), no higher divine authority, only higher natural authority (human thought/Science/TV/Philosophy/Dr Phil? etc)which include a small but significant aspect on the supernatural (no God or anything supernatural exists. ”HM
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024