Poll: Would the world be a better place without religion?

[yourkie1921]

Bull. Language is the way people communicate. Religion has no such purpose.

Religion HAD a purpose, it was to maintain order untill governments could be established, thats why you'll never find tribes that don't believe in god, or a god like power. Cause they don't work out. However we have governments, we have laws, we have order. Religion is no longer needed, and thats why its dieing out.

I don't know about you, but I'd have an easier time convincing 8 neanderthals who use the same form of writing I do not to kill me than to convince one that there is a bearded man in the sky in control of our existance.

 

[Random Argument Man]

.

. The war of 1812 is the only war I can think of (off the top of my head) that wasn't cause by religion or dogma. So would the world be a better place without religion...^^^^ Yes

The American revolution wasn't caused PRIMARILY by religion.

The American revolution wasn't in 1812....

 

[Slayer_2]

Yep, no more insurgents. Now we just need to get rid of patriotism and have one global county, language and currency

 

[Littaly]

On a worldwide perspective yes, too many wars and conflicts are based on different believes. But on a personal level no, it brigs a lot of good to a lot of people.

 

[FunkyCouncil]

All I'm going to say about the matter is you can't just take everyones beliefs and call it religion, its far to vague a question to answer simply yes or no.. You're dragging in every single belief on the planet and that's a heck of a lot, that also includes things such as Paganism (which isn't atheism despite common belief) and other tiny tiny minority religions.. I think most religions are based around a better future or destiny than this one (eg. Christianity believes in the brighter future being life after death AKA Heaven) So I think it spreads goodwill for the most part.. And when people talk about corrupt religions its more the those who represent authority on the religion that are corrupt not the principles on which it is based..

 

[yourkie1921]

.

. The war of 1812 is the only war I can think of (off the top of my head) that wasn't cause by religion or dogma. So would the world be a better place without religion...^^^^ Yes

The American revolution wasn't caused PRIMARILY by religion.

The American revolution wasn't in 1812....

I know. He said the only war he can think of not caused by religion is 1812, I gave him one.

 

[DamienHell]

No you didn't. All you said was that these wars were caused by religion. That's all. I'm asking how you think they were caused by religion because I don't see where you're coming from.

And you said that dogma was equal to state worship, which is what I took issue to in my first comment.

And for the record, communism isn't a belief system at all, it's not even a political standpoint. All it is is a economic theory. One which opposed the American theory and was therefore wrong.

Look at the comment you quoted, now look at the comment before, I explain it.

One which opposed the American theory and was therefore wrong.

I had to quote that again *clap* *clap* nice closed mindedness. Communism doesn't work for more reasons then because it

opposed the American theory

I know. He said the only war he can think of not caused by religion is 1812, I gave him one.

Well the American revolution and the French revolution were both against monarchies, and monarchies are in part backed by "Divine Rite"

 

[Unknower]

Hahaha, next you'll say religious people who died in Stalin's purges only have themselves to blame.

EDIT: Hmmm, more posts appeared as I posted. Kinda makes this post a bit out of place.

 

[Ares Tyr]

You just said that every major war in human history was caused by religious differences more than less, which is a load of horse shit, I'm sorry to say. What did The Revolutionary War, The Spanish-American War, The French-Indian War, The American Civil War, WWI, WWII, The Korean War, or Vietname have to do with religion? Communism isn't a religion, its a governmental doctrine, and fighting against the spread of a government isn't a religious crusade. Its a war between two political doctrines trying to stop the spread of another.

Communism isn't a religion, it may have propaganda to bring glory to the state to encourage people to get behind it. Democracy and the American Ideal isn't a religion, its a doctrine. Just because somehting has fervant followers doesn't make it a religion automatically. Just because I'm a fervant believer in the Democratic rights doesn't mean I pray to George Washington and offer sacrament to Abraham Lincoln. Chairman Mao isn't the pope to China. Karl Marx isn't God. And the statement you made prior to your little comeback, is definetly a bunch of bullshit.

LOL you clearly know nothing of communism. They are taught that their leader IS god, when the US was sending food into North Korea the citizens were told that the US was paying tribute to the leader (not even gonna try and spell his name). US civil war was because of slavery, slavery which was defended by the bible. No christianity and the South would have had no position. WWI was caused by a religious terrorist group assassinating Archduke Ferdinand (or however you spell it) it escalated from there, Hitler was a devout catholic who believed he was doing gods work (if you say he's not it proves you know nothing about history he talked about his beliefs all the time)

One note, my good man. If you're trying to make a faux-intellectual arguement against me, its a horrible idea to start your sentence with the "LOL" as if it makes you sound any smarter.


