What if we could get rid of religion?

[LAGC]

What would take the place of dogma and superstition, assuming the latter would ever go away?

Color me elitist, but I just can't imagine a sizable portion of humanity that basks in willful ignorance would somehow become enlightened without religion as their crutch to lean on. Wouldn't equally ignorant political ideologies and belief systems "fill the gap" so to speak? Does not most of humanity need something greater than themselves to believe on, to justify their lives?

Isn't that the 800-lb. gorilla in the room? Sometimes I think the best we could hope for is for atheism to become a sizable minority (much larger than it is now) but surely as it grows you will find more ignorant members filling its ranks. I'm just picturing masses of people who don't believe in religion simply because no one else does, not because of any careful thought put into the matter.

That's one thing that makes atheism so interesting, is because it is unique, it's a minority position that only a privileged few are privy to. Wouldn't some of that allure be lost if everyone was an atheist?

Am I just being an elitist snob in thinking this way, that only a select few could ever really appreciate what being an atheist means?

I just wonder that while most atheists now could be said to hold favorable political beliefs, that would not necessarily be the case if a large swath of humanity signed onto the bandwagon. I'm just picturing a lot more Ayn Rands and Charles Krauthhammers popping up.

This site is enough to give pause:

http://www.theatheistconservative.com/

(I notice they don't like Richard Dawkins at all.)

[Skink]

1. let's concentrate on fast food.

and corn syrup etc. That is really what is killing us.

[Ken Burch]

4. True. As long as there are cheeseburgers, we'll still need prayer

n/t.

[Divine Discontent]

2. and in turn, there are ignorant bigot types who are religious just because it is what most others do

yet, so many who aren't are so quick to hoist up those people as being the poster children for ALL who do believe.

[darkstar3]

3. As you seem to expect, you would indeed get an army of Randites.

:scared:

[Warpy]

6. Not necessarily

The only thing most of my fellow atheists and I share is a lack of belief in any god or gods.

Expecting a majority of atheists to walk in any sort of lockstep or espouse any political philosophy is like expecting the same of people with brown eyes or red hair.

[darkstar3]

9. This is true, but you're missing a key issue.

LAGC is talking about millions, possibly billions of people who participate already in authoritarian religions suddenly becoming "atheists" because religion has been eliminated. They would FLOCK to a substitute, and Rand's disgusting shit would qualify.

[vixengrl]

10. The newly-minted atheists might just bail because their church

wallows in "social justice" and their very good tv friend Glenn Beck said to "Run away! Run away!" :evilgrin:

Sadly, atheism doesn't always means skepticism or logical pursuits. It's just an absence of God-acceptance. And by skepticism, I mean the real deal--not the "denialist" bullshit of contrarians who might decide they don't agree with global warming or vaccinations because they are "hipper than science". I mean people who actually decide they want to live fact-based lives. I tend to believe that facts generally lean liberal. But I suspect that just because authoritarian personality-types do away with "god", doesn't mean they couldn't glom on to any strong personality (like Rand) as an "authority" to fill the "god-sized hole" their insecurity leaves them with.

[Ken Burch]

7. The Randites(in a weird mirror-image of the Marxists they were obsessed with)

Essentially became their OWN religion, with The Lady Ayn Almighty as both messiah and high priest.

[Ken Burch]

5. If we got rid of religion, somebody would bring it back

The need for meaning, solace and clarity that drives the religious impulse will be with us always.

[iris27]

11. Yup. Religion was spawned when newly-sentient humans realized they would die someday,

and then wondered why they were alive at all, and couldn't cope with the existential angst. Unless you can cure death, or the fear of it, humans will find things to believe which soothe that discomfort.

[tama]

26. Not a convincing hypothesis

In light of anthropological comparative study of religion, or more generally worldviews. There is no generally accpeted scientific definition of 'religion' as object of adacemic study, only family resemblance, but it is generally accepted that what is central to birth and meaning of religions is 'spiritual experience'.

Also it cannot be said that fear of death is universally as strong phenomenon as it is in ego-driven West.

