Question of the Week #5: A World Without Religion?
Hey there,
It’s that time of the week again and it’s my turn to present a question for you to ponder over. It’s something I think about a lot actually and it’s something I’m not so sure I have a firm answer for. The “sort-of” answer I do have is an uncomfortable one.
Do you think we can ever have a world truly free of religion?
Right now, my answer is no. I think religion is too deep-rooted. But what are your thoughts?
Sadly I expect there will always be some people with crazy ideas, and one of them will probably be a skydaddy. Humans are too fallible to eradicate it from everyone.
The best we can hope for is that religious belief will be reduced to low enough levels that anyone still hanging on to religion will be widely regarded as crazy as opposed to being given the respect they still are in 2012. That *might* be possible some day if we work hard enough, but I’m a pessimist.
Mr. Nerd, I hear ya. I think it will defo get a lot less popular BUT I don’t know if it will ever be totally eradicated. Then again, so many people once thought the earth was flat if you recall.
I can think of a world without religion that exists right now, JUPITER. But assuming you mean in a more practical way a world where humans exist without religion, then I’m not sure. I think people will always have irrational beliefs.
I think it depends what you mean by “free from religion”. If you mean one where zero people have religious beliefs, then no. If you mean one where there are zero adherents to an organized religious faith, then no. If you mean one where religious beliefs have no standing or significance in public life, then… maybe. Not for a very very long time, though.
That’s an interesting point you raise, Ian. Well I think I mean where the majority of people hold no “religious” or superstitious beliefs, and do not follow organised religion. I’m in that kind of vein of thought I think…
A world without a significant body of humans who subscribe to theistic beliefs is possible, if terribly unlikely, but a world in which different peoples don’t unite around elaborate and at least somewhat illusory schemes of moral and epistemological thought is pretty much unconceivable as our desire for purposeful and principled existence, and need for tribal customs and community, is too strong. Even if people went off the idea of God, in other words, they’d keep everything else to do with religion.
I don’t think religion will ever be truly gone from our world. I would consider that a realistic statement rather than a pessimistic one, especially when you take onto account that some people still believe the Earth is flat.
But in terms of having a world free from religion in the sense that it has no leverage in government, law or the rest of society and little merit in general – I am more hopeful but still rather pessimistic. I feel that progress is being made however, even if it is only in certain parts of the world. The middle-east is another thing entirely.
I still think that the progress that is being made could lead us into a world that has far less religion over the next few generations. There is unfortunately always the threat of self-fulfilling extremism from people who think that the world is going to end… so they endeavor to end the world. But barring any potential nuclear warfare, I think we could very well see a world where religion plays less of a role.
In any part of the world where religious orthodoxy is not compulsory and enforced by the use of extreme and brutal punishment, religion is in long term decline. So, at least the developed world is likely to be free of it eventually, unless this decline suffers a reversal or at least a levelling off. The presence of the internet and the high profile of the New Atheist movement suggests that this is unlikely. I find it odd that my parent’s generation still regard themselves as Christians while in reality they are totally indifferent to religion, but this does suggest that the decline is a lot further advanced than the stats would indicate.
In the nineteenth century educated people were predicting the imminent demise of religion due to the spread of education and science. The fact that they were so over optimistic has to give us pause for thought, but it is happening, just more slowly than expected.
Imagine you are watching a magic trick take place. It is the magician not pulling a rabbit out of the hat; but instead telling the audience over and over again that there is indeed definitely a rabbit in there – and that they just have to trust him.
Far be it for the majority to actually even want to see the rabbit, they are just comforted by the fact that its there with them, in the same room. Even if it is only a projection. Enough cajoling from a good enough magician will not only tell you that the rabbit is real, and tangible, but that it now has degrees in sociology, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, extensive studies of cardio-thorassic surgery, cancer treatments and is a highly accomplished firefighter, pilot and sports coach. The rabbit is malleable. The rabbit is imperishable. Not because it exists and is credible. But instead because the people for whom the rabbit seems helps the most can make it become almost anything.
Any audience dumb enough to be conned into believing that the rabbit is real without seeing it first, isn’t going to suddenly assume there was no rabbit just because the magician is constantly having his show dissected by the glaring eyes of those with whom he holds no common ground.
With this, religion will never go away. We will never be rid of it. We can keep on at it, day and night, year after year, race and gender and sex and ideological lines shattered in the process; and there will still be a majority for whom the promise of the rabbit exceeds the cold, unforgiving reality of the empty hat.
