A world without religion

[Uzor]

Yes, it is too long to cover every little detail. I'm mainly focusing on the Western world the past 2000 years or so.

 

[Khajit]

I have to disagree on the instinctively we know that killing people is wrong bit. Just looking at nature alone or the closest species to us in evolution disproofs that in addition to data on feral humans. Feral humans actually view other human being as enemies first and foremost so if anything as far as morality is concerned we'd be more violent and aggressive as a species. Now that i think of it the feral human's perception of all humans sounds similar to most people's perception of any group that isnt the "us" in "us or them."

This is not going into the fact that the chimpanzee aka the closest thing to a human other than actual humans is a violent cannibalistic baby eater. They literally just randomly (as far as can be known) grab a baby chimp out of the arms of it's mother and eats it while sharing the body parts with it's friends while the mama chimp sits there traumatized. Dolphins are one of the most intelligent species on the planet and they're extremely homicidal. They kill porpoises, baby dolphins, etc for the sheer fun of it. They have roving rape gangs where they rape female dolphins(they dont even stop at just dolphins either) and keep them captive for hours at a time. Chimpanzee's are intelligent to be equivalent to human children if I remember correctly so they should be intelligent enough to know right from wrong if the concept of morality was introduced to them. I'm not entirely sure how intelligent dolphins are on the scale but considering that dolphins have been documented as manipulating their trainers via inventing what could be considered basic capitalism/economics i'd say they havea decent score.

Also morality is realative. Alot of what we learned even in textbooks was bleached history.(eg look up world war 2 in a Japanese or German textbook) The fact that Greeks/Romans were homosexual and pedophiles is never mentioned. the practices of the roman army like the rape of any defeated solder are never mentioned, etc etc ec. The fact that the Aztecs worshiped butterflies and that the human sacrifices were actually a small part of the religion is glossed over. The real problem with this is in order to get things even remotely accurate you'd have to do some possibly heavy research to find out the important stuff that standard textbooks delete. At the same time some scientific works were a direct result of people's curiosity involving their religion. They were inspired to research the nature of the universe to understand god or the gods.
Even going back 50 years you'd see a stark difference in morality itself. Ah the good old 50~60's. The good old days when women stayed in the kitchen, them darkies knew their place, cigarettes were everywhere and companies could use lead in children toys.
Basically you have too many variables to the point that i honestly can hardly see any particular specifics on the subject as being more than a lucky guess if they did somehow turn out to be accurate.

 

[Halifirien]

Oh and hali. You're living in a fairy tale. A religion free world will be exactly like the old one from a sociology/ethics standpoint.

I don't think we can really say what such a world would look like because it doesn't exist. I imagine the social contract theory would still lead us to a lot of similar behaviors, but it wouldn't be exactly the same. There are plenty of religious people who seem to think it would mean communism and non-stop perversion and baby-eating without a god to keep us in line with the threat of eternal punishment, but I doubt that.

I have no "sworn enemy for all eternity." Like I said, I would not erase religion's influence from history. I wouldn't use a time machine to go back and drown Moses before he got halfway down the stream or beat Joseph Smith to death before he started talking about his golden plates. The last thing I need is a visit from Temporal Investigations.

 

[Uzor]

A lot of animals kill their children, and it is not entirely random. While we can see it as random, animals have instincts we have lost. Certain fish, for example, choose to eat some of their eggs for what we earlier believed to be a random reason. However, evolutionary it makes sense. These eaten eggs are the eggs that grow slower, ad as such require more attention and protection from the father, which hinders the father from mating and spreading his genes. Birds do this too. Other animals choose to kill the weaker children, so that they don't take food from the other kids in order to improve the chances of the stronger children's survival. It would not in the least surprise me if monkeys have this behavior too. Purely evolutionary, human children with genetical defects is a liability for the entire group, as it requires more attention and, if he/she mates, reduces the purity of the gene pool.

 

[Valandil]

I have to disagree on the instinctively we know that killing people is wrong bit. Just looking at nature alone or the closest species to us in evolution disproofs that in addition to data on feral humans. Feral humans actually view other human being as enemies first and foremost so if anything as far as morality is concerned we'd be more violent and aggressive as a species. Now that i think of it the feral human's perception of all humans sounds similar to most people's perception of any group that isnt the "us" in "us or them."
This is not going into the fact that the chimpanzee aka the closest thing to a human other than actual humans is a violent cannibalistic baby eater. They literally just randomly (as far as can be known) grab a baby chimp out of the arms of it's mother and eats it while sharing the body parts with it's friends while the mama chimp sits there traumatized. Dolphins are one of the most intelligent species on the planet and they're extremely homicidal. They kill porpoises, baby dolphins, etc for the sheer fun of it. They have roving rape gangs where they rape female dolphins and keep them captive for hours at a time. Chimpanzee's are intelligent to be equivalent to human children if I remember correctly so they should be intelligent enough to know right from wrong if the concept of morality was introduced to them. I'm not entirely sure how intelligent dolphins are on the scale but considering that dolphins have been documented as manipulating their trainers via inventing what could be considered basic capitalism/economics i'd say they havea decent score.

