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Kasz216 on 19 November 2008
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vlad321 said:
Kasz216 said:
vlad321 said:
Kasz216 said:
vlad321 said:
Kasz216 said:

Also... would the world really be better off if Religion never existed?

You can argue that it's "outlived it's usefullness". From an atheists view i can see that.

However i can't see how an atheist could argue religion never had a use.

Religion for a long time was the main driving force behind science... and has times saved science from being lost. (For example stuff saved from the fall of Rome.  Even more would of been lost without religion.)

It's only fairly recently that science has come into "conflcit" with religion.

 

Science existed well before any overbearing religion came to be. Archimedes found a way to calculate the volume of a sphere, and that requires limit. He was very close to discovering Calculus centuries before Newton was even born. Yes, religion saved some knowledge from the fall of Rome, but it's not like Rome was the last bastion of knwledge, Byzantium still existed well after the fall of Rome. Whatever little knowledge was saved does not redeem how much science was surpressed during the Medieval Ages.

The greeks believed in gods....

 

 

 

Yes they did, but neither were they closed to science and math which might go against their gods. In fact Athen supported that for the longest time.

So... I don't get your point then.  You seem to be saying you aren't against religion.  But against vast religious orginzations that control everyday lives.

Also most of the knowledge of the greeks was... well lost or ignored... because they didn't have anybody to save it.  Hence why a lot of it all had to be rediscovered.

 

If religion didn't have such an effect on people's actions, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. Greeks did the exact same with their religion with what is being done right now, they supported their philosophers, they had a god just for that, but still used religoin to twists the commoner's beliefs. I'm not saying I liek the Greek religoin any more thananything today, I'm just saying it was much better than what transpired between the end of Rome and modern times. If I had to tag one very well known true religion as a favorite it would be the Roman one. It humanized their gods way too much and in general Romans were very secular.

I don't think religion does have much of an effect on anyones actions... aside from like... priests... and people who are actually very religious... which is a small minority that got there by thinking about religion... a lot.

More of it has to do with 4 things

1) Genetics

2) Childhood religion being kinda irrelvent compared to how your raised.  As most people don't really teach religion.  They just teach their own set of values and mores... with brief mentions of god being an extra reason to not do them.

3) Security

4) Power

The general values and mores people have then, are the same that they'd have today. 

Lots of people still wouldn't believe evolution, but instead of a religous reason they'd probably pick spontaneous generation or something else... because they can't understand evolution as a process

I mean.  Keep in mind.  OJ got off partially because people didn't understand DNA.

You need to make a crime show in which criminals are found via evolutionary data.

Then more people will believe in evolution.

Take a loot at the leaders of the vatican.  They believe in evolution, all the disagree with is that evolution is random.  Yet for some reason most people take that as "evolution isn't real genisis is exactly how it happened!"