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.
Faith and Religion are two different things. Yes, I think the world would be far better without Religion. But faith gives people strength to overcome challenges that otherwise may destroy them. Faith doesn’t require you pay anything, money, time, etc into it. Faith is a personal thing between that one person and whatever they happen to put the faith into. Faith doesn’t require you to kill someone else because they don’t share that faith. Faith doesn’t require you study some fairy tale written by storytellers thousands of years ago. Religion is the opposite of all that, and for it’s survival requires you to spread the virus by any means necessary.
You really nailed it. I’ll take it one step further though - religion as a concept is not the problem. Having gods, holidays rites and rituals - that’s all good.
It’s religion as an organization, when it gives people power which they can misuse when we start having problems.
Your way of saying it is way clearer though.
Power-hungry people need to make up rules to control others, religions are a convenient tool for that, but they’re not the only one.