All valid points, but it's never "for the fun it." They're all evolutionary strategies that give your specific genes the best possible opporunity to propagate into the next generation.

Even if you're focusing on Christianity, in the "West" since the first century CE onward, the topic is still too broad. How long of a paper is this? How many sources are required? If this is a research paper for college, and it's going to be under 20 pages, I think you're going to find yourself bogged down in a sea of information, examples, anecdotes, etc. I think you should pick one specific aspect of Western civilization and describe how of if that would be different had Christianity died out before it ever gained a foothold. One thing you should always keep in mind if you're specifically targeting Christianity is that paganism, for the first few centuries CE, was by far more popular and widespread than Christianity. So, even if you took Christianity out of the equation, you're still going to have semi-organized religion in the form of paganism to deal with.

 

[Khajit]

All valid points, but it's never "for the fun it." They're all evolutionary strategies that give your specific genes the best possible opporunity to propagate into the next generation.

Even if you're focusing on Christianity, in the "West" since the first century CE onward, the topic is still too broad. How long of a paper is this? How many sources are required? If this is a research paper for college, and it's going to be under 20 pages, I think you're going to find yourself bogged down in a sea of information, examples, anecdotes, etc. I think you should pick one specific aspect of Western civilization and describe how of if that would be different had Christianity died out before it ever gained a foothold. One thing you should always keep in mind if you're specifically targeting Christianity is that paganism, for the first few centuries CE, was by far more popular and widespread than Christianity. So, even if you took Christianity out of the equation, you're still going to have semi-organized religion in the form of paganism to deal with.

That's the thing. There is no evolutionary advantage to the dolphins tendency towards murder. Your theory has been checked out before and there is no possible reason for the dolphins to hunt down porpoises to murder them than for fun. They don't compete with dolphins for any resource whatsoever. The dolphins are actually going out of their way to just fuck with them. IT isnt about territory even because after they chase them away they keep stalking them until they've killed them all.
The same thing with chimpanzees. THe chimps dont even need to eat meat usually and generally detest it. There is a theory about it looking possibly ceremonial but that's under the heading of wold mass guessing. Chimps also start wars.
And at the same time your theory of it being evolutionarily advantages would give even more reason for morality to not exist among humans since the guy who killed the other men and rapes the women has the biggest evolutionary advantage.

dolphin murder link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/25/eadolphin125.xml
I can link to a youtube vid as well where a dolphin is attempting to rae a human but noone here wants to see that. Doesnt make a lick of sense evolutionarily speaking either.

 

[Uzor]

All valid points, but it's never "for the fun it." They're all evolutionary strategies that give your specific genes the best possible opporunity to propagate into the next generation.

Even if you're focusing on Christianity, in the "West" since the first century CE onward, the topic is still too broad. How long of a paper is this? How many sources are required? If this is a research paper for college, and it's going to be under 20 pages, I think you're going to find yourself bogged down in a sea of information, examples, anecdotes, etc. I think you should pick one specific aspect of Western civilization and describe how of if that would be different had Christianity died out before it ever gained a foothold. One thing you should always keep in mind if you're specifically targeting Christianity is that paganism, for the first few centuries CE, was by far more popular and widespread than Christianity. So, even if you took Christianity out of the equation, you're still going to have semi-organized religion in the form of paganism to deal with.

Yes, which is why I'm mentioning the points in my OP of how, generally, religion affects various parts of society, in order to theorize how the world could have looked some 2000 years ago, and as such theorize how the world would have progressed from there, assuming it still had the countries and empires intact.

As for the paper itself, it is a theoretical paper based on a subject we find interesting within religion. Our teacher mostly want to see how we come to the conclusions we do rather than the factual aspects of the paper, and as such we're free to write a bit how we want.

Basically, our assignment is aching to writing a paper on our views of death and whether we believe there's something after death. Its theoretical rather than factual. Besides, this is mroe of a bonus assignment for me since I've already done all of the other papers we're supposed to write.

And no, Khajit, it wouldn't give an evolutionary advantage. Evolution is about the survival of the species more than the individual. Mindlessly slaying every male in your group and having a personal harem of women is as such not beneficial to the species, especially since humans rely so much on each other to get things done.