I think the optimist in me would agree and say that we might be rid of religion one day in the very distant future and that the process is just happening VERY slowly. However, let’s keep it real. I think there will be parts of the world where irrational belief in deities or “God” exists. I think it’s something left behind from our prehistoric origins. Religion was a sort of “science” once upon a time in the sense that it was a method to try and explain what could not be explained. Now we have science to do that in a more rational way.
But ya know guys, say religion disappears… what if it is replaced with something else?! Yikes!
I doubt any significant steps in either direction will occur in my lifetime though.
I was speaking to a friend about this. Someone told me that the reason I am an atheist is because I am “too well-educated”!!! This came from someone who I’d say was very intelligent. Scary. But this idea of even very rational and intelligent people believing in “God”, Christian scientists (!!) means that Religion has affixed a firm place in our lives, like it or not. If people at the forefront of science can still believe and even try to MARRY religion and science then where is the hope for people in the deepest and darkest of places.
I think that I still think religion is too deep-rooted. But then I have to ask myself if that means that any attempts to change this would be in vain… I don’t think I actually think that.
That ‘too well educated’ line is such a blow-off. Its the even more stupid version of someone finding out that you are against religion and assuming you are a satanist by default. Grrrr!
If ‘our current religions’ disappeared it would only be because other more fanciful, promise-filled bullcrap replaced them. Ask a Scientologist who used to be a Christian…The ‘something else’ argument is well argued by Sam Harris in ‘The End Of Faith’. His direction for the argument speaks of what would happen if ‘every memory of every religion every invented was suddenly erased from sight and memory of every human’.
Bluntly, – like biker gangs and their criminal activities – certain religious association has pay-offs, regardless of how silly or impossible they may seem to a non-believer; the promise of something (money, eternal life, anarchy, martyrdom, co-opting of power for selfish gains etc) is what can often keep a member even after their initial fervour for the belief itself has waned. The knock-on effect, and indeed its personal benefits, are powerful tools that are almost devoid of religion themselves, and almost certainly steer wildly off course from the moral teachings that, with all the best intent in the world, are now clouded with extra-curricular acts that house the true reason for a person at least still paying lip-service to a belief.
The first thing that happens when a priest gets accused of sexual assault? His parishioners rally around him in support.
The first thing that happens after an islamic suicide attack, anywhere in the world? Western media does everything it can to play down the religious element, and the religious element that caused the act use it as a motivating springboard to martyrdom, heroism and as a recruitment drive for the next wave of flesh and blood robots they can line up and strap a pack of ball-bearings to and send on a bus-ride.
The first thing that happens when ultra-orthodox jews viciously torment and demean a female bus passenger? Their community tried to justify that the girl is at fault.
The insular barrier between what is good and what is right by your religious beliefs is insanely thick, and rarely do the two points meet. The first few commandments make sense, but once you start reading the rest you start to question what the meaning behind writing things quite so outlandish actually was. It has nothing to do with morals. It has to do with control.
If all the religions we are familiar with right now disappeared tomorrow, it would be because they had been replaced with other nonsense. Look at the last 4000 years. Thats happened hundreds of times already.
“Religion was a sort of “science” once upon a time in the sense that it was a method to try and explain what could not be explained.”
I’d actually challenge that it was never that. I have long disagreed with folk about that fairly commonly held viewpoint. The holy books weren’t written to fill gaps in knowledge. They were written to be *the* knowledge. You submitted to their every word, at least when challenged, or you died. They were never there to inspire you to learn, just there to exercise dominion. To be taken at face value. Never to be questioned. There was always people interested in not being interested in what holy books told them, but they were burned, raped or stoned to death for their decisions. Scientists seek knowledge out. Alchemy was considered a science. It was considered ‘the’ science by a lot of royalty; the authoritative word of an alchemist did for its time what the words of surgeons and biologists does (or tries to do) for us today. That is, it tries to generate wonder and excitement through facts. Obviously, over time it was well established that alchemy and the like were bogus bad-science parading as science; dangerous experiments with zero safety measures established, but alchemy never stood in your face and said ‘this is all you can know, never question it’. It was always finding new things to try.
Religion is the yardstick. And its the guy telling you both how long the yardstick is, and why you aren’t allowed to challenge that ruling. Science never does that, lest it be trashed very quickly as ‘not science’. Religion hasn’t wavered from that same course it started on thousands of years ago.
Yes.
