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What if there was no god? Nothing would change because there is no god.
What if there was no religion? Things would be very different indeed and for the better.
Prove Me Wrong.

Matias66 6 June 3
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Religion as I said is just an easy target for "liberals/progressives" to disarm their political enemies. It makes conservatives or those that want to preserve traditions appear irrational. If liberals themselves were more rational they would take a more critical look at socialism lite because the historical evidence is not on their side. Most of the gains in standard of living over the last two centuries have had more to do with the success of capitalism and applied science than social programs. Why that is involves a lot of complexity that they just push aside with emotional reasoning such as "minimizing suffering". They never deal with the mind boggling questions such as on what time frame or how wealth is created and the cost of that creation in terms of environmental impact both physical and cultural.

Cultures evolve and for the most part it is undirected. That is the case because there is nothing move complex in the universe. Both biologically and abstractly. While I'm not a conservatives I think it is pragmatic to not go monkeying around with things you don't understand such as culture. The religious concept of pride as a mortal sin comes to mind. That doesn't mean I'm against progress it just means I don't see anyone smart enough to predict with any certainty the consequences of social engineering. A good engineer is constantly reevaluation the cause and effects of their design but most liberalism is stagnant and ideological.

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You can enter at any time. but you can never leave.

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Seems the new majority of atheists are just as delusional as the religious. For example if you can't define what a woman is you may be delusional. If you still believe that Climate Change is an existential threat you may be delusional. If you think that Trump was a reincarnation of Hitler you may be delusional. Religion it turns out is just an easy target for those who want to feel intellectually superior but for the most part ignore history. In the 20th century most of the death and destruction was brought about by Atheists or at the very least unrelated to religion. The first World War, Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, Mao. Pol Pot, had nothing to do with religion. Going back in history perhaps the greatest cause of misery the world had ever seen was the Mongols, again events untied to religious beliefs.

Even when religion was superficial the excuse for death and destruction it's hard to see the same events not playing out in its absence. The religious wars in Europe that plagued the continent for two hundred years were clearly more political than religious. The crimes of Spain against the peoples of the Americas would have taken place with or without the Catholic church.

People believe many ridiculous things. It's not simply a matter of ignorance. For example the current obsession with the idea that racism, sexism, guns and bibles are the root of our societal ills is a welcome delusion for those unable to cope with reality. The truth is often very unpleasant. Years of liberal social engineering has had little positive effect. Late stage industrial development has had more to do with eliminating absolute poverty than the welfare state. At the same time the welfare state has devastated the social norms such as those around families and communities that made life bearable for the poor and minorities.

Attacking religion today is boorish, sophomoric, self aggrandizing, and irrelevant for the most part. Even the Muslim's who claim they are acting on religious beliefs to engage in holy war are actually engaged in a culture war much more complex than they are conscious of. If the current crop of atheists were a bit more sophisticated they would focus on freewill, agency, and dignity and quit being obsessed with religion. The battle over science has been mostly won, time to move on.

Why do you relate atheism with “what is a woman” or belief in climate change?
They have nothing to do with each other. To the contrary.

The wars you mention and dictators did not happen because of atheism.

For good people to do good things, you need nothing.
For bad people to do bad things you need nothing.
However, for good people to do bad things you need religion.

Religion JUSTIFY bad behaviour.
The Spanish justified what they did in south America through religion.

And therefore I view the current modern liberal movement as a religion.

@Hanno

What I'm trying to get at is that many atheists focus on religion as getting in the way of rationality. At the same time they ignore things that are equally irrational that are preventing society from moving forward with rational plans to deal with social issue. I picked "what is a woman" and climate change off hand. In the case of "what is a woman" people are ignoring the importance of biology in how they feel, think, and the choices they make. Humans have instincts just like any other animal and to live happy productive lives they have to come to some sort of arrangement with those instincts. In the case of climate change the attitude is almost apocalyptic. The evidence that climate change will result in another mass extinction is pretty weak. Yes there is a dramatic increase in the number of species that are going extinct but some species are doing better than ever and the total biomass is not shrinking as would typical be if we were experiencing a mass extinction. That doesn't mean I'm not concerned about global warming. It just means that environmentalism has become something of an eschatological cult.

I used the examples of past wars to show that you don't need a religious motivation to go to war. I would even question if wars of religion were actually about religion but rather cultural conflicts that would have taken place regardless of religion.

