A World with No Religion

[j.woodard24]

I had this discussion at my university's secular club a couple of weeks ago, and thought that I might pose the same question here for a broader range of opinion.
I am of the opinion that a world abolished of all religion would be a much better place. This hypothetical world does not bar spirituality, but merely removes all instances of deity worship.
What about you? Would you prefer a purely secular world, or do you think religion holds a necessary place, even if you in particular don't hold to one? Why or why not?

[Twentythree]

Spirituality? What does that even mean? In a hypothetical world it can mean anything. In a hypothetical world perhaps even gravity does not exist. I feel as though it is beyond our biological capacity to exist without religion especially if religion as a term is boiled down to belief. Belief in non belief is still a belief. Atheism is a meaning system from which we are able to derive substance, purpose and clarify our position in the world. Atheism is a particular stance just as is any sort of moral judgment or political affiliation. It is how we, and by we I mean those of us who harbor no faith in the supernatural tend to explain reality to ourselves. It is through this foundation of reality that we derive purpose and meaning of any and all other actions. To be completely absent of belief is impossible, to be completely frank we believe what our sense tell us which are not even real things, our senses tell us things because of the way our brains analyses and interpret electrochemical reactions. In nature nothing is really real, it is all just an illusion from which we derive meaning and purpose in order to carry out the extended chemical reaction that is a human life cycle. Or so we think, because scientists have told us so, because we are hinging our faith in non faith on the findings of individuals who are using the same flawed tools that we all have. So at the very base of everything anything we think or believe to be true is faith and therefore self awareness in itself is a religion. We are biologically incapable of living a life without faith. Living a life outside of the shackles of conventional religion is something entirely different. So no I don't think religion holds a necessary place I think that as we evolved we evolved belief and in such we have given ourselves no other alternative than faith.

[j.woodard24]

Spirituality? What does that even mean?

Excuse me, I should have clarified originally. I used "Spirituality" in the way Einstein might have used it, and the way Sam Harris frequently uses it: to describe gratitude, awe, astonishment, a sense of personal identity and the apparent (this being the key word - I don't believe in miracles) miracle of our existence.

I feel as though it is beyond our biological capacity to exist without religion especially if religion as a term is boiled down to belief. Belief in non belief is still a belief.

It is not boiled down to belief. It is boiled down to belief in a supernatural deity. And to say that that is beyond our biological capacity is simply untrue, empirically speaking. It is not beyond my biological capacity, and it needn't be beyond anyone else's in a more rational world.

Atheism is a meaning system from which we are able to derive substance, purpose and clarify our position in the world. Atheism is a particular stance just as is any sort of moral judgment or political affiliation. It is how we, and by we I mean those of us who harbor no faith in the supernatural tend to explain reality to ourselves. It is through this foundation of reality that we derive purpose and meaning of any and all other actions.

This position is extremely difficult to maintain. Atheism itself is defined as only the rejection of belief in a supernatural deity. To extrapolate upon that definition and derive moral positions, systems of thought, or purpose is to leave a great logical gap between premise and conclusion. We are atheists because of our particular sensibilities (i.e. rationalism) not vice versa. Atheism is a conclusion of our system of thought, not a parameter.

To be completely absent of belief is impossible, to be completely frank we believe what our sense tell us which are not even real things, our senses tell us things because of the way our brains analyses and interpret electrochemical reactions. In nature nothing is really real, it is all just an illusion from which we derive meaning and purpose in order to carry out the extended chemical reaction that is a human life cycle.

"A world without belief" is a far cry from "a world without religion". In regards to what our senses tell us, you may believe that the universe is rationally unintelligible if you like - it is a fine belief that is not disprovable - however, to assume that belief is to abandon reason, and you may therefore not pursue anything in the way of rational argument. In fact, by this view, your own atheism is just as rationally unjustifiable as is the belief in Yahweh.

