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The poll would have made more sense if you stuck with "Christianity" instead of the generic "religion". I think Christianity has been a positive influence on the world, whereas I think Isalm has been a negative influence. Judaism would have been positive if not for the establishment of A Jewish state of Israel which is the source of much turmoil in the Middle East. Buddhism and other religions have been a positive influence.
I was debating sticking with Christianity rather than going with the catch-all 'religion', but like you said, there are non-Christian religions like Buddhism that coexist quite harmoniously with Christianity and the world at large (IMHO).
The poll would have made more sense if you stuck with "Christianity" instead of the generic "religion". I think Christianity has been a positive influence on the world, whereas I think Isalm has been a negative influence. Judaism would have been positive if not for the establishment of A Jewish state of Israel which is the source of much turmoil in the Middle East. Buddhism and other religions have been a positive influence.
LOL..in what way has Christianity been a positive influence on the world? Because i can't think of one single thing that Christianity has contributed that's been positive. Nothing.
Hell, Judaism has been far more positive than Christianity for several reasons...most of all because it doesn't proliferate and spread, and Jews have no interest in attracting converts. That in itself makes it the best religion.
BTW...Christianity sure hasn't been a positive influence on Judaism, has it? After all, six million Jews are dead at the hands of Christians....and that doesn't include all of the pogroms over all the centuries.
Buddhism is positive because relative few people practice it.
Without religion the world would be far less violent, more moral, less bigoted, with fewer wars, and less strife....
Why wasn't that option on your poll since it is obvious?
According to their most recent rankings, among the top ten most peaceful nations on earth, all are among the least God-believing – in fact, eight of the ten are specifically among the least theistic nations on earth. Conversely, of the bottom ten – the least peaceful nations – most of them are extremely religious. https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-earth-atheism
Blah, poll question cut off. The last bit says to "pick the closest response", since of course there are no true absolutes.
Quick clarification: This is of course a hypothetical scenario. Whether or not you desire to live in a theocracy, just imagine a world with no religious adherence at all.
A world without religious adherence is impossible, not just on a large scale but on a small scale.
You fail to perceive what religion is. It's software that determines social and political rules.
All humans have it and require it with few exceptions, whether or not your brand has what you perceive to be religious dressing or not.
And taking away that religious dressing, such as the name of a god, does not make your beliefs less religious.
If I were to eliminate "Allah" and other metaphysical beings from my hypothetical brand of Islamic belief, but kept just as much fervent belief in every other aspect of the system, would I be any less religious?
Absolutely not.
In one hundred-percent of the practical actions and beliefs of the average Islamist, I would be indistinguishable. I may not direct my mind to a metaphysical god entity, or I may replace such a concept with another metaphysical non-god concept in which to root my beliefs (the inherent good of mankind, race, the class war, historical ethnic interests, 'love', etc), but my belief in the social and political actions that comprise observable Islam would not waver in intensity.
How would my system, then, be one iota different from a religion? The answer is that it would not be.
Conservatives can, but do not always, adhere to a religious framework that has been around for 2 to 3 thousand years depending.
Other conservatives have similar beliefs that eschew the older religious dressings, but their beliefs otherwise closely match every essential aspect of religious belief.
"Non-religious" liberals tend to be uncompromisingly religious in their beliefs; holding to rigid but often morally, logically, or sociopolitically unjustified concepts of the inherent equality of man, the right to abortion, feminism, gender identity, and much more. These people will fight for these things with the fervor of the average fundamentalist Islamist, because their religious belief in these issues is just as strong as the Islamist's religious beliefs in his issues. Because they both have a fundamentalist religion.
It only differs in what they believe.
Getting rid of one religion and replacing it with another will not solve the world's issues. This is only a proposal to reduce competing religious ideas. The strife comes from the competition between these ideas, and largely not from the ideas themselves that are merely proxies for competing groups.
When a person proposes that we get rid of religion to reduce strife, what they are proposing is that we get rid of every religion but theirs so that there will be no more inter-group conflict.
Essentially, they are proposing the eradication of a distinct group or of many distinct groups.
The morality of that proposal is another discussion, though I can also point out that this proposal is a long held philosophical core of the more imperialist religions in the world.
Whatever one's conclusion as to whether or not this is moral, what I disagree with is dressing this proposal up in a disingenuous anti-religious plea that only serves to hide what a person is actually proposing.
That would be nice. I did give Esperanto a fair go.
It's not going to happen that your going to ban all political parties.
Okay, as a thought experiment let's not take the whole world and just look at the USA.
What if in the US all Muslims were banned, all Mexicans, black people were deported back to Africa?
The point of my question is that is not going to happen.
Now, looking at the US and Brazil I have come over time to believe in homogeneous societies. Or at least far more homogeneous than the USA. People that see themselves as the same tend to take far better care of each other. One problem with the United States is it is too diverse. The liberal anti-religious in this thread for example express an intolerance for religious people. They want a nation or world more homogeneous in beliefs, in non-religious beliefs like theirs.
