seebs

I dunno, it would depend on what people used to fill those same gaps. It could be better or worse... I think it might be a bit dull, though. I like theological debates.

ShabbyChick

Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

seebs

I think "no religion" and "nothing to kill or die for" are pretty much orthogonal concepts.

managalar

This doesn’t sound quite right. There is an interesting thing about human evolution, it doesn’t just ‘take care of its’ self’, rather, humans engineer it. So saying society cannot be pushed is not a valid criticism of the an active/aggressive approach to social development, or cognitive development. Considering the fairly elaborate specialized structures in the brain for language processing, visual processing, and spatial reasoning ect., all have been actively selected by other people. The first ape people who picked up partially burnt sticks and wrote pictures on the cave walls were attempting to communicate the order in their minds, and other ape people found that sexy, and so selected the more ordered and expressive minds. Basic physics (babies will stare at precarious objects) and facial recognition are also apparent in human babies. All this so far supports your notion that evolution cannot be pushed…however, one of the characteristics that had to be optimized was flexibility. So, while the basic rules for grammar might be hardwired into our brains from birth, the arbitrary symbols are not (words). So, while everyone who really gets turned on by ghost stories may be susceptible to seeing ghosts, they likely also have the capacity to understand their emotional weakness (emotional weakness = enjoying the taste and feel of the hormone rush, and allowing it to effect rational judgement).

There is manic-depression in my family, and I can feel it sometimes, but I fight it. My brother takes some hard core drugs for it. I have built up over time elaborate response mechanisms to monitor changes in brain chemistry, and correct for it. It works, a functional level of cognitive stability is achieved, but it comes at a fairly high cost. I liken it to a software fix for hardware instability, ECC, but it is fairly indiscriminate. I cant seem to ‘let go’ of the hierarchal command structure in my mind, or enjoy alcohol, or love…all cognitive instability is in check, I consider taste for food and women a kind of tyranny that enslaves my brain, and steals processor time for biological imperatives (not that I try and deny myself). I have trained myself to have compulsive need to resist the irrational, I guess sometimes I tend towards obsessive compulsive, but I recognize it and fight it. Further, I mix up ‘q and b’ ‘n and u’ ‘p and d’ and sometimes ‘E and 3’, my minds eye tries to sees these symbols from all sides, and equates them if the look the same from another angle, or mirror. I told myself they were typos for a while, but I’ve gotten pretty good at watching out for those types of errors (though I have screwed up a few tests because of it, one of my teachers had a good laugh about my symmetric delusions). Anyway, the point of all that is, biologically speaking I cant be pushed genetically away from what I am, but I can still push and get results because of the flexibility of massively parallel analog processing.

The studies that show elevated levels of dopamine in believers compared to skeptics is telling, but it is unknown if reward mechanisms like dopamine are on a masturbatory overdrive (I get a special feeling about god, so he’s real) because of genetic tendencies, or because of trained indoctrination. At any rate, I think there are plenty of reasons to try and be rational, and actively pushing other people to be rational by being critical of irrationality is good for the success of our species. If the individual can push himself, so too can society be pushed.

[ December 22, 2002: Message edited by: managalar ]</p>

Starboy

Perhaps a totaly atheist world would look something like East Germany. According to Adherents.com, 88.2% of the country's population are atheists. Other sites list the percentage as anywhere from 28% to 46%. In any case self proclaimed atheist represent a large portion of the population.

Starboy

[Edited to add more statistics]

[ December 22, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Philosoft

Would this be the communist East Germany that ceased to exist in 1988? The communist East Germany that, like most other communist states, is doctrinally atheist by definition?

JusticeMachine

So if we get ride of all religions, then all of the wars will end, and starvation and hate. All gone when we eradicate religion.

Ooorrr....is it possible that, regardless of the reason, people with opposing ideas/ideal/morals/beliefs will always be at odds with one another. Regardless of the excuse being used, humanity will have conflict, it is unavoidable.

We will never have a perfect utopia. (Unless everybody’s ideas/ideal/morals/beliefs are the same i.e.: It will never happen)

So the point of make any given idea/ideal/moral/belief the boogie man of all the worlds ills is moot, it is ludicrous.

Godbert

First of all it was not really communist, secondly it ceased to exist in 1990 and thirdly we were not doctrinally atheist.
I have never heard a single anti-religious word being uttered by anything state-controlled in east germany. It was just a complete non-topic. In the ten years I lived there after we joined west germany I still have met only one person there who believed in
God. There are a few people going to church (who were free to do so and did it in east germany as well) but when I asked them it was always for social reasons (nice trips and activities and such, meeting friends..)
Of course I spent my time mostly at university and before that a special school for science but still my overall estimate is clearly less than 10% theists in east germany (during 'communist' times as well as after)

Jamie_L

We will never have a perfect utopia, but things can be improved. A more rational, secular world would be an improvement.

People who think getting rid of religion will solve all the world's problems are kidding themselves. But that doesn't mean getting rid of religion wouldn't be a good thing.

Jamie

JusticeMachine

And that doesn't mean it won't be a bad thing.

If we follow that line of reasoning to it natural end, then anything that can be a dividing factor to the world society, as a whole, should be dispensed with: religions, cultures, governments.......race.

We will have conflict and strife as long as there is difference of belief.

Or we can try to stamp out anyone who has strongly held convictions of any sort. For if we don't have a belief/ideal that we feel strongly about, we won't care enough, when that belief/ideal is challenged, to do anything about it. We will be gray, mediocre semi-living, passionless husks of our former selves. What a wonderfully colorless unchanging world it would be. I am joking of course.