Or so we think, because scientists have told us so, because we are hinging our faith in non faith on the findings of individuals who are using the same flawed tools that we all have. So at the very base of everything anything we think or believe to be true is faith and therefore self awareness in itself is a religion.

Among everything you said, this is the most patently false. We have reasonable expectations in science, because science has historically and empirically proved itself to further our understanding of reality. This is nothing like faith - it is empirical - and it is certainly nothing like religion. If you extend the definition of "faith" to mean "reasonable expectations based on empirical evidence", then I suppose we can't live without faith, but that is not a definition of faith that I accept, primarily because there is a massive distinction between faith demonstrated by religious people and reasonable expectations based on information derived from the real world.

Living a life outside of the shackles of conventional religion is something entirely different. So no I don't think religion holds a necessary place I think that as we evolved we evolved belief and in such we have given ourselves no other alternative than faith.

This answers the question I was asking, more or less. But again, I entirely disagree with the last statements, for reasons I've already clarified.

[Twentythree]

Great response, I haven't posted on this forum in a while...I need to start posting more this has already gotten my mind in a tizzy...

"It is not boiled down to belief. It is boiled down to belief in a supernatural deity. And to say that that is beyond our biological capacity is simply untrue, empirically speaking. It is not beyond my biological capacity, and it needn't be beyond anyone else's in a more rational world."
Religion is roughly defined as culture, belief systems and rituals. The reason that we have culture is due to what we collectively believe to be moral or appropriate and thus the ritual of daily life is developed out of this culture. What we collectively believe to be moral is based on how we view reality and our place in the world and how we perceive this gives us meaning and purpose. Not believing in what we have labeled the supernatural is just another way of clarifying to ourselves what is real and what is false and therefore what is moral and what is immoral and eventually this is expressed in generalities in culture. Without getting steeped in semantics it seems to me that religion could be defined as anything that lends itself to solidifying your view of reality as this in itself is a belief system or a meaning system. We cannot escape the fact that virtually everything we understand about the cosmos is based on hypothesis, Scientific guesses that are constantly changing and therefore even the known is unknown and if we believe the cosmos to be a certain way we are putting faith in the best possible guess of the best possible theory but at its core it is a guess a guess in which we must put our faith in. So atheism and rationalism when looked at completely objectively from an outside perspective is not terribly indistinguishable from religion, especially if you could remove historical bias from the traditional deity based religions.
It's strange, to see myself type this because I am not religious in the traditional sense I do tend to believe in science but since I have been a member of this forum I continue to see people evaluate themselves through a different lens than we evaluate people who believe in gods. Evolution has no such bias, genetically we have nearly identical brains, it seems to me that a the very core of each of our existence is a genetic predisposition to explain reality and to find our place and purpose therein. Whether this involves gods or not biologically speaking its basically the same phenomena...right? Maybe not I'm not a doctor, but I do think a lot...and what better to do on a forum like this than to explore those thoughts. It helps me to solidify how I view myself fin the world.

"This position is extremely difficult to maintain. Atheism itself is defined as only the rejection of belief in a supernatural deity. To extrapolate upon that definition and derive moral positions, systems of thought, or purpose is to leave a great logical gap between premise and conclusion. We are atheists because of our particular sensibilities (i.e. rationalism) not vice versa. Atheism is a conclusion of our system of thought, not a parameter."
I don't think that I would view atheism as a conclusion nor would I be able to look at rationalism as the cause of atheism. It seems to me like they go hand in hand, as the development of the pursuit of rational explanations of reality grows so does our propensity to consider atheism as an explanation of reality.  To say that rationalism is the reason that we are atheists is to say that #1, there are no irrational atheists and that #2 people who believe in gods are ostensibly irrational. I think instead that these are two sides of the same coin or to different options of a divergent path. At some point everyone makes a choice about how they definer reality...either with or without the aid of what we consider supernatural. This does not mean that those of us with faith abandon rational though nor do I think that rational thought is a necessary precursor to the abandoning of gods either. There are perfectly rational thinkers that believe in god and complete nutjobs that are atheists, rationalism in itself is not married to ones position on reality. So instead of Atheism being a conclusion of our system of thought I would like to think that it is born of discovery or forged In a decision of how you wish to explain reality to yourself.

