Would the world be better without organised religion?

You keep failing to answer some of my questions, so I'll start arranging them in a list (including some new ones).

1. Why should they value achievements such as nation building and going to the moon?
2. What business do we have interfering in their affairs?
3. Is there anything to suggest that this hypothetical culture of "savages" will die off? Simply because they are different and "savage"?

I'm honestly surprised that this sort of 19th century thinking still exists in the 21st century, especially coming from someone as well informed and reasonable as yourself. So I'm doing my best to understand where you're coming from.

As much as I hate to say it but probably not. The reason for that is history. Without Catholicism, as bad as it was, the Middle Ages would have been true Dark Ages with all the knowledge simply lost instead of just hidden away. Without Islam, many scientific discoveries wouldn't have been made in the ME.

Today religions aren't the keepers of knowledge any more. They have outlived their usefulness until the next apocalypse.

Out of interest, did you read the opening post or any of the thread?

Everyone just seems to answer the thread title.

But what I was actually asking is what would would the world better is without it today, rather than historically. Yet everyone rcounts a historical opinion.

Yep....

That's why many on the right started referring to him in mocking terms as "the messiah" and talking about him as a cult of personality.

This is Wordforge.

Answering questions with specificity is not something we do here. You should know that.

You should be glad we are sticking to the theme of religion.

Here's a good start to reining in organized religion:

Churches should be taxed. Period. In fact, they should payer higher tax rates than individuals and corporations.

Any charitable work they undertake could be considered a tax deduction (just as individuals and corporations) but the work must be done without strings. That is, it must not encourage membership in the church or conversion to their faith.

The trouble isn't the concept of organized religion, it's the undemocratic and discriminatory practices of most contemporary religious organizations. They operate like unelected aristocracies, they have ever since ancient times. Christianity immediately after Christ's own time followed his lead and adopted an informal, egalitarian, communal model. That was lost as the church grew bigger and tied itself more closely to the state and emulated its aristocratic model in Constantine's time. (That tie between church and state wasn't formally broken anywhere until 18th century North America and still persists in most faiths in many other parts of the world, even though Jesus himself invented the concept of separation of church and state in reminding us that what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar [the state] are and should remain two different things). Even if we no longer have state religions everywhere, however, most religious organizations internally operate like aristocratic, authoritarian states.

If we ever went back to the communal, egalitarian model of the ancient Church we'd be infinitely better off.

You seem to be missing mine.

The Mound Builders could have the perfect society, where all were equal and able to reach their full potential. I highly doubt it, but you never know.

But it doesn't matter b/c their culture disappeared thousands of years before Europeans even made it to the new world. Cultures are born and they die, some are good at organizing their society and stick around, aspects of it being passed down and passed across.

Now to get back are you honestly arguing that all cultures are equal?

Because I think that would be oversimplifying it and that's not something I like very much. In the case of institutions that are thousands of years old the yesterday does count

Anyway, to answer your question about today: I'm very torn on it. On the one hand you hear the bad things, the child molesting, the creationist nutcases, the suicide bombers, the religious tensions everywhere. On the other hand, religion gives quiet comfort to billions you never hear of. Without some sort of spirituality, people would only live to be little gears in a huge machine churning out profits for a few. Spirituality tends to flock togehter and bam, there you are, organized religion. It's no coincidence that no dystopian future scenario seems to have much of it - or totalitarian regimes suppress them.

So while I myself don't believe and have a really hard time with people proselytizing, I can see that it gives aid and comfort to many. I will always call people on this BS, but I'll also accept that, nutjobs aside, the big, old religions are a good thing with good ideas at their roots. What people made of them is entirely different story.

Because you stated (in post #31) that you were talking about a world "without churches". You further clarified (in post #41) that by that you meant buildings. I am attempting to understand why you have a problem with buildings for religious groups but not for other groups, and why a world without what you call "organised religion" would have to be a world without buildings for groups of people whose common interest is spirituality, and why the lack of such buildings would be better than a world in which they exist.