At best, sir, you have a remedial understanding of history and war. North Korea is an extreme example of things, and Kim Jong Il is the guy who started the whole worship thing. The war itself was not started for religious reasons, it was started because South Koreans did not want a communist rule. Communism is an anti-religious government style and it tries its best to get its citizens to not be religious. Communists aren't all about worshipping their leaders. They might have parades and statues and what not of them, but Americans do also, they've carved mountains to depict leaders, that doesn't mean they worship them. Communists don't worship Karl Marx and Lenin, they just glorify them in the name of patriotism and to spread their governmental doctrines. You're basically insulting what it means to have a religion, what it means to have a spirituality, and your definetly making communists all over the world seem like a big group of blind morons.

The South in the Civil War wanted to keep slavery because it was an econimic powerhouse and without it, the South would lose ALOT of money because all of their enormous plantations were being worked by slaves. Regardless if slavery is defended in the Bible, their arguement and stand on it was not "We are entitled to slaves" it was "We need slaves to keep making all this money". And Lincoln's only stand on Slavery at the beginning was never "abolishment" but to keep it from spreading to any other region other than where it already existed. There were definetly other reasons.

The Black Hand that was responsible for the death of Franz Ferdinand were a nationalist extremist group, not a religious one. Their main goal was to prevent imperliasm, not to spread or defeat a religion. Again, your point is not there.

If Hitler said he was doing "God's work" then he was doing so in order to give his anti-semetic teachings an extra boost amongst his citizenry. He needed a scape goat to blame Germany's after-WWI fall, and he used the Jews (the minority). His anti-semetism also spread from his and the Nazi Party's own belief in white supremacy, which they tried to use science to prove, religion, and everything they could possibly get ahold of to get the German citizens to back their war effort and imperialism.

Just because Hitler used religion as a tool to gain supporters does not mean that religion is to blame for World War II. If Hitler were a real Christian or Catholic, and a logical man, then he would've realized he was whiping out the race of people whom his Lord and Savior belonged to. Hitler was a fanatic who tried to dilute and alter Christianity to work for his own needs, and he used it as tool. It was not the reason he started wars. The only thing that religion covered for him was his anti-semetic actions, not his imperialistic ideals and dreams of world domination.

 

[Phoenix Arrow]

No you didn't. All you said was that these wars were caused by religion. That's all. I'm asking how you think they were caused by religion because I don't see where you're coming from.

And you said that dogma was equal to state worship, which is what I took issue to in my first comment.

And for the record, communism isn't a belief system at all, it's not even a political standpoint. All it is is a economic theory. One which opposed the American theory and was therefore wrong.

Look at the comment you quoted, now look at the comment before, I explain it.

One which opposed the American theory and was therefore wrong.

I had to quote that again *clap* *clap* nice closed mindedness. Communism doesn't work for more reasons then because its

opposed the American theory

I refuse to accept you dictating what is true as an explanation. WWI was caused for various reasons. None of them religious. WWII was, again, caused for various reasons. None of them religious. Why don't you tell me WHY they were religious next time?

And I didn't say I supported the idea of communism, I said I didn't support the idea of America destroying ideologys which are different to them. British people aren't communist but we didn't build a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Neither did France, or Germany, or Japan.
Don't quote single lines of my text and take them out of context in future please.

 

[Saevus]

Bull. Language is the way people communicate. Religion has no such purpose.

Religion HAD a purpose, it was to maintain order untill governments could be established, thats why you'll never find tribes that don't believe in god, or a god like power. Cause they don't work out. However we have governments, we have laws, we have order. Religion is no longer needed, and thats why its dieing out.

Religion also serves a purpose.

It permits people to cope with life. It provides tools to deal with injustice; to make life feel meaningful (otherwise nihilism would be the order of the day, really); to get through events like death; etc. All the shit like governance and order are peripheral. Some traditions barely even focus on social functions, but instead on personal experiences and emotions.

And why is language necessary? Plenty of animals live communally without using a well-defined language.

I think what you mean to say is that, for the human race/civilization/society, language is inevitable. And religion, too, is inevitable. Philosophy can never displace it because philosophy does not allow for such flexibility and universality that a set of interpretive symbols does - and it doesn't even always satisfy the human condition.

LOL you clearly know nothing of communism. They are taught that their leader IS god, when the US was sending food into North Korea the citizens were told that the US was paying tribute to the leader (not even gonna try and spell his name). US civil war was because of slavery, slavery which was defended by the bible. No christianity and the South would have had no position. WWI was caused by a religious terrorist group assassinating Archduke Ferdinand (or however you spell it) it escalated from there, Hitler was a devout catholic who believed he was doing gods work (if you say he's not it proves you know nothing about history he talked about his beliefs all the time)

Communism is, actually, littered with religious phenomena. But other than that, you're talking out of your ass. Slavery was justified economically at the end of the day. WWI was the result of long-standing international tensions, arising mostly because Germany was a late-comer in the Imperial age and Nationalism was the soup du jour in almost every major nation.