""A world without belief" is a far cry from "a world without religion". In regards to what our senses tell us, you may believe that the universe is rationally unintelligible if you like - it is a fine belief that is not disprovable - however, to assume that belief is to abandon reason, and you may therefore not pursue anything in the way of rational argument. In fact, by this view, your own atheism is just as rationally unjustifiable as is the belief in Yahweh."
I do actually think that atheism is rationally unjustifiable. Atheism as a belief system or an evolutionary tool is more rationally justifiable but it still requires me to believe that our life cycle, all of the joy, love hate and pain experienced is all part of an infinitely compounded complex chemical reaction. I'm not sure if I'm even articulating this well at all it feels like I'm in a feedback loop...nothing is explainable because explanation requires explanation...isn't there a famous phrase for this type of thought the type of though that continually loops back on itself using its own argument against itself until it is boiled down to uselessness...perhaps my train of thought has jumped the shark.

[Xjeepguy]

A world without religion would be much less violent, there would be much less hate, and there would be far less misery globally. The US south would be tolerable, and charities would actually help people, not use donations to give the hungry useless propaganda and bibles (same thing IMO). I think the world would be a MUCH better place.

[Sandra Craft]

What about you? Would you prefer a purely secular world, or do you think religion holds a necessary place, even if you in particular don't hold to one? Why or why not?

Isn't there a tribe in the Amazon (or possibly the Himalayas, my memory is shot) where the people never came up with a concept of god, and have no religion?  If I'm remembering right, altho not completely without violence or conflict, they were substantially more peaceful than any other culture on the planet.  Of course they were also still living in Stone Age conditions in the 20th century.  I'm not saying that religion leads to advancement (esp. not in West where religion seems to set itself directly against science and technology) but there may be a link between conflict and advancement.  But I'd have to do one heck of a lot of research before I made any kind of definite statement about that.

Personally, my first reaction is that a godless/religionless world would be great but then I think of the people who do seem to need an outside force to make them behave decently, who honestly seem to have no sense of connection to others that gives them the empathy necessary to develop ethics on their own.  I don't know, maybe the best to hope for is a world leaning to Buddhism or Quakerism.

[MinnesotaMike]

I want society to mature past superstitious practices, not simply leave them altogether. We're definitely moving in the right direction, but not quite as fast as I would hope.

[Stevil]

Religion had its place in the past I guess.

But now that the world has evolved with globalisation and a mature common law, our society is much more accepting of people's diversity and have put much thought into a fair society based on equality and freedom of personal choice.

At one stage Religion may have been the leading light of human morality, but now it is sandbagging us on our journey to a more humanistic future.

[Too Few Lions]

Unsurprisingly for an atheist, I definitely think the world would be a far better place without religions. But I think the problem is religions and not the belief in gods per se, I don't have a problem with deism or pantheism. I've never heard of a deist wanting to kill non-believers or impose restrictive laws on others based on their beliefs. But yeah, it would be lovely to live in a world without religions.

[Whitney]

I don't think there would be a noticeable difference unless we also got rid of politics.

[xSilverPhinx]

I think that some people still need religions, need to feel like they're created in god's image, hold personal conversations with him and need an authority watching and telling them what to do. It helps that then they don't need to take full responisbility for whatever they think their god is telling them...

Sad but true.

I'm especially thinking about those who say that without god, there would be no reason not to do evil things. Really disturbing.

I think that some people just aren't grown up enough yet to be atheists, or hold any other beliefs other than one that involves personal gods.

Don't really know if the world would be a better place though, I'm not so sure I have all that faith in people...

[j.woodard24]

Twentythree, thank you for the thoughtful reply. Though I'm afraid I still disagree.