Sadly I expect there will always be some people with crazy ideas, and one of them will probably be a skydaddy. Humans are too fallible to eradicate it from everyone.
The best we can hope for is that religious belief will be reduced to low enough levels that anyone still hanging on to religion will be widely regarded as crazy as opposed to being given the respect they still are in 2012. That *might* be possible some day if we work hard enough, but I’m a pessimist.
Alex, expand.
Mr. Nerd, I hear ya. I think it will defo get a lot less popular BUT I don’t know if it will ever be totally eradicated. Then again, so many people once thought the earth was flat if you recall.
Some people still do. Re: religion – That diminishing curve gets frightfully dangerous the closer toward zero that it inevitably marches.
The closer we get to religion’s decline the more extreme and dangerous some people will get. I agree.
I can think of a world without religion that exists right now, JUPITER. But assuming you mean in a more practical way a world where humans exist without religion, then I’m not sure. I think people will always have irrational beliefs.
We can establish a world free of religion by infusing rationality in our children and changing our education system.
I think it depends what you mean by “free from religion”. If you mean one where zero people have religious beliefs, then no. If you mean one where there are zero adherents to an organized religious faith, then no. If you mean one where religious beliefs have no standing or significance in public life, then… maybe. Not for a very very long time, though.
I should also add that I don’t particularly want a world “free from religion” in the first definition. Maybe not in the second, either.
That’s an interesting point you raise, Ian. Well I think I mean where the majority of people hold no “religious” or superstitious beliefs, and do not follow organised religion. I’m in that kind of vein of thought I think…
A world without a significant body of humans who subscribe to theistic beliefs is possible, if terribly unlikely, but a world in which different peoples don’t unite around elaborate and at least somewhat illusory schemes of moral and epistemological thought is pretty much unconceivable as our desire for purposeful and principled existence, and need for tribal customs and community, is too strong. Even if people went off the idea of God, in other words, they’d keep everything else to do with religion.
I don’t think religion will ever be truly gone from our world. I would consider that a realistic statement rather than a pessimistic one, especially when you take onto account that some people still believe the Earth is flat.
But in terms of having a world free from religion in the sense that it has no leverage in government, law or the rest of society and little merit in general – I am more hopeful but still rather pessimistic. I feel that progress is being made however, even if it is only in certain parts of the world. The middle-east is another thing entirely.
I still think that the progress that is being made could lead us into a world that has far less religion over the next few generations. There is unfortunately always the threat of self-fulfilling extremism from people who think that the world is going to end… so they endeavor to end the world. But barring any potential nuclear warfare, I think we could very well see a world where religion plays less of a role.
In any part of the world where religious orthodoxy is not compulsory and enforced by the use of extreme and brutal punishment, religion is in long term decline. So, at least the developed world is likely to be free of it eventually, unless this decline suffers a reversal or at least a levelling off. The presence of the internet and the high profile of the New Atheist movement suggests that this is unlikely. I find it odd that my parent’s generation still regard themselves as Christians while in reality they are totally indifferent to religion, but this does suggest that the decline is a lot further advanced than the stats would indicate.
In the nineteenth century educated people were predicting the imminent demise of religion due to the spread of education and science. The fact that they were so over optimistic has to give us pause for thought, but it is happening, just more slowly than expected.
It’s incredibly hard to imagine, but I think anything is possible and you never know what could happen in the distant, DISTANT future…
Imagine you are watching a magic trick take place. It is the magician not pulling a rabbit out of the hat; but instead telling the audience over and over again that there is indeed definitely a rabbit in there – and that they just have to trust him.
Far be it for the majority to actually even want to see the rabbit, they are just comforted by the fact that its there with them, in the same room. Even if it is only a projection. Enough cajoling from a good enough magician will not only tell you that the rabbit is real, and tangible, but that it now has degrees in sociology, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, extensive studies of cardio-thorassic surgery, cancer treatments and is a highly accomplished firefighter, pilot and sports coach. The rabbit is malleable. The rabbit is imperishable. Not because it exists and is credible. But instead because the people for whom the rabbit seems helps the most can make it become almost anything.
Any audience dumb enough to be conned into believing that the rabbit is real without seeing it first, isn’t going to suddenly assume there was no rabbit just because the magician is constantly having his show dissected by the glaring eyes of those with whom he holds no common ground.
With this, religion will never go away. We will never be rid of it. We can keep on at it, day and night, year after year, race and gender and sex and ideological lines shattered in the process; and there will still be a majority for whom the promise of the rabbit exceeds the cold, unforgiving reality of the empty hat.
