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Do you think the world would have been a better place if there were no religions?

I’m having conflicting thoughts about religion in shaping human history.

As an atheist, it seems obvious to me that if there were no religion from the start, the world would have been a better place than it is now. There would be no religious wars, honor killings, more freedom, no religious leaders abusing their powers, no waste of labor and money on religious things, etc. It may seem that we would be more educated and have better understanding.

My whole conflict arises from the fact that “fear is a better driver than education and reasoning.” As no system is efficient and perfect, the absence of religion would have caused more crimes. Religion promotes fear (the concept of an afterlife, hell) if you do something wrong. If there were no religion, humans may have committed numerous crimes without fearing consequences. You could say that it is due to religions that numerous wars have happened in history. But that is a tiny percentage of the whole population. Most people lived happier with religion as it introduced morals ,ethics and consequences for wrongdoing(big factor). One would think and question before doing something wrong.

You could also say that if we were non-religious from the start, we would have had better education, reasoning, different type ethics and morals etc. But as I said earlier, no system is efficient, and since non-religion doesn’t promote fear if you don’t get caught by others, there would be more crimes without fearing consequences if they don’t get caught by others, which was easy in the old days.

So, I’m thinking if religion did better in the early days.

And I know that nowadays it’s a different story, and non-religion is obviously better.

alexc ,

The answer (to me) is a resounding yes. I firmly believe that belief in the Supernatural is in-built into all of us. It’s an off-shoot of us being incredibly good at pattern matching combined with our need for parental guidance for so long and a fear of death -

To get past this, we need two things: A personal willingness to ask questions and follow the answers (which is a basic description of science) and we need a society that is willing to embrace these individuals.

That we aren’t quite there yet means we end up with leaders embracing religion, which is reinforced by the masses accepting their dogma. The whole thing about “religion creating morality” is BS and just another form of dogma.

It may be entirely simplistic, and it probably puts too much faith in human capacity, but I think we could move in that direction if we just prioritized learning and inquisitiveness. Note, this is not the same as making people go to college. Learning is a life skill…

Infynis ,

Religion exists because it’s a way to control people you can’t reason with for whatever reason. It’s definitely a net negative now, and has been for centuries imo, but back at the beginning it was an important cornerstone of civilization

fsxylo ,

If there were no religions I’d figure that human race is one where tribalism can’t catch on as well, in which case there would probably be a lot less organized violence like wars.

Individual crimes are always going to happen with or without religion. Crimes generally have real tangible punishments and there are still criminals. Imaginary punishments aren’t going to do much to stop them.

A_Very_Big_Fan ,

We’d certainly be better off in the education/intelligence department if we promoted skepticism and criticized faith or any belief without evidence, but to be fair the word “better” is more broad than that…

Hikermick ,

Something i read during the beginning of the Iraq War put things in perspective. During the time of monarchies it was suicidal to challenge them . Religion provided a balance because you can’t kill God. Kings and queens learned to work with religious leaders to help deal with the populace. Democracy made it less necessary. I don’t know if any of this is true but it does make sense

themurphy ,

Iran and Turkey would be a better place, that’s for sure. Especially Iran was a free country, women rights and everything. Now priests control the country, and women are getting killed for not wearing their clothing “correct”.

Also, the whole western world entered the “dark ages” which was a big push backwards in terms of living standards and science. That was because of religion, so we might be 100-200 years ahead now, if it wasn’t for that.

BearOfaTime ,

You’d have to cut out the part of our brain that’s responsible for religious thinking. So what does that do to humanity?

kubica ,

What I would want is that some people wouldn't try to bend religion to their will. But anyway what are religions but something that has been shaped over time by people... Sigh, whatever.

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