I’m having conflicting thoughts about religion in shaping human history.
As an atheist, it seems obvious to me that if there were no religion from the start, the world would have been a better place than it is now. There would be no religious wars, honor killings, more freedom, no religious leaders abusing their powers, no waste of labor and money on religious things, etc. It may seem that we would be more educated and have better understanding.
My whole conflict arises from the fact that “fear is a better driver than education and reasoning.” As no system is efficient and perfect, the absence of religion would have caused more crimes. Religion promotes fear (the concept of an afterlife, hell) if you do something wrong. If there were no religion, humans may have committed numerous crimes without fearing consequences. You could say that it is due to religions that numerous wars have happened in history. But that is a tiny percentage of the whole population. Most people lived happier with religion as it introduced morals ,ethics and consequences for wrongdoing(big factor). One would think and question before doing something wrong.
You could also say that if we were non-religious from the start, we would have had better education, reasoning, different type ethics and morals etc. But as I said earlier, no system is efficient, and since non-religion doesn’t promote fear if you don’t get caught by others, there would be more crimes without fearing consequences if they don’t get caught by others, which was easy in the old days.
So, I’m thinking if religion did better in the early days.
And I know that nowadays it’s a different story, and non-religion is obviously better.
Eh, looking through the comments (and its so nice to see that folks really giving some good thought to their comments on such a hot button topic), there’s not much I can add.
I fall into the “humans will find excuses” camp. I also think that religion isn’t a bad thing, per se. Even organized religion doesn’t have to be destructive at its extreme. But it’s also inevitable that the section of humanity that craves power and control is going to use whatever avenue for such that they find.
Since all religions are susceptible to zealotry, I don’t think we’ll ever be free of religious zealots, which means there’s always going to be people insisting that other people follow their religion’s rules, or else.
Now, that isn’t exclusive to religion, but it’s the obvious example of that kind of thinking. You can look at pretty much any bloc that’s belief based and find zealots. Politics, whoooo boy! Veganism. Even fandoms of cartoons have zealotry in a way, though it tends to be a much less invasive kind, akin to music genre fanatics; it’s more gatekeeping than proselytizing. But you do run into the kind of obsessive fandom where if you don’t like it, you suck; and you have to watch/listen/read.
Now, it may seem strange to connect religious zealotry to fandoms, but it’s the same underlying way of thinking. People are just prone to wanting to control other people, and will use any excuse to do so.
That proclivity is present even in people that think they don’t think that way, and actively try to weed it out of themselves. Ever catch yourself thinking "the whole world would be better if they all insert personal belief here? That’s the underlying kind of thinking that can snowball into the bigger kind of problem. Doesn’t even matter if it’s true on a factual level, it’s the way it’s thought about and approached that’s the key. If anything, a belief being highly factual and demonstrably true makes it more likely to turn into zealotry.
So, better without religion? Eh, nah, not imo. Just different in detail.