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What would be the benefits? Here are a few off the top of my head:
1. Higher test scores in science.
2. Less discrimination against homosexuals, women, other races, etc.
3. No religious wars; although, I concede that wars over property, power and money would still occur.
4. More respect for other forms of life since were all animals.
5. Laws passed/repealed on the basis of modern logic rather than ancient 'wisdom'.
dear op, imho, you cannot have a society without religion, at best a society with religion abolished and/or prohibited. and then you would have to ask and research the historical accounts for the origins of the benefits you are anticipating right now.
What would be the benefits? Here are a few off the top of my head:
1. Higher test scores in science.
2. Less discrimination against homosexuals, women, other races, etc.
3. No religious wars; although, I concede that wars over property, power and money would still occur.
4. More respect for other forms of life since were all animals.
5. Laws passed/repealed on the basis of modern logic rather than ancient 'wisdom'.
Although it would be nice, it would never happen. Unfortunately, I believe many (though certainly not all) religious people only live moral lives or attempt to make something of themselves in life because they think if they don't, they might be punished. An existensialist view of life may become prevelant for a while at least.
I agree that there would be benefits to society if mankind moved beyond religion but I have to agree with effie as far as the outright banning of religion is concerned. I believe in the complete freedom of thought and that would include the right to hold religious beliefs. I would hate to see my views as an atheist turned into something as barbaric as the long history of religion which has tried to stamp out any competing philosophy or religion. I would prefer to see the promotion of a simple live and let live attitude in which everyone would be accepted. I do believe that eventually religious beliefs will be left behind because we're simply going to outgrow them but I don't think that should be forced on anyone.
Societies without religion or are the least religious tend to be much more progressive than those who haven't awoken from the slumber of superstition. Here are some of the benefits of a society with religion:
What would be the benefits? Here are a few off the top of my head:
1. Higher test scores in science.
2. Less discrimination against homosexuals, women, other races, etc.
3. No religious wars; although, I concede that wars over property, power and money would still occur.
4. More respect for other forms of life since were all animals.
5. Laws passed/repealed on the basis of modern logic rather than ancient 'wisdom'.
1. I'd like to see the quantified evidence for this one. I do not see the correlation. Interestingly enough, my daughter attends public school in a town that's not particularly religious, she believes in God, and she's usually the top science student in her class, if not her entire grade. It's her favorite subject, and one she intends to pursue passionately for a career (particularly in the archaeological and anthropological fields).
2. This one may have some merit.
3. Like you conceded, humans will always find reasons to war.
4. Again, not seeing the correlation. There may be specific religions that have no respect for animals, but this is not true of all religions; and there are plenty of non-religious people who abuse animals (I unfortunately know this from personal experience).
5. This one scares me. I never want our laws to be based on "fad" thinking or mass hysteria, but rather on careful study of past lessons learned. I find this one, in general, to be unrelated to religion. If you mean that there would be no legislation based strictly on religious tenets, then I could get behind that.
In the spirit of being open-minded, the only potential benefits I can see are:
(1) People, on average, might be more inclined to live for today, to fully enjoy the present, if they thought this was all that there was.
(2) None of us would ever again have to hear: "You're going to burn in hell because you don't agree with me on this!" Though I suppose, there will just be some other dire threat to replace it.
A lot of people need to be controlled by fear. Most of the societies without religon are well-educated and wealthy to begin with (i.e. it is likely the nature of the rational society that led to less religon as opposed to the lack of religon that lead to more rational society). I'm not sure the lack of religon is a good thing in undereducated poor societies.
Societies without religion or are the least religious tend to be much more progressive than those who haven't awoken from the slumber of superstition.
You think the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin, was progressive? That's not a direction I want to progress in! It wasn't exactly known for its respect for human rights (or animals either).
It is not clear why people wound automatically be better at science if there was no religion. That is its not clear how the existence of religion in a culture reduces in some way the aggregate intelligence in the population.
Also, religion is rather general. The distinction between a religious society and say a secular society is not that cut and dry particularly from a functional perspective.
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