The fact of the matter me personally, me, not other Christians, just myself I am speaking of: I am more tolerant of any non-Christian or atheists as well then the vast majority of atheist and agnostic Americans.
I really don't care if a person is Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, Protestant, a believer in Vodoo, or whatever.
There is one exception. I'm intolerant of Satanism, Lucuferianism, or worship of the demonic.
So, what am I saying here: divisions are natural. You can either accept divisions or you can war with them. I have ZERO desire to wipe out the Islam prevelant in the Middle East or to wipe out Buddhism in Thailand. Nor will you catch me being confrontational with an American Buddhist trying to convert them, not will you catch me trying to convert atheists in America.
I don't want to be around Catholics because I regard most of them as Judas. Nor do I try to convert Catholics to Orthodoxy. Rather, I'll simply convert and desire no unity but that division remains. And there can be peace in division if you can accept divisions. Or you can try to bring about unity with mass murder like the atheist Cambodian Killin fields did.
Unity by mass murder may not always be bad. Once the smoke of war rises in the USA I will be blowing the heads off my enemies. My enemies live in the United States, not Syria or Russia, right here. And I will blow your head off before you kill me in your unity effort.
If one can accept divisions, but still be neighborly, then no need for war. When you can't be neighborly then the divided sides may have to go to war. Corpses may have to get torched. Bombs may have to be set. Such is life and the way of the world.
Well, I assume you mean organized religion and I think that the world would be worse off without it.
Here are some things that the Catholic Church has given the world: (from What the Church has given the world | CatholicHerald.co.uk) 1. Light and the cosmos
The Opus Maius (1267) of the Franciscan Roger Bacon (d 1292), written at the request of Pope Clement IV, largely initiated the tradition of optics in the Latin world. The first spectacles were invented in Italy around 1300, an application of lenses that developed later into telescopes and microscopes.
While many people think of Galileo (d 1642) being persecuted, they tend to forget the peculiar circumstances of these events, or the fact that he died in his bed and his daughter became a nun.
The Gregorian Calendar (1582), now used worldwide, is a fruit of work by Catholic astronomers, as is the development of astrophysics by the spectroscopy of Fr Angelo Secchi (d 1878).
Most remarkably, the most important theory of modern cosmology, the Big Bang, was invented by a Catholic priest, Fr Georges Lemaître (d 1966, pictured), a historical fact that is almost never mentioned by the BBC or in popular science books.
2. Earth and nature
Catholic civilisation has made a remarkable contribution to the scientific investigation and mapping of the earth, producing great explorers such as Marco Polo (d 1324), Prince Henry the Navigator (d 1460), Bartolomeu Dias (d 1500), Christopher Columbus (d 1506) and Ferdinand Magellan
(d 1521). Far from believing that the world was flat (a black legend invented in the 19th century), the Catholic world produced the first modern scientific map: Diogo Ribeiro’s Padrón Real (1527). Fr Nicolas Steno (d 1686) was the founder of stratigraphy, the interpretation of rock strata which is one of the principles of geology.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (d 1829), a French Catholic, developed the first theory of evolution, including the notion of the transmutation of species and a genealogical tree. The Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel (d 1884, pictured) founded the science of genetics based on the meticulous study of the inherited characteristics of some 29,000 pea plants. 3. Philosophy and theology
Catholicism regards philosophy as intrinsically good and was largely responsible for founding theology, the application of reason to what has been revealed supernaturally. Great Catholic philosophers include St Augustine (d 430), St Thomas Aquinas (d 1274), St Anselm (d 1109), Blessed Duns Scotus (d 1308), Suárez (d 1617) and Blaise Pascal (d 1662). Recent figures include St Edith Stein (d 1942, pictured), Elizabeth Anscombe (d 2001) and Alasdair MacIntyre. On the basis that God is a God of reason and love, Catholics have defended the irreducibility of the human person to matter, the principle that created beings can be genuine causes of their own actions, free will, the role of the virtues in happiness, objective good and evil, natural law and the principle of non-contradiction. These principles have had an incalculable influence on intellectual life and culture. 4. Education and the university system
Perhaps the greatest single contribution to education to emerge from Catholic civilisation was the development of the university system. Early Catholic universities include Bologna (1088); Paris (c 1150); Oxford (1167, pictured); Salerno (1173); Vicenza (1204); Cambridge (1209); Salamanca (1218-1219); Padua (1222); Naples (1224) and Vercelli (1228). By the middle of the 15th-century (more than 70 years before the Reformation), there were over 50 universities in Europe.
