Basic Christianity.

[_moksha]

Would the world have been better off without Christianity?

Imagine - no religion, no God.

Would we now all be living in peace and harmony?

The Christians did provide a firewall for the rise of Islam. Hey, no religion is free from disrupting peace and harmony. Even the peace loving Buddhists acted badly in WWII Japan. Religion can encourage the collective will of men towards good deeds.

[_Moniker]

Even the peace loving Buddhists acted badly in WWII Japan.

Shinto was the state religion of Japan during WWII and Buddhists were persecuted.

[_Doctor Steuss]

Buddhism has too many outs that allow for complacency when another is in need, in my opinion. It is great for helping yourself, but often in helping another, no help is given when in reality it is indeed needed.

If I were in need of help, I’d take a Hindu over a Buddhist. That, and there is too a spoon.

[_Gadianton]

Shades: Good one!

Ray,

Someone asked a similar question the other day. I think it's impossible to predict how things would be today based on some outrageous change of previous circumstances.

One thing I will note, is that "religion" isn't the same thing across all time and cultures. And to the extent that there is some kind of glue that ties people together in communities and so on, I think it's deeper than religion.

In the early Old Testament books, there are no well-defined afterlife beliefs for Israel, certainly nothing along the lines of personal immortality in bliss with God. The covenants get them extended life and lots of children and this seems to have not provoked -- save some somber phrases in Ecclesiastes about the rain shining on the just and unjust -- mass suicides and there was plenty of fanatical devotion. But those kinds of rewards wouldn't have been interesting for anyone in the "ME" "NOW" "IT'S NEVER ENOUGH" generation of Christians who need big guarantees of eternal payoff in order to agree not to do terrible things.

In Eastern religions, the idea of God is also very different. The "World Religion" text I used at BYU, when discussing Buddhism, flat out exclaimed that the Buddhist idea of salvation looks like Outer Darkness to Latter-Day Saints. The concept of Brahma-Atman certainly isn't very appealing for those who value their eternally persistent ego. And what about Confucianism? It's sort of religious and sort of not, it's a bunch of wisdom sayings that resonated with people and structured a community but it's not anything close to "Theism".

Apologist, scholar, and polemicist Dr. Daniel Peterson once strongly condemned Calvinism as a terrible evil, doctrinally speaking. Most people need a God that fleshes things out in a way personally gratifying to them before it counts as something much better than no belief at all. I can understand the resistance many people have to determinism and take it fatalistically, the Calvinist God is hard to swallow for Mormons and the Stoic doctrine of determinism was so depressing to Stoics that there were suicides over it. Yet Richard doesn't seem to be so bad off and plenty of atheists are determinists and aren't bothered by it.

Everything that goes into modern day atheisms probably wouldn't even be translatable into something ancient societies could even understand in the first place.

[_Mary]

Atheism is a religion, a way of viewing the how's and what's and where's and why's of this world.

If you think that atheism is a form of religion, then you also think that infertility is a form of parenthood.

Yes, that is a good one (though having experienced it, infertility can be seen as potential or unrealised parenthood). Maybe I have been reading too much of Dawkins lately...? I do appreciate that atheists do not hold to one set of unbeliefs/beliefs.

Blixa, my friend is studying the philosophy of religion at the moment. Other than the faith element is philosophy that different to religion? Surely both attempt to reason through things, at the very root.

I'm not asking because I know the answers by the way, but because I am interested in your response.

mary

Edited to add that surely if someone terms themselves atheist, it is because they do care about taking a position? Either by dismissing the theist position or/and by putting forward an alternative argument for their place in this existence? Someone who was truly apathetic wouldn't even bother to define themselves as atheist surely?

[_Ray A]

Someone asked a similar question the other day. I think it's impossible to predict how things would be today based on some outrageous change of previous circumstances.

My OP question was a hypothetical.

One thing I will note, is that "religion" isn't the same thing across all time and cultures. And to the extent that there is some kind of glue that ties people together in communities and so on, I think it's deeper than religion.

Perhaps so, but here's one definition of religion:

(Latin: religio, ligo, "to bind together") A way of seeing, thinking, and acting inspired by questions about what things mean: i.e. Where did we come from?, What is our destiny?, What is true?, What is false?, What is my duty or obligation?, What is the meaning of suffering?, What is the meaning of death?, How shall we live?