Religion is roughly defined as culture, belief systems and rituals. The reason that we have culture is due to what we collectively believe to be moral or appropriate and thus the ritual of daily life is developed out of this culture. What we collectively believe to be moral is based on how we view reality and our place in the world and how we perceive this gives us meaning and purpose. Not believing in what we have labeled the supernatural is just another way of clarifying to ourselves what is real and what is false and therefore what is moral and what is immoral and eventually this is expressed in generalities in culture. Without getting steeped in semantics it seems to me that religion could be defined as anything that lends itself to solidifying your view of reality as this in itself is a belief system or a meaning system. We cannot escape the fact that virtually everything we understand about the cosmos is based on hypothesis, Scientific guesses that are constantly changing and therefore even the known is unknown and if we believe the cosmos to be a certain way we are putting faith in the best possible guess of the best possible theory but at its core it is a guess a guess in which we must put our faith in. So atheism and rationalism when looked at completely objectively from an outside perspective is not terribly indistinguishable from religion, especially if you could remove historical bias from the traditional deity based religions.
It's strange, to see myself type this because I am not religious in the traditional sense I do tend to believe in science but since I have been a member of this forum I continue to see people evaluate themselves through a different lens than we evaluate people who believe in gods. Evolution has no such bias, genetically we have nearly identical brains, it seems to me that a the very core of each of our existence is a genetic predisposition to explain reality and to find our place and purpose therein. Whether this involves gods or not biologically speaking its basically the same phenomena...right? Maybe not I'm not a doctor, but I do think a lot...and what better to do on a forum like this than to explore those thoughts. It helps me to solidify how I view myself fin the world.

You are probably correct that our biology does not distinguish between our methodology. However, the mere fact that atheism exists demonstrates that a purely atheistic world is not beyond our biological capacity. We seem to have very different views of science. I personally think that religion is the near opposite of science. The distinction lies in that religion first claims to know something that it doesn't, and then is done. Science first claims not to know, and then tries, through long periods of trial and error, to figure it out. And actually, most of what we know is based on theory, not hypothesis. Most of what we know has been tested in some way or another. And if we satisfy our genetic predisposition in this way, rather than just saying "I already know", then a purely secular, more rational world is a happily realistic possibility.

I don't think that I would view atheism as a conclusion nor would I be able to look at rationalism as the cause of atheism. It seems to me like they go hand in hand, as the development of the pursuit of rational explanations of reality grows so does our propensity to consider atheism as an explanation of reality.  To say that rationalism is the reason that we are atheists is to say that #1, there are no irrational atheists and that #2 people who believe in gods are ostensibly irrational. I think instead that these are two sides of the same coin or to different options of a divergent path. At some point everyone makes a choice about how they definer reality...either with or without the aid of what we consider supernatural. This does not mean that those of us with faith abandon rational though nor do I think that rational thought is a necessary precursor to the abandoning of gods either. There are perfectly rational thinkers that believe in god and complete nutjobs that are atheists, rationalism in itself is not married to ones position on reality. So instead of Atheism being a conclusion of our system of thought I would like to think that it is born of discovery or forged In a decision of how you wish to explain reality to yourself.

Atheism necessarily must be the product of one recognizing that there isn't enough evidence to believe, and therefore no need - this is directly a product of a rationalist system of thought. And no, it is not to say that there are no irrational atheists. I am a rationalist. I also frequently engage in irrational behavior. The difference is in what matters to a person - evidence or assumption? If it's evidence, and evidence alone, then you are a rationalist. It is a system of thought, not a blanketing description of behavior. But I will agree with the second point. All belief in a god or gods is ostensibly irrational, as it arises from no rational premise, and therefore has no basis for its outlandish conclusions. There are fairly rational people that believe in a god, yes, but they are not rationalists. There is a very, very wide distinction between being a generally rational person, and being a rationalist. And atheism, to me, does not seem to be a choice. I couldn't believe again if I tried. I do think it's a great deal simpler than you make it out to be. Atheism means one thing, and one thing only: a lack of belief in a god. It is not a system of belief, and we may not extrapolate moral statements, life philosophies, or senses of purpose from it. "There is no god," is all that is necessary to say in order to define us as atheists, and it is really all that can be said.