While the Spanish subjugation of Native Americans was excused on religious grounds it was really about gold, silver and the slaves to dig it out. Religion or not the Spaniards were going to exploit the native population the same as other nations exploited the availability of African slaves without any religious justification.

I think if we stretch the definition of religion to be simply a strong belief in something based on faith then yes you can included a lot of radical "liberal" beliefs as "religious". Technically however religion requires a supernatural belief system. I often say that humanism as practiced by "liberals" is a religion because it makes humans almost supernatural. This is somewhat justified because of the tremendous success of the abstract tools, languages such as mathematics, scientific systems of reasoning, financial systems and money, and other abstractions, that are "unnatural" or only indirectly tied to physical reality. Complex cultures as it were is almost as dependent on abstract reality as on physical reality. All of culture is abstract although it has physical manifestations.

As an aside it is important to understand that all but the simplest animals,, and maybe those as well, use abstract reasoning. A good example is that they assign agency to events that have no agent. That is the way evolution has worked. For example a dog may hear a book fall from a self in the adjacent room and assume "someone" did it. You can assign behavior to instinct or mental mechanics but that is missing the point. The abstraction of agency is part of the instinct. Humans have instincts as well but for the most part there is more layers of abstraction between stimulus and action.

The final point I want to make is that civilization/culture significantly alters instinctual behavior. Outside of social insects there are very few eusocial animals. Certainly our closest relatives are not eusocial in the strict sense. Civilization creates a kind of artificial eusociality. It's required because civilization is based on productivity which is alien to apes which simply exploit the existing environment. This is just one reason that understand biology is so important to cultural development. The average liberal, including most that are scientifically grounded, reject the importance eusociality and multilevel selection in human development. It's an irrational hangover from humanism that is "hopeful" about unlimited social engineering (socialism).

@wolfhnd
You make many valid points that I agree with.
However,
You seem to equate atheism with liberal thought. They have nothing to do with each other.

You can be an atheist and not support any of the things you mention.
Why would atheists ignore equally irrational things?

I for one don’t. Granted I am an agnostic, however there are many atheists who are not liberals.

So my issue is that you make statements that atheists do certain things and then have a whole discussion about liberals.

Atheists does now mean liberal and vice versa.

@Hanno

Your point is well taken. Atheism and liberal positions have nothing to do with each other. However the majority of atheists I know are liberals. The majority of religious people I know are conservative.

The problem is that atheism like everything else has become political to some extent. In part as a reaction to Tea Party Americans, the religious objection to abortion, school prayer, the teaching of evolution, so on and so forth. Those conservatives that are atheists are rarely militant about it unlike their liberal counterparts. You often would not even know they were atheists. Liberals tend to make a point of letting you know.

While I'm not a conservative I appreciate the role religion has played in building civilization. See Jordan Peterson for a full explanation. What I see as the value of religion is complicated. Someday I may try to articulate it.

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“Proof” is an Earthly value.

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” - C.S. Lewis

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It all depends on what societal or civilizational stage of development you idealize. Name a society that ever developed into a civilization without a unification through Cult-ure? Until the modern era, culture was pretty much a societal embodiment of a broadly and widely held religious system.

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Sounds like a tautology.

Which two terms are tautological ?

@Matias66 "What if there is no God? ...there is no God."

@GaryMysels Nature is God not HE or SHE

@maryrose ??? What does your comment have to do with mine?

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> What if there was no religion? Things would be very different indeed and for the better.

What's up? Pining for the good old days in the Gulag?

Here's some news for you: one does not have to subscribe to socialism or even Stalinism to be an atheist. Half of the adult population in Germany are self-identified "nones", and there is no Gulag here.

@Matias66 Yet.

I don't see your politicians banning all religions.

@FrankZeleniuk religion is money. money makes the world go round.

@FrankZeleniuk They do not have to ban anything. Secularization is a quasi-natural trend in modern , western-style societies. The US are the one outlier, and even there secularization is gaining ground, just look at the numbers of 'nones'.

@Matias66 The debate is not about whether secularization is gaining ground. It is whether a nation of no religion would be "better". The sole examples are communist nations, unless you consider communism a religion. Some do. But there you go. We can determine from historical precedent that atheism does not provide a better life for its citizens. We could argue that the use of force to ban religion is not healthy for a society. Communism has shown us that.
It is also not great for a government to endorse a single religion or make a religion a national State religion. All of South and Central America embraced Catholicism while North American governments basically kept religion separate from the State. Did South and Central America progress faster than North America? Of course, there are other factors to consider than just religion but I would say religion was a big one.

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