 

[Valandil]

And at the same time your theory of it being evolutionarily advantages would give even more reason for morality to not exist among humans since the guy who killed the other men and rapes the women has the biggest evolutionary advantage.

It would seem that he does have the biggest evolutationary advantage in this situation, but in reality he doesn't. He doesn't because he is at just as much risk of suffering the same things he inflicts upon others, hence, society. A group, working together and keeping each other in check through various social restraints, has a much greater collective evolutionary advantage than a single organism using brute force.

 

[Khajit]

There's still plenty of women to help out in said harem of one could subjugate the other males technically. It's not like there aren't animal species out there with a similar behaviors.
Also the guy doesn't HAVE to stick around. Hell now that i think of it they could just skip the kill the men part and he'd have the genetic advantage. Nor would all the men have to be killed in the first place. Think of it this way. Genghis Khan is currently the ancestor of at least 20~30% of humanity using that method. AS far as genetic success goes he's the most successful human being in history and spreading one's genetics is the basic imperative to go on for natural selection.

Basically we have society the way it is today because we got really lucky as far as coincidences go. it would be ALOT worse and still function properly with or without our current version of morality or any morality at all. Murder was like saying hello for millenarian and yet we managed to come as far as we did before the modern era started. Hell we still murder hundreds of thousands yet our technology and population is increasing.
I also admit i used the word evolutionary advantage incorrectly. i should have said something like "the largest advantage towards the basic imperative to spread one's genetic code." as really evolution isn't an superior or inferior, it's just an adaptation that is different from the previous version.

 

[Valandil]

There's still plenty of women to help out in said harem of one could subjugate the other males technically. It's not like there aren't animal species out there with a similar behaviors.
Also the guy doesn't HAVE to stick around. Hell now that i think of it they could just skip the kill the men part and he'd have the genetic advantage. Nor would all the men have to be killed in the first place. Think of it this way. Genghis Khan is currently the ancestor of at least 20~30% of humanity using that method. AS far as genetic success goes he's the most successful human being in history and spreading one's genetics is the basic imperative to go on for natural selection.

This is true, but Khan didn't conquer the world all by himself. I'm not disagreeing that someone who is brutal, aggresive, etc doesn't have an advantage over those who are timid and too willing to cooperate. What I am saying is that if you are faced with A) being brutal to the extreme as the expense of alienating yourself from any kind of collective, or B) curbing your "appetites" (for lack of a better term) in favor of being a part of a collective group, the person who chooses B is alwasy going to be in a much strong evoluationary position than the person who chooses A.

It's not just about being able to mate with the most number of females, it's also about ensuring that your offspring can actually survive and flourish. Take for example Sparta. Sparta practiced eugenics to such a degree that was unrivaled until the Nazis. However, in the long-run this strategy backfired on them as it left them weak and vulnerable because their "herd" had been culled to the point that it could not easily adapt. Essentially Sparta collapsed from within, Thebes just finished the job for them. Obviously this is an over-simplified example but it serves as a decent illustration for these purposes.

 

[Khajit]

True enough. Genghis khan actually ruled via leadership though. He basically got his entire horde together under the principle of "I'm an awesome leader". Soldiers got treated with respect, got thier share of the loot, if you defected to him you were in with no penalties, promotions based on hard work and merits instead of politics. His entire campaign across most of the world was probably a team building exercise to make sure his subjects didn't get bored and fight themselves.
I'm just pointing out that the two sides aren't mutually exclusive. You guys are saying x y nd z is bad for human development when i look at it and realize that theoretically there is no real reason for it not to work other than our morality saying it's bad.

One side says murder wont get things done in a civilization. I say that there's tons of murder and genocide in lots of civilizations that advanced technology and science immeasurably so when did it magically stop working? That's the funny(no not in a haha way) thing about humanity. Sure the extra death might lose us an Einstein or Plato or Imhotep but pragmatically speaking the human race can pop out 50 more if they all work on reproduction for a few minutes after the conflict. Even without the super geniuses there's the regular guys that advance us whom can easily have been replaced. Yeah it's kinda scary to realize that sometimes but it's true. War alone causes huge advances in technology so tbh i wonder how much of our technology really owes it's existence to war itself than to the pursuit of knowledge.