BTW is freezing your brain in hope of afterlife, believing that science will advance that way (and that "you" ARE your brain), religion or can non-religious atheists freeze their brains too?

[ironbark]

28. If you do freeze your brain please remember

Invention- Microwave = the most humane way of re-heating frozen hamsters in 1980's cryogenics experiments.

;-)

[Ozymanithrax]

8. Look people want to believe in something...

A lot of human systems work like religion. I saw a study on politics that found that the same places that are active when a believer is worshiping his or her deity works when a person is listening to a politician that he or she really supports. If you look at the way people tend to fall in line behind big political movements, it works just like religion. Many of use are liberals, Conservatives, or Libertarians because we have faith that those ideologies are right. No matter what kind of fact and logic you throw at most people, few change their political religion. Hell, belief in UFOs, Ghosts, and the idea that the earth (GAEA) is a living organism are just religion.

I am an agnostic because after a lot of searching I am pretty sure that religions based on the bible, the koran, or any other holy book are not a reflection of reality or fact. I can not prove there is no God, but I am not going to go the full Atheism route. It is irrelevant to my life.

People will find something to believe in. When some event occurs that changes the paradigm of their belief system, they make adjustments and go on believing.

Religion won't go away, ever.

[tama]

29. Worldviews

Can't do without them. Even if you believe like buddhist's that it's all just illusion, that's still a world view. To mind, not a nihilistic but compassionate one.

The main thing seems to be that flexible world views are more tolerant of each other than rigid, regardless of world view in question.

[PassingFair]

30. It doesn't sound like you believe in any Gods.

I don't "believe" that there are any gods either.

I don't claim that means there aren't any.

It seems that we are in agreement here.

I call myself an atheist.

A=without.

I can call myself an Agnostic as well,
but by definition, everyone who hasn't died
or had a visitation from a god
has no ACTUAL knowledge of said god, just "belief".

A THEIST is a god BELIEVER.

A GNOSTIC is someone with KNOWLEDGE of a god.

(This is my personal interpretation, based
on the actual meaning of the words....)

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ironbark]

13. Oh, I don’t think “being an elitist snob” will loose its “allure”

There will always be a place and role for the Chardonnay Socialists, the Literati, Glitterati, Arty Farty and Armchair Atheists.

We will always need some standard by which we can measure how twee, stupid and uncool the rest of us are.


But if you get rid of religion…who’s going to do the work of cleaning up the mess left by the Heroin chic?

[mcollins]

14. all religion?

or just the mainstream 'normal' ones?

[beam me up scottie]

15. Excellent point.

What happened when ancient people realized their fairy tales were only, well...fairy tales?

[iris27]

16. I think there was always a new faith to move on to.

Religions that do not evolve to allow for concepts generally backed and accepted by the population -- causes of volcanoes, lightning, natural selection, etc. -- begin to be abandoned by later generations in favor of other religions that do accept these ideas. You can see it happening now with regard to the idea of natural selection. It still meets a lot of vocal resistance, but a growing number of religious people believe that "evolution is the answer to how and God is the answer to why".

[beam me up scottie]

17. Wouldn't it be nice if every believer in the One True Religion would move on?

But you're right, it would probably only be to the newest One True Religion™.

[tama]

23. What happened

was that the native people were conquered by the imperialist supremacists, their land robbed and their way of life destroyed, their children stolen, their language and culture banned, their people massacred etc.

Until that their tales had worked just fine.

[struggle4progress]

18. Superstition is not limited to the unintelligent or uneducated: beliefs

contrary to fact and reason are as common among the intelligent and the educated as among the unintelligent and uneducated

The real difficulty in eliminating superstitution is that as individuals and groups we are bad at noticing our own -- and the very fact that one considers oneself as intelligent and educated can be an impediment, because a lot of "education" consists of indoctrinating people about what they "ought" to believe without any question

Practical advances tend to win with almost anyone: sure, you can find examples of people that oppose electric appliances or lightning rods or vaccination for strange-sounding reasons, but they'll always be a minority

Ethical advances are harder: the dimensions of the problem have been known for thousands of years without much quick decisive progress. The Buddhist started preaching the importance of mindfulness and compassion quite a while ago; similarly, the Christians have long warned against the dangers of anger, gluttony, pride, sloth ... Almost everyone, of course, pays lip service to such insights. But here the intelligent and the educated get no special dispensation: they can be just as unmindful and uncompassionate as the unintelligent and uneducated -- and just as angry, gluttonous, proud, slothful ...