Nothing obtuse about it. You claimed (in post #41) that the kinds of groups interested in spiritual things that would exist in a world without organised religion would be without (among other things) style. When I pointed out that "style" is a function of everything people do, you asked a question about "countries set up in the name of Star Trek, football or Justin Bieber". I do not see the relationship between my statement and that question. You might think it is so clear that no one can fail to understand it without being "obtuse" but I see no relationship whatsoever. If it makes you feel better to think I am "obtuse" then do so (it doesn't matter much to me either way) but indulge me by explaining what your question has to do with what I was talking about.

1) It is a strawman to think that leaders "direct people's thoughts and opinions". Some do, but that is by no means a necessary function of leadership.

2) The leaders here on Wordforge are very clear, and you complain about them very often in the Help Desk. If any given discussion was a stable social structure in itself, implicit or explicit leaders would emerge sooner or later within that discussion as well.

That is what I am trying to ascertain. Your initial post is about a situation that seems to have meaning only if you limit freedom. To me, your "world without organised religion" concept seems much like Muad Dib's "country without political parties" concept. Since people getting together to discuss their ideas on spirituality, just like people getting together to discuss their ideas on politics, coupled with the marked tendency of people to associate with those who have similar ideas to their own, is fundamental to human nature, it seems to me that from the very outset you are talking about limiting freedom.

Not all that much. You have not clearly defined the parameters of what "no organised religion" means.

The influence of religion in government, the amount of influence religion has (or tries to have) outside the circle of those who voluntary choose that religion, is indeed a problem. You and I are probably very close to each other on that issue. We both want religion to be as separated from government as possible, to have as little power as possible to coerce those who don't voluntarily accept it, in terms of either belief or behaviour.

But that, to me, is a very different question from "a world without organised religion". I can conceive of very "organised" religions which nevertheless mind their own business and don't try to turn their beliefs or behaviour into laws that affect people who don't adhere to their religion. I agree entirely that that would be a much better state of affairs (while admitting that I don't see any good way, at present, to achieve it).

Since the absence of "organised religion" is by no means a necessary component of such a scenario, it therefore seems that the desire for such a world to be "without organised religion" necessarily implies an unreasonable limitation on other people's freedom. As long as they don't try to force others to go along with their practices, why would they not have church buildings, scriptures or clergy?

You are moving the goalposts by claiming that it is about when it is done. Whether "organised religion" must disappear "tomorrow" or "in ten-thousand years" in order for the hypothetical scenario in the OP to happen is irrelevent: It would still have to disappear.

What is wrong with trying to influence what people think, as long as they are free to say it is baloney? Your posts are an attempt to influence what I think. My posts are an attempt to influence what you think. Does that mean that either of us should be complaining that we aren't free to make up our own minds because the other one "wrote something"?

It was clearly a debate abot the value of organised religion to society. If the "organised" part doesn't matter, why include it? And if it does, why limit people's right to "organise" as long as they don't try to force others to believe and behave as they do?

We'll debate the subject in the other thread as it's a different subject so I'll skip over the things you said on that issue. The thread is here. The first post in which I asked the question is here (it's post #304 in the thread).

The part before the part I quoted and to which I responded. You wrote "As I said above, Christians no longer burn people at the stake for heresy (well, at least mostly not in the West anyhow), Jews no longer crucify people and so on." To make for a less lengthy post, I snipped that part since I don't see any disagreement and, in any case, it grew out of a question having to do with "scriptures" and, in both the cases you cite, the religions in question were paying very little attention to their "scriptures" when they did those things so it seems rather irrelevant.

After that you stated that "society is very slowly moving beyond its reliance on religion" and that is what I challenged. I do not see any evidence of that. What I see rather is evidence that the nature of religion and the nature of society have changed in the West (and am not sure which change influenced the other more, because there has been positive feedback all along in both directions).