 

[Uzor]

I've never said murder and brutality does not have its place in evolution. Of course it do, that's not the point. The point is, humans have programmed within them that killing every innocent person in sight is bad. We have a built-in system to prevent this from happening. People invading our territory is not considered innocent, and we have an easier time killing these. However, all personalities have their time and place. The same goes with murderers. Just because some individuals in a group have homicidal tendencies does not mean the species as a whole are homicidal maniacs, it simply means that some individuals have that behavior. Why? Because of how they are wired. The brain is wired different in every single individual, in order to allow a species to adapt and adjust, for the very reason that different personalities have different strengths that could be needed in various times.

 

[Dancingweapon]

I knew this was gonna be a good read. Are you going to post the essay on here after or would that not be possible?

 

[Raesvelg]

There was in interesting morality experiment recently on the topic of what we consider justifiable. Basically, they posed a classic moral dilemma to a group of people, while performing a fairly detailed monitoring of their brain activity.

The dilemma is two-part. In the first part, you're standing at the track switch control of a rail yard, and there's a high-speed train coming through. There is a track crew working on the track ahead of you. You know that the train cannot possibly stop in time, and that the crew cannot see or hear you, so you have only one available choice. If you leave the train on its current track, four members of the crew will be killed. If, however, you switch the train to an alternate track, only one crew member will die.

Now, when posed with this question, most people make the choice to kill the one crew rather than let the four die. Brain activity showed a process of deliberation, a weighing of relative values, before a decision was reached.

The second part is similar, only this time you are standing on a bridge above the switch control, with another man. The train is coming, the four members of the road crew will die, but there nobody on the alternate track. The only way to activate the switch in time, however, is to push the man you're standing on the bridge with off, so that he strikes the switch control and diverts the train.

Almost everyone, when asked this question, said no. Immediately. The brain showed an overwhelming response from a completely different part of the brain, effectively shouting down the parts involved in deliberation. It was an arguably instinctive refusal to actively kill another human being.

Obviously, the interesting part of this is that in both outcomes, someone dies as a result of your action, whether it be by the indirect murder of throwing the switch, or the direct murder of pushing a man off a bridge.

Suffice to say that there is at least some evidence for an instinctive basis of morality, at least as far as some things go.

Anyhoo.

On a related note, pretty much any predator will occasionally kill for the fun of it, assuming that the act of killing poses no particular risk to themselves.

 

[Uzor]

I knew this was gonna be a good read. Are you going to post the essay on here after or would that not be possible?

I'm writing it in Swedish, and I'd rather not translate it <.<;

Also, Raesvelg, I'm not sure how many of you have done this morality test, but its a fairly easy and fun one:

Spoiler:

Yes yes, I know, I'm a great painter.

There's a couple, Jane and Pete. Jane is madly in love with Pete, and Pete is madly in love with Jane. The problem is that there's a river separating the two of them. There is no way to cross the river other than by boat. Jane contacts the boat's owner, Marcus, asking him if she may borrow it to see Pete. Marcus' response to Jane's question is a simple "I'll lend it to you if you have sex with me".

Jane, confused and upset, says she'll think about it, and goes to Alex to ask for advice. Alex tells her that he wishes to stay out of her dilemma. Jane, now having made up her mind, goes to Marcus and tells him that she agrees to his deal, has sex with him, and then takes the boat over to the other side.

In the meantime, Sandra tells Pete that Jane has slept with Marcus, and when Jane finally reaches Pete, he is upset and has a fight with Jane, resulting in the couple breaking up and Pete telling Jane that he never wishes to see her again. Crying, Jane calls her friend Ian, explaining the situation to him. This makes Ian very angry, resulting in him paying Pete a visit and beats him up.

Now, with all of this in mind, how would you rate each person's action, from best to worst?

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

This is a quick morality test to see what you put value on.

I would love for you to post your results here if you want, it can be quite fun to see how split everyone's values and morals are.

 

[Skaw]

Theres nothing wrong with religion, today, except for it having influence in virtually every world power. Take that away from religion, and it's perfectly fine.

Now, the inner-working of some religions themselves have problems. Christianity is a husk of what it was founded for, for example. Megachurches are an ultimate hypocrisy, considering Jesus was against even meager cathedrals. Considering all the woes of Americas poor and middle class aren't getting better due to Americas rich(Healthcare, Fuck You Got Mine-ism,) being a prominently Christian nation, again - It's all hypocrisy. Barking "Socialism" whenever any programs are being set up to help others, when your religions basic fundamentals are to help those in need - well, fine times in Hell at the end of the road for most of the upper class and (ironically) brainwashed middle class and poor I suppose.

I myself am not a religious person, but I do try and be a good person whenever I can. Which, going by the bible, puts me "closer to Jesus" than most of his followers it seems.

 

[Rips]

I myself am not a religious person, but I do try and be a good person whenever I can. Which, going by the bible, puts me "closer to Jesus" than most of his followers it seems.