I think the optimist in me would agree and say that we might be rid of religion one day in the very distant future and that the process is just happening VERY slowly. However, let’s keep it real. I think there will be parts of the world where irrational belief in deities or “God” exists. I think it’s something left behind from our prehistoric origins. Religion was a sort of “science” once upon a time in the sense that it was a method to try and explain what could not be explained. Now we have science to do that in a more rational way.
But ya know guys, say religion disappears… what if it is replaced with something else?! Yikes!
I doubt any significant steps in either direction will occur in my lifetime though.
I was speaking to a friend about this. Someone told me that the reason I am an atheist is because I am “too well-educated”!!! This came from someone who I’d say was very intelligent. Scary. But this idea of even very rational and intelligent people believing in “God”, Christian scientists (!!) means that Religion has affixed a firm place in our lives, like it or not. If people at the forefront of science can still believe and even try to MARRY religion and science then where is the hope for people in the deepest and darkest of places.
I think that I still think religion is too deep-rooted. But then I have to ask myself if that means that any attempts to change this would be in vain… I don’t think I actually think that.
My mind is blown.
That ‘too well educated’ line is such a blow-off. Its the even more stupid version of someone finding out that you are against religion and assuming you are a satanist by default. Grrrr!
If ‘our current religions’ disappeared it would only be because other more fanciful, promise-filled bullcrap replaced them. Ask a Scientologist who used to be a Christian…The ‘something else’ argument is well argued by Sam Harris in ‘The End Of Faith’. His direction for the argument speaks of what would happen if ‘every memory of every religion every invented was suddenly erased from sight and memory of every human’.
Bluntly, – like biker gangs and their criminal activities – certain religious association has pay-offs, regardless of how silly or impossible they may seem to a non-believer; the promise of something (money, eternal life, anarchy, martyrdom, co-opting of power for selfish gains etc) is what can often keep a member even after their initial fervour for the belief itself has waned. The knock-on effect, and indeed its personal benefits, are powerful tools that are almost devoid of religion themselves, and almost certainly steer wildly off course from the moral teachings that, with all the best intent in the world, are now clouded with extra-curricular acts that house the true reason for a person at least still paying lip-service to a belief.
The first thing that happens when a priest gets accused of sexual assault? His parishioners rally around him in support.
The first thing that happens after an islamic suicide attack, anywhere in the world? Western media does everything it can to play down the religious element, and the religious element that caused the act use it as a motivating springboard to martyrdom, heroism and as a recruitment drive for the next wave of flesh and blood robots they can line up and strap a pack of ball-bearings to and send on a bus-ride.
The first thing that happens when ultra-orthodox jews viciously torment and demean a female bus passenger? Their community tried to justify that the girl is at fault.
The insular barrier between what is good and what is right by your religious beliefs is insanely thick, and rarely do the two points meet. The first few commandments make sense, but once you start reading the rest you start to question what the meaning behind writing things quite so outlandish actually was. It has nothing to do with morals. It has to do with control.
If all the religions we are familiar with right now disappeared tomorrow, it would be because they had been replaced with other nonsense. Look at the last 4000 years. Thats happened hundreds of times already.
@Seb
“Religion was a sort of “science” once upon a time in the sense that it was a method to try and explain what could not be explained.”
I’d actually challenge that it was never that. I have long disagreed with folk about that fairly commonly held viewpoint. The holy books weren’t written to fill gaps in knowledge. They were written to be *the* knowledge. You submitted to their every word, at least when challenged, or you died. They were never there to inspire you to learn, just there to exercise dominion. To be taken at face value. Never to be questioned. There was always people interested in not being interested in what holy books told them, but they were burned, raped or stoned to death for their decisions. Scientists seek knowledge out. Alchemy was considered a science. It was considered ‘the’ science by a lot of royalty; the authoritative word of an alchemist did for its time what the words of surgeons and biologists does (or tries to do) for us today. That is, it tries to generate wonder and excitement through facts. Obviously, over time it was well established that alchemy and the like were bogus bad-science parading as science; dangerous experiments with zero safety measures established, but alchemy never stood in your face and said ‘this is all you can know, never question it’. It was always finding new things to try.
Religion is the yardstick. And its the guy telling you both how long the yardstick is, and why you aren’t allowed to challenge that ruling. Science never does that, lest it be trashed very quickly as ‘not science’. Religion hasn’t wavered from that same course it started on thousands of years ago.