That does indeed seem to be the tendency, at least in the West, and seems to me to be a good thing (though I'm not sure in what way that means that religion has "augmented").

Then it should have been about the influence of religion over people outside of their own group, instead of about whether or not religion is "organised".

Wow! I cannot find anything I disagree with in an entire post by you. That is a very rare thing.

Excellent post.

Well, in the United States it was churches that led the fight against segregation in many cases.

So we do have concrete examples of organized religion being of real secular benefit to Americans within living memory.

It would only take a leap of faith if there were consequences for being wrong.

What would they be?
Hell?

Since I am convinced to the utmost that my God (in Whom I believe to the utmost) actually personally instituted the religion I practice, I am not able to accept the premises proposed by the OP.

And if you were born somewhere else, you'd be "convinced to the utmost", it was Allah.

Anthropomorphics R Us.

All right, then. Tell us what would happen and how. The human race just wakes up one morning, or over the course of decades, and decides "Let's turn all the churches and mosques into discos and upscale co-ops"?

Create a structure for this alternate universe, and you'll get your own answers.

And some die out through no fault of their own. Take the Mayans and the ecological disaster they suffered which caused a collapse/fracturing of their society, or the Incas and Aztecs who were conquered by the Spanish. None of that was really their fault nor did it have to do with any of their cultural values or traits. But with the Inca conquest especially it was an attempt to "tame the savages" with Christianity (and take their gold).

No, every culture is different in some way. I'm arguing that what cultures consider good can be relative and not always universal.

You managed to sort of answer #3, but here are the other two once again:

1. Why should they value achievements such as nation building and going to the moon?
2. What business do we have interfering in their affairs?

Recommended for anyone curious about at least some of the reasons why some cultures survive and others don't:

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

Not reading the thread. It depends how the removal of religion was achieved. If we all separately decided to become rational, then yes.

^Pretty much what I said. Would like to know how it would be done.

In reply to the thread title, at/in the present time, YES, but in the overall context of history, NO. Religion has been a necessary "evil", up to a point.

Really, how?

Reading and writing were developed in order to keep records in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest "art" is cave drawings, whose purpose is unclear. And architecture - building stuff - was for the purpose of shelter. And "science" grew out of philosophy.

And I'm saying I'm judging them, and many could use a good dose of civilization!

How much time have you spent in the 3rd world dealing with backwards ass peoples and cultures?

19th and early 20th century colonialists agree.

This thread took a helluva turn...

Chad hates rubber.

Although I'm not seeing the relevancy.

Lambskin.

I'm honestly surprised you don't. The attitude you have regarding "civilizing savages" has been used throughout history not to civilize but to destroy societies for the benefit of the dominant society. Civilizing is the justification, but is rarely the end result. Look up Kipling's The White Man's Burden, King Leopold, civilizing missions, and the roots of the Rwandan genocide to start with. Leopold in the Congo is the most often cited example of colonization and the moral justification of "civilizing savages" gone horribly, brutally wrong. The Rwandan genocide is one of the more modern end results of "civilizing missions" completely shattering a society.

And of course there are other instances outside of Africa, but some of the worst atrocities were carried out in Africa. A lighter (and slightly humorous) example is President McKinley's pledge to civilize and Christianize the Philippines. The Philippines had already been "civilized and Christianized" centuries prior by the Spanish.

Think about all the money the Salvation Army raises every Christmas. Or Catholic Charities. Or the work places like the Union Gospel Rescue Mission or Sharing and Caring Hands do. Would the world be a better place without them?

I guess you could argue that you wouldn't have shitty Islamonazi Theorcrats in places like Iran and Egypt so that it all balances out.

Freedom? It is a worship word. You will not speak it.

So?

Soviets used equality and brotherhood as justification for their tyranny, does that mean the ideas of equality and brotherhood are tyrannical?