And Hitler may have been religious, but he was successful in his 'divine' work because he played up the general populace's sense of jealous, vengeance, etc.; entirely un-Christian emotions. The humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles had far more to do with WWII than religion.

You're taking religion from the periphery of many events and putting it dead centre, in the place of the real reasons for conflict such as economy, politics, nationalism, etc.

French-Indian War = economics and expansionism (Why bother with constant skirmishes when you can just crush the opposition for good and control their land?)
American Revolution = economics (British dicking you with taxes? Kill 'em!)
Napoleonic Wars = economics (No, really, you try to figure out how to employ and feed millions of angry, poor Frenchmen other than telling them to go kill shit and steal food)
Civil War = politics and economics (Federal policy vs. states rights combined with 'Bawww we don't want to work the land ourselves that means less money and fun')

And so on. Religion has been pretty much just chilling on the sidelines and getting dragged in for propaganda purposes since the Enlightenment. Honestly, not even the recent conflicts in the Balkans have been entirely religious in nature.

 

[Random Argument Man]

It permits people to cope with life.

Only if your life sucks to the point you should just kill yourself, or if you're mentally retarded. And yes, I do think you should kill yourself under certain conditions.

It provides tools to deal with injustice; to make life feel meaningful

no it doesn't

to get through events like death; etc.

Oh, cry me a river. Death is supposed to hit you hard when someone close to you dies. And you're supposed to be able to cope with it without lieing to yourself your whole life. This is coming from someone who's been on the brink of tears from fucking fanfiction.

Well this is sad, but reported!

 

[yourkie1921]

For what? So your saying when someone close to you dies you shouldn't care. Also, I doubt anyone here has a life so bad they should just kill themself. At minimum we all have yahtzee to live for so under my conditions none of us should commit suicide.

 

[Lucane]

Thinking about it for a second before voting I was going to say it would be better without religion then I thought about all the people in Power over the years who've ignored the rules of thier own religions to benifit them selves an thought if religion didn't exsist these individuals wouldn't have any what so ever to consider what is and isn't to far. So I think in the grand scale of National ethics would remain similar individual people could have better relationships.

 

[Random Argument Man]

For what? So your saying when someone close to you dies you shouldn't care. Also, I doubt anyone here has a life so bad they should just kill themself. At minimum we all have yahtzee to live for so under my conditions none of us should commit suicide.

I think I can get your point. However, this http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.50823 says otherwise.

 

[SixAngryDwarves]

Yes.

Religion is turning us against each other. Even more so back in the 20th century and before then. If Jews weren't Jews, to really think Hitler would have a problem? He still might have, we never know, but at the same time, the men and women without blond hair and blue eyes could have pretended to support the Nazi's to avoid being killed. I know, I'm going to get flamed 100% for saying that, but its the truth.
Just like race, people start war with each other for being different. Even though religion isn't as big a factor now as it was before, people still use that as an excuse to harm another. As if skin color and race wasn't enough already.

So the holocaust is only one example, im sure there are plenty others in the past.
And one other quick point, just like racism, we can't get rid of Religion. There will always be that group of people who believe in one thing, and the other group who believes different.
-SixAngryDwarves

 

[The Iron Ninja]

If Jews weren't Jews, to really think Hitler would have a problem?

Yes. It is commonly refered to as the first world war.

 

[stompy]

I've noticed a lot of you are arguing that we don't need religion because it's outstaying its welcome. But, the OP is asking "What would we have done if religion hadn't been introduced?". He's not asking what would happen if religion was removed, but if it was never there to start with.

In this case, humanity as a whole would have no unity, meaning we couldn't advance. Life without religion would be very different from what we know, and many things would turn out worse. Just because events like the Holocaust wouldn't of happened because they'd be now Jews, Hitler probably would've still persecuted all those without blue eyes and blond hair.

 

[leugim789]

its not religion, so no, its the ability for people to think for themselves, for there to be absolute peace, people would have to be void of any and all opinion. not that i endorse no opinions, i happen to like mine.

 

[crazy-j]

Religion isn't the problem. Extremism is. Dogma is. Religion has a positive effect.

i think you are 100% right

almost all religions teachings are what our society would call "proper" or "good" its just that some people become so devoted to what they believe in that they will go to any length to promote their religion. if u look at most wars critically any of them have been started because of fanatics of 2 different religions both think that theirs is the best and then they think the only way 2 settle it is to fight each other, wich solves NOTHING

but looking at what i just wrote i see that as long as we have religion's there will always be fanatics so we have 2 toss religion...but we can not do that because religion has laid down the moral code for humanity..it is the guideline for what is right and wrong so technically i dont think there is really a solution