I too realise that atheists/atheism, on the whole, cannot be neatly defined. I suspect (but don't know) that at least two of my children are atheist, or possibly agnostic. But like most agnostics/atheists, they don't even perceive this as a "state", a position, an ideology, a worldview, and they don't "bind together" with other atheists. Magazines like American Atheist promote atheism. Do you dispute this? Let me quote from it:

Atheism is a doctrine that states that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter), that thought is a property or function of matter, and that death irreversibly and totally terminates individual organic units. This definition means that there are no forces, phenomena, or entities which exist outside of or apart from physical nature, or which transcend nature, or are “super” natural, nor can there be. Humankind is on its own.
The following definition of Atheism was given to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Murray v. Curlett, 374 U.S. 203, 83 S. Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed.2d (MD, 1963), to remove reverential Bible reading and oral unison recitation of the Lord's Prayer in the public schools.

“Your petitioners are Atheists and they define their beliefs as follows. An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. An Atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy.

An Atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and enjoy it.

An Atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.

http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/

So let make my point clear, there are atheists, and there are atheists. One is passive, the other is proactive. It is the proactive ones I refer to as "binding together" ("religio") to achieve their aims in society, which includes "demoting" religion (a la Dawkins), to put it politely.

This should also answer Shades' comment.

[_Blixa]

Atheism is a religion, a way of viewing the how's and what's and where's and why's of this world.

If you think that atheism is a form of religion, then you also think that infertility is a form of parenthood.

Yes, that is a good one (though having experienced it, infertility can be seen as potential or unrealised parenthood). Maybe I have been reading too much of Dawkins lately...? I do appreciate that atheists do not hold to one set of unbeliefs/beliefs.

Blixa, my friend is studying the philosophy of religion at the moment. Other than the faith element is philosophy that different to religion? Surely both attempt to reason through things, at the very root.

I'm not asking because I know the answers by the way, but because I am interested in your response.

mary

Edited to add that surely if someone terms themselves atheist, it is because they do care about taking a position? Either by dismissing the theist position or/and by putting forward an alternative argument for their place in this existence? Someone who was truly apathetic wouldn't even bother to define themselves as atheist surely?

I would say that the "faith element" is what makes "religion" qualtatively different than "philosophy." Religions of course have philosophies, but thay are not equivalent to them in the sense that relgions also have rituals of worship of a deity, and sets of behaviors that one is supposed to follow to deemed a member of that group. Philosophy is a body of ideas, not an organization of people structured by rituals and such that determine one's status as a believer in something supernatural.

for your second question I would say that some who call themselves atheists and spend time debating about relgion obviously "care" about things more than being indifferent to them. What this "care" consists of can vary widely: those for whom such questions are interesting intellectually, those for whom the consequences of relgious belef are understood as a probelm that needs to be countered, and so on.

For myself, I don't go around calling myself an atheist all day, nor does it even come to mind if I contemplate how I would define my identity. I only use the term if someone asks specifically. That's the only way it ever occurs in my life. I think that this is similar for many people who don't believe and don't live in a culture or situation where religious issues are at the forefront of one's daily encounters with the world. But if someone asks me if I believe in god, I say no. Thus I am an atheist (I'm "apathetic" as regards any atheist/agnostic differences. For my concerns they're close enough that I don't care enough to follow that line of thought or see the point).

I hope I clarified my points, if not, I'd be happy to discuss this further (for once!)

[_Gadianton]

a worldview, and they don't "bind together" with other atheists. Magazines like American Atheist promote atheism. Do you dispute this? Let me quote from it:

There are certainly organizations that promote atheism and get worked up over things I don't care about. At one time, I thought maybe I needed to be more social in the real world and poked around at different secular groups. None of it appealed to me at all. Atheist groups I've encountered online don't interest me in the least. Specifically American Atheists. Some of it is just the reality that I hate meetings and speeches. I hate formal debates and all kinds of other stuff. I can credit these organizations with the fact that someone does need to take an active stand against religion, if for no other reason than just to keep the playing field gridlocked as Madison envisioned, but it's better someone other than me because I'm just not the activist type and I'm not a salesman.

[_Mary]

Blixa, thanks.

Mary

[_John Larsen]

Most of the world has and continues to live without Christianity. We don't need to hypothesize what the world would look like without it, we can simply talk to our neighbors. It is a Western centric idea that somehow the world revolves around Christianity.

John