Well since your post count is 10,666 I wouldn't expect you to be.

 

[Khajit]

There was in interesting morality experiment recently on the topic of what we consider justifiable. Basically, they posed a classic moral dilemma to a group of people, while performing a fairly detailed monitoring of their brain activity.

The dilemma is two-part. In the first part, you're standing at the track switch control of a rail yard, and there's a high-speed train coming through. There is a track crew working on the track ahead of you. You know that the train cannot possibly stop in time, and that the crew cannot see or hear you, so you have only one available choice. If you leave the train on its current track, four members of the crew will be killed. If, however, you switch the train to an alternate track, only one crew member will die.

Now, when posed with this question, most people make the choice to kill the one crew rather than let the four die. Brain activity showed a process of deliberation, a weighing of relative values, before a decision was reached.

The second part is similar, only this time you are standing on a bridge above the switch control, with another man. The train is coming, the four members of the road crew will die, but there nobody on the alternate track. The only way to activate the switch in time, however, is to push the man you're standing on the bridge with off, so that he strikes the switch control and diverts the train.

Almost everyone, when asked this question, said no. Immediately. The brain showed an overwhelming response from a completely different part of the brain, effectively shouting down the parts involved in deliberation. It was an arguably instinctive refusal to actively kill another human being.

Obviously, the interesting part of this is that in both outcomes, someone dies as a result of your action, whether it be by the indirect murder of throwing the switch, or the direct murder of pushing a man off a bridge.

Suffice to say that there is at least some evidence for an instinctive basis of morality, at least as far as some things go.

Anyhoo.

On a related note, pretty much any predator will occasionally kill for the fun of it, assuming that the act of killing poses no particular risk to themselves.

That doesnt technically prove morality at all.
For one there was no "control" subject. ALso what would even consitute a control subject? A person convicted of murder? serial killer? an apathetic individual? somewhere in between the average person and one whom has killed to test the difference? perhaps a person whom had injuries to the section of the brain that was activated by the second test? While yes one could translate it as morality the results interpretation seems to be alot of projection. People tend to find killing easier when they push a button vs physically killing so that alone could show that our brain views the 2 situations differently to begin with. In the second test the subjects could easily be the result of being taught that "killing is bad mmmkay" aka where we store behaviors based on tradition or social rules impressed upon us.

Taking a look at bystander syndrome which we've all heard of the victim can get a member of the crowd to help by specifically calling for that individual which makes the bystander treat the victim as a person. Even in rape cases supposedly if the victim talks to the rapist and carries on a conversation it sometimes causes them to stop as the rapist can no longer think of the victim as an object.(disclaimer . I'm not saying it happens in 100% of cases or that you should stop screaming for help or anything stupid like that)

The test subjects simply could have thought of the conductor as an individual instead of a test subject while the 4 others hadn't been given an identity. 4 is a number, "Mr conductor" is an individual you're in the company of. The test should have given some "personal" information on the 4 road workers as well to change them from a statistic to a person in their minds.

Also human beings seem remarkably able to ignore this vaunted morality instinct when they choose to. For example the island of Fiji had the following written about it by a missionary in his diary.

"October 31st, 1839, Thursday. This morning we witnessed a shocking spectacle. Twenty (20) dead bodies of men, women and children were brought to Rewa as a present from Tanoa. They were distributed among the people to be cooked and eaten. They were dragged about in the water and on the beach. The children amused themselves by sporting with and mutilating the body of a little girl. A crowd of men and women maltreated the body of a gray-haired old man and that of a young woman. Human entrails were floating down the river in front of the mission premises."

"About 30 living children were hoisted up to the mastheads as flags of triumph. The motion of the canoes while sailing soon killed the helpless creatures and silenced their piercing cries."

 

[Uzor]

Taking a look at bystander syndrome which we've all heard of the victim can get a member of the crowd to help by specifically calling for that individual which makes the bystander treat the victim as a person. Even in rape cases supposedly if the victim talks to the rapist and carries on a conversation it sometimes causes them to stop as the rapist can no longer think of the victim as an object.(disclaimer . I'm not saying it happens in 100% of cases or that you should stop screaming for help or anything stupid like that)

I would say that has to do more with the rapist being turned on by fear. A rapist don't rape out of sexual desire, buy because they get turned on by fear and control. If the victim shows no fear (as by talking to the rapist), he no longer feel like he's in control, and is no longer turned on by the fear.

 

[Khajit]

That's a distinct possibility as well, nor are all rapists exactly the same in mind even if one can classify them as all sick in the head.