I do actually think that atheism is rationally unjustifiable. Atheism as a belief system or an evolutionary tool is more rationally justifiable but it still requires me to believe that our life cycle, all of the joy, love hate and pain experienced is all part of an infinitely compounded complex chemical reaction. I'm not sure if I'm even articulating this well at all it feels like I'm in a feedback loop...nothing is explainable because explanation requires explanation...isn't there a famous phrase for this type of thought the type of though that continually loops back on itself using its own argument against itself until it is boiled down to uselessness...perhaps my train of thought has jumped the shark.

Atheism is in fact the only rationally justifiable position. That is not to say that the statement "there is no god" is rationally justifiable. It is to say that lack of belief in god is rationally justifiable, because there is absolutely no evidence for god (including the tealeological argument). Yes, I do believe that all of our consciousnesses are the results of chemical reactions, driven to replication, but that is what all scientific evidence suggests. If atheism is rationally unjustifiable, there is absolutely no reason to be an atheist. But fortunately, it is, and there is, and I am.  

I agree with both of you, Xjeepguy, MinnesotaMike, Stevil, and Too Few Lions (and to the latter, you make an excellent point about deism, though I personally think that deists are basically atheistic theists - if you'll forgive my turn of phrase). One thing, BooksCatsEtc:

Personally, my first reaction is that a godless/religionless world would be great but then I think of the people who do seem to need an outside force to make them behave decently, who honestly seem to have no sense of connection to others that gives them the empathy necessary to develop ethics on their own.  I don't know, maybe the best to hope for is a world leaning to Buddhism or Quakerism

If you just mean bad people, then I really think they are bad whether they are religious or not. I don't really think god (or his idea) ever convinced any truly bad person to be a good one. I think reason is the way to go. Throughout the world, the least religious societies have the lowest crime rates (including violent crime), STD rates, teen pregnancy rates, and so on and so forth. I think that without religion, the world would be a much more pleasant, happy, and safe place.

[j.woodard24]

I don't think there would be a noticeable difference unless we also got rid of politics.

Then what would anyone have to argue about?

I think that some people still need religions, need to feel like they're created in god's image, hold personal conversations with him and need an authority watching and telling them what to do. It helps that then they don't need to take full responisbility for whatever they think their god is telling them...
Sad but true.
I'm especially thinking about those who say that without god, there would be no reason not to do evil things. Really disturbing.
I think that some people just aren't grown up enough yet to be atheists, or hold any other beliefs other than one that involves personal gods.
Don't really know if the world would be a better place though, I'm not so sure I have all that faith in people...

I guess I have enough trust in reason, and a (perhaps unjustified) view that even the least of people are capable of more than anyone thinks, to think that a secularized world would emerge a much better place indeed. People that rely on god now might someday find that they don't have to. After all, I used to proudly tell people of my dependency on Yahweh, and now I am more proud of my godless autonomy as a human being than anything.

[Tank]

General note.

Attributing quotes is becoming lax, with a number of members not attributing quotes which makes subsequent response difficult to follow.

It's very easy to attribute a quote. In the start tag [quote] you add =name after the word quote thus to attribute a quote to me you need

[quote=Tank]Tank wrote this.[/quote]

becomes

Tank wrote this.

If you are making a number of quotations from one source then it is fine to just attribute the first one.

[Heisenberg]

I would say, without doubt, that a society without religion would be superior to a society with religion, all else equal. There's probably a lot of people out there who couldn't handle life without religion so I don't see it being extinguished any time soon. But I firmly believe that if and when our world has no more need for religion, it will be a much more pleasant place to live.