Societies would not collapse if there was no belief in a supernatural punishment. We don’t need a God to facilitate social order or tell us what is moral. Societies no longer need the concept of a God to develop and maintain complex societies. Sweden has 82% of the population that regard religion as unimportant and there is no mass hysteria or killings. Sweden currently ranks tenth in the World Happiness Report. They are not worried about if they are going to heaven or hell or following some religious rule. Morality, Ethics, Compassion and Forgiveness can exist quite well without God, maybe even better.
If God doesn’t exist, people will no longer be able to use religion as a reason to oppress people and even start religious wars. They would be more interested in providing better education and critical thinking and science-based programs to improve society.
To my knowledge, there is no actual evidence for the existence of a ‘God’ and no evidence societies need the concept of God to maintain social order and development.
I disagree. Humans have tried very hard over the course of history to pretend deities are real.
There seems to be a need to feel a void in their existence with the idea of a supreme being that listens to them.
Take away that crutch and they will try to latch on something else.
Humans need to evolve from their pathological need of patriarch figure that will care from them thru eternity. Proof that gods don’t exist won’t shortcut that process.
>If God doesn’t exist, people will no longer be able to use religion as a reason to oppress people and even start religious wars. They would be more interested in providing better education and critical thinking and science-based programs to improve society.
They would just fall on other supernatural beliefs, and whoever wanted to oppress others will keep doing it with a new excuse, be it quartz crystals or leprechauns.
Every single society that has abandoned any and all forms of religion promptly enter a state of tyranny and/or decline.
And before someone starts moaning about secular nations in modern Europe, find me just one majority non-believer country with a fertility rate that is at or above the healthy replacement rate of 2.1
I think in the long term it would be good, but in the short term absolute chaos due to billions of people having their worldview flipped upside down.
There would be war believers vs deniers. These people would have proof but still faith.
Atheist here. I don’t think it’s possible. Confirmation bias is a bitch.
It would not stop people from believing in those suggestions.
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The mistake here is to look at one society, which still has a certain amount of inertia from religious beliefs of the past, and then assume it would be true of all places at all times. The blood bath unleashed by the Communists, who were dogmatic atheists by doctrine and philosophy, is a case in point: They killed 100 million people.
There are several principal problems with saying that we can invent a code of ethics on our own. Although I am a believer in natural law theory, and I deny the alternative theory that a moral action or law is only right because God commands it, people have long had trouble coming up with a set of moral absolutes by human reason alone that most people would accept. Another problem is that atheists and agnostics, after they get done denying that God exists, normally erect a system of moral relativism or subjectivism. (Admittedly, Ayn Rand and her fellow Objectivists are a key exception to this generalization). So then, skeptics normally end up saying, “Anything goes,” which simply doesn’t work in any practical terms. Suppose a racist says, “Oppressing black people because of their skin color is right.” Presumably all skeptical liberals would heatedly denounce that moral claim, but they can’t refute it based on any kind of system of moral relativism or subjectivism. Other problems with inventing these laws on our own are that people may nominally upheld these moral laws, but if it is convenient, they don’t follow them consistently because they don’t fear being punished by God in the afterlife. From a Christian viewpoint, the Holy Spirit helps believers to obey God’s moral law better. Without supernatural help, it’s hard to obey any kind of detailed set of moral absolutes. So then it’s one thing to know what is right, but it’s another thing to do what’s right when our self-interest, laziness, fear, or other factors intrude.
This hypothetical doesn’t even really make sense, since the existence of some sort of God is an unfalsifiable hypothesis. People will always use “the God of the gaps” fallacy
Even if somehow it was absolutely determined there was no God, people would still do mental gymnastics and convince themselves there’s a God anyway.
Many aspects of religious texts have been completely debunked, yet many people still believe them to be “the truth.” We have definitive proof that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, yet there are people who still believe the Earth is flat. People already come up with a bunch of conspiracy theories and essentially believe what they want to be true.
First: I think a sudden shattering of paradigms and power structures would cause a ton of chaos, violence, death, power grabs. Currently, there are a number of theocratic governments, and many more religiously backed political parties. You don’t think the sudden revelation that their whole ideology is based on nothing would cause a ton of issues?
Second: While I absolutely agree that religion and/or belief in the afterlife is unnecessary for moral behavior, that doesn’t mean that people who’ve grown up with and developed their sense of morality through religious teaching will ipso facto adapt and/or develop new mores. You are removing incentives and laws. For those who are not incentivized enough through other means (secular laws, empathy, internalized morals, etc).
Third: unfortunately, while belief in God would end a ton of strife and tribalism, it wouldn’t eliminate it all. Those tendencies are deeply ingrained human tendencies, same as empathy and compassion. It’s not like China treats their ethnic and religious minorities well, for example (and no, that’s not cuz of atheism, but it is extreme ideology and totalitarianism anyways).
A friend of mine was a therapist for decades.
He said fear of real world consequences is what motivates people to stay in line.
Sweden is a pretty racist place. I feel like there is a better country you could’ve mentioned instead.
I frequently see the refrain of “why don’t atheists murder and pillage and rape with reckless abandon since they aren’t afraid of afterlife retribution” — and that makes me think that many of the religious crowd are only doing good and avoiding evil because of a sense of selfish opportunism.
And there’s most likely an equally alarming number who would suddenly have no purpose because they’ve devoted their lives to a religion that doesn’t mean anything.
Religion honestly has relatively little to do with most major forms of oppression in the world today, and the number of wars through history that were *purely* about religion (rather than also having underlying motives of, e.g., controlling resources or expanding territory) is pretty small. I agree that a totally non-religious society would probably be no worse off than our current world, but I don’t really think it’d be any better either.
Also, you’re completely wrong that disproving God would prevent people from being religious. Around a third of the world’s religious population believe in non-monotheistic religions, either with multiple gods or no gods, all of which would be untouched by disproving the monotheistic capital-G God. I find it very annoying when people assume every religion is Christianity or Islam.