Discussion»Questions»Religion and Spirituality» What if all humans were Atheists? Religion disappears as a cause to hate. How many folks have died/will die because of religion?
Thank you for your reply Jaimie and Happy Monday. I was going to comment your egregious insertion of "not an original thought" but I thought better of it. Next time, if there is one, I hope you think better of it too. It would make your reply more helpful and less un.
Eliminating religion is not going to eliminate hate or violence. Imperialism is likely the root of most violence. Wars have been fought, and continue to be fought--over strips of land. People get shot over common turf disagreements. I suppose you have a greater chance of being killed over $20 in your wallet, than you have over being a different religion than someone else. The exception may be the radical islamists, but aren't they really after what people have been going after for centuries; world domination of vast land areas?
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at February 13, 2017 5:31 PM MST
Freed of the yoke of false gods, the fantastical and contradictory tenets that support them, and especially the religious hatred and bloodshed spurred by the ignorance bred by religion, we can begin to realize something resembling the human species standing to its full height. In the best case, faith leaves otherwise well-intentioned people incapable of thinking rationally about the biggest questions of life and the world; at worst, it is a continuous source of human suffering. It is time we realized the presumption of knowledge in the guise of a pious hope is a species of evil. The evil of perpetuated ignorance, fear, guilt and shame,to be prostrate before mythical figures conjured by Bronze Age clerics and scribes intent on pronouncing truth to what they lack any coherent grasp of. No myths need be embraced for us to grasp the miracle and uniqueness of our circumstance, no personal god worshipped to live in awe and wonder of that which surrounds us, nor to seek that which portends the benefit and prosperity of our kind, now or ever.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at February 13, 2017 6:19 PM MST
Religions have always provided a ready excuse for murder and misery, whether in "holy" wars between nations, sectarian conflict as we see in India and the Middle East - and saw in the 1970s Ulster "troubles" - or misery inflicted by domestic bullies on their own families.
That's not the fault of the religion though. It's the fault of the cowardice of people - the "holy warrior" or Inquisitor, the rabid sectarian, the domineering parent. All are insecure bullies, banal in mind but capable of acts that are not at all banal in their heartless intent and outcome.
If though religion were to fade away, would that stop such nastiness? No: the bullies would find other excuses such as greed or spurious political dogma. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were atheist but between them killed more people that the Nazis (I think Stalin's and Mao's regimes may each have managed that alone) - but from a mixture of Communist dogma that included state atheism, the leaders' personal callousness and sheer Governmental ineptitude.
As for Tom Thhumb's deeply anthropocentric but God-fearing notion, frankly that's rather rude to any non-believer because it suggests only the religious are moral, though he is by no means alone in that mistake. I am not religious and obviously I am an animal - a living, mobile, sentient organism in the form of a primate mammal of genus Homo, species Sapiensis - but I do not go round wilfully harming other people, especially over such relatively trivial matters as differences in belief about something whose existence or otherwise cannot possibly be observed, not even tested, let alone proved.
Benedict Arnold 