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.
I feel the need to disagree with you a bit here. The belief in a god or higher power can drive people to do terrible things, regardless of any form of organization or power structure.
Though I would also argue that the concepts of “religion” and “organization” cannot be separated. To be considered a religion, one would expect an organized set of doctrines, values, etc., likely taught by a spiritual leader or practitioner. The heirarchy of student and teacher is intrinsic to religion. The enlightened, and the lost.
Further, faith/religion based views on the world are, in my view, inherently “unscientific”. If you already feel you have the answers to lifes big questions, what motivation is there to continue research? Or even worse, could they end up wasting resources on religious pursuits.
Anyway, just my 2c.
I can see why you have that position, and it is absolutely valid. What I reacted to is the idea of it being faith vs religion - but if you have faith/believe in a deity or something divine, that would by definition be a religious belief, no? But this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an organized religion like Christianity. This is what I was getting at with my poorly worded comment.
The underlying issue for this kind of conversation is that when people say “religion”, most people think highly organized religions like Christianity or Islam and such. But what if a person has their own or (for lack of a better term) a “non-traditional” belief system that includes some sort of deity/deities? Is that not religion? Maybe i see the word with a wider definition that is wrong, idk,
Anyway, as other commenter said - religion can be absolutely used as a tool for power, or to have excuses for terrible behavior. Thing is, the people that do would just use another tool if no religion existed.
As for the scientific argument - we don’t know (or at least I don’t) but Greek philosophers and scientists didn’t live or work in non-religious environment. There was religion present and yet they built important foundations for science today. Same with people in Arabic world, afaik. Hell, there were scientists that were Christians as well. It boils down to one thing - if there is organized religion with people at top who use it as a tool for power.
So to summarize - no, I don’t think religion in general is inherently bad. It’s about what people do with it. And the problem starts at a point where you want and need other people to conform to your religious beliefs.