[ironbark]

20. On the superstition theme

Our agency deals with traumatised adolescents in residential care. We operate within the ‘Therapeutic Model’ devised and handed down to the coalface residential carers by some very intelligent management and extremely well qualified Clinical Psychologists. Under the Therapeutic Model it is deemed that trauma has caused physiological damage and the adolescent boys have no executive control over behaviour. The behaviours include vandalism, spitting, swearing, verbal and physical abuse. All of the (much less educated) residential staff believe that there ought be some consequences for property damage and violence if for no other reason than to clearly signal that such behaviour is inappropriate. The Therapeutic Model says that >any< attempt to impose consequences (time out, loss of privileges/pocket money) is “too punitive”.

At a recent meeting it was pointed out to management/Psychologists that all of these ‘uncontrollable’ behaviours caused by physiological damage disappear entirely when the boys change environment from home to school (an environment of firm rules, expectations and consequences).

“Oh no, it’s nothing environmental, it’s purely physiological” was the ‘go no further’ management response.

After the meeting one of the residential carers (a former truck driver) observed- “It’s a bit like being back in the Middle Ages, only the invisible demons are no longer external, they’re internal and only the Psychologist Priest can deal with them”.

“The real difficulty in eliminating superstition is that as individuals and groups we are bad at noticing our own”

Yup ;-)

[struggle4progress]

21. That comment fits curiously well with my current recreational reading: I'm struggling

through Foucault's massive History of Madness, which has finally appeared in its entirety in English translation, with a frontispiece reproduction of a handwritten note from psychiatry critic R.D. Laing, raving (as the publisher's reviewer) about the text. Foucault's starting point is medieval: the decline of the leprosaria as leprosy vanished from Europe

[ironbark]

22. Then you might also enjoy reading

‘We Have Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy And the World Is Getting Worse’.
My favourite book title ;-)
I think the authors are Hillman and Ventura.

And-

Why Therapy Doesn’t Work and What We Should Do About It and The Nature of Unhappiness
by David Smail

Smail is regarded as part of the 'anti-psychiatry' movement, along with R. D. Laing
(Personaly I get more from K D Lang than R D Laing ;-)

His website here
http://www.davidsmail.info/index.htm

A critical review here
http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/02/therapy.html

(While you’re here…just wanted to say how much I have enjoyed reading your posts over the last couple of years. Always found them balanced and thoughtful.)

[struggle4progress]

24. Thanks! I didn't know of either Hillman and Ventura or Smail

[tama]

27. Psychocontrol

When the first school massacre happened in my country, a discussion on state of psychotherapy followed (the shooter was ordered pills for his angst about state of world and teenage problems of love life and hated the pills). The national chief of psychotherapy responded to criticism - proudly! - that under difficult circumstances (cutting down funds and hospital seats), thanks to new innovative drugs, psychotherapy has succeeded rather well in what it is supposed to do, namely maintaining people's ability to work (...in wage slavery for added value to capital, which he left unmentioned).


Aldous Huxley's 'soma'.

[omega minimo]

19. This is blatant FLAMEBAIT

Referring to non-atheists as "a sizable portion of humanity that basks in willful ignorance would somehow become enlightened without religion as their crutch to lean on."

Referencing a conservative web site?

How MANY levels is this OP fuckedup on and how long will it stay open, as proof of who-gets-away-with-what-bullshit?

[Toasterlad]

25. Why Would Something Need To Take Its Place?

I'm not convinced man has an innate need for dogma and a pre-disposition to believe in a higher power. In this theoretically rational age, there is absolutely no reason for religion, and no reason it could not simply disappear if ignorant parents would stop passing along these fairy tales to their children and calling it fact.

[LARED]

31. "Am I just being an elitist snob in thinking this way"

Yes, and God will not forget.