Many of these universities, such as Oxford, still show signs of their Catholic foundation, such as quadrangles modelled on monastic cloisters, gothic architecture and numerous chapels. Starting from the sixth-century Catholic Europe also developed what were later called grammar schools and, in the 15th century, produced the movable type printing press system, with incalculable benefits for education. Today, it has been estimated that Church schools educate more than 50 million students worldwide. 5. Art and architecture
Faith in the Incarnation, the Word made Flesh and the Sacrifice of the Mass have been the founding principles of extraordinary Catholic contributions to art and architecture. These contributions include: the great basilicas of ancient Rome; the work of Giotto (d 1337), who initiated a realism in painting the Franciscan Stations of the Cross, which helped to inspire three-dimensional art and drama; the invention of one-point linear perspective by Brunelleschi (d 1446) and the great works of the High Renaissance. The latter include the works of Blessed Fra Angelico (d 1455), today the patron saint of art, and the unrivalled work of Leonardo da Vinci (d 1519), Raphael (d 1520), Caravaggio (d 1610, pictured), Michelangelo (d 1564) and Bernini (d 1680). Many of the works of these artists, such as the Sistine Chapel ceiling, are considered among the greatest works of art of all time. Catholic civilisation also founded entire genres, such as Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, High Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The Cristo Redentor statue in Brazil and the Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona show that the faith continues to be an inspiration for highly original art and architecture. 6. Law and jurisprudence
The reforms of Pope Gregory VII (d 1085, pictured) gave impetus to forming the laws of the Church and states of Europe. The subsequent application of philosophy to law, together with the great works of monks like the 12th-century Gratian, produced the first complete, systematic bodies of law, in which all parts are viewed as interacting to form a whole. This revolution also led to the founding of law schools, starting in Bologna (1088), from which the legal profession emerged, and concepts such as “corporate personality”, the legal basis of a wide range of bodies today such as universities, corporations and trust funds. Legal principles such as “good faith”, reciprocity of rights, equality before the law, international law, trial by jury, habeas corpus and the obligation to prove an offence beyond a reasonable doubt are all fruits of Catholic civilisation and jurisprudence. 7. Language
The centrality of Greek and Latin to Catholicism has greatly facilitated popular literacy, since true alphabets are far easier to learn than the symbols of logographic languages, such as Chinese. Spread by Catholic missions and exploration, the Latin alphabet is now the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. Catholics also developed the Armenian, Georgian and Cyrillic alphabets and standard scripts, such as Carolingian minuscule from the ninth to 12th centuries, and Gothic miniscule (from the 12th). Catholicism also provided the cultural framework for the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), the Cantar de Mio Cid (“The Song of my Lord”) and La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland), vernacular works that greatly influenced the development of Italian, Spanish and French respectively. The Catholic Hymn of Cædmon in the seventh century is arguably the oldest extant text of Old English. Valentin Haüy (d 1822), brother of the Abbé Haüy (the priest who invented crystallography), founded the first school for the blind. The most famous student of this school, Louis Braille (d 1852), developed the worldwide system of writing for the blind that today bears his name. 8. Music
Catholic civilisation virtually invented the western musical tradition, drawing on Jewish antecedents in early liturgical music. Monophonic Gregorian chant developed from the sixth century. Methods for recording chant led to the invention of musical notion (staff notation), of incalculable benefit for the recording of music, and the ut-re-mi (“do-re-mi”) mnemonic device of Guido of Arezzo (d 1003). From the 10th century cathedral schools developed polyphonic music, extended later to as many as 40 voices (Tallis, Spem in Alium) and even 60 voices (Striggio, Missa Sopra Ecco).
Musical genres that largely or wholly originated with Catholic civilisation include the hymn, the oratorio and the opera. Haydn (d 1809), a devout Catholic, strongly shaped the development of the symphony and string quartet. Church patronage and liturgical forms shaped many works by Monteverdi (d 1643), Vivaldi (d 1741), Mozart (d 1791, pictured) and Beethoven (d 1827). The great Symphony No 8 of Mahler (d 1911) takes as its principal theme the ancient hymn of Pentecost, Veni creator spiritus. 9. The status of women
Contrary to popular prejudice, extraordinary and influential women have been one of the hallmarks of Catholic civilisation. The faith has honoured many women saints, including recent Doctors of the Church, and nurtured great nuns, such as St Hilda (d 680, pictured) (after whom St Hilda’s College, Oxford, is named) and Blessed Hildegard von Bingen (d 1179), abbess and polymath. Pioneering Catholic women in political life include Empress Matilda (d 1167), Eleanor of Aquitaine (d 1204) and the first Queen of England, Mary Tudor (d 1558).
Catholic civilisation also produced many of the first women scientists and professors: Trotula of Salerno in the 11th century, Dorotea Bucca (d 1436), who held a chair in medicine at the University of Bologna, Elena Lucrezia Piscopia (d 1684), the first woman to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree (1678) and Maria Agnesi (d 1799), the first woman to become professor of mathematics, who was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV as early as 1750.
Agreed, but what about a hypothetical world with no religion at all?
why is it hypothetical? Is it hard to imagine?
The Chinese lived without religion for 4,000 years, and most of time it was one of the most powerful and wealthy countries in the world.
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A worse place.
