What if there would be no religion?

[Blaggard]

We'd invent something to replace it, we have been so inured to authority for so long that we have to believe in something even if it is nonsense, ideas for new religions: democracy at the barrel of a gun. because nothing says the will of the people or the right to sovereignty and self determination, quite like forcing them to your will to make them into being what you want but not necessarrilly what they want. America! Et al Fuck yeah!

Google the one God, and wiki is his prophet PBUH.

My personal favourite science, and not science as in something you have to question and prove wrong or the Devil wins, and you are no true Scientist, I mean herders who make science what it is for money, personal gain and all the facile weakness people are prone to. Or my second favourite Capitalism, because nothing says screwing someone over for your own selfish needs like capitalism as it is atm...

Hallowed be the Dawkins and the Hawking and the holy boast, praise be unto people who cannot think for themselves without being swayed by prophets. :[

I refer the honourable ladies and gentlemen to the answer Brian almost certainly did not give some millenia ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjz16xjeBAA

Anyone who says "I'm not" well done at least you were listening.

[3Sum]

Secular humanism seems like a decent replacement for religion.

[metachuck]

I think religion is like language in the sense that it is simply an aspect of being human. I, as a believer, feel it is because there is a God and the human mind picks up on this fact. But, putting that aside, I believe a non-theistic civilization of any sort is quite improbable. There will always be some force, or being, to which some people will always appeal. We can call it God, the Tao, whatever, but it is part of human nature and will always be with us. Just my opinion.

[Felasco]

The most optimal thing for humanity would be to realize exactly why religion is useless and irrational and for people to let go by their own choice.

If we are to be rational then we must examine the evidence.

The evidence shows that religion has arisen in pretty much every time and place in human history.

This raises the question of why something proposed to be useless is continually being used in such a longstanding widespread manner.

Further examination of the evidence suggests that nature usually discards things that are useless. When sea creatures crawled out on to the land they lost their gills and flippers, which were no longer needed, useless.

A quite significant pile of evidence suggests that religion is useful, and if this is true, it is also rational.

This doesn't rule out the possibility that some or all religious beliefs may be fantasy. If such beliefs are fantasy, then we come to the question of the usefulness, and thus rational basis, for fantasy.

Further examination of the evidence reveals that religious believers are not the only people interested in the experience of fantasy. As example...

Ardent atheists claim there is no God. That is, they claim to know what doesn't exist in all of reality, an arena they can not define in even the most basic manner. Just as with religious beliefs, a great many people all over the world have willingly embraced this wildly speculative assertion for a long time too, and so like religious belief, we can reasonably propose atheist belief too is useful, and thus rational.

[Blaggard]

The most optimal thing for humanity would be to realize exactly why religion is useless and irrational and for people to let go by their own choice.

If we are to be rational then we must examine the evidence.

The evidence shows that religion has arisen in pretty much every time and place in human history.

This raises the question of why something proposed to be useless is continually being used in such a longstanding widespread manner.

Further examination of the evidence suggests that nature usually discards things that are useless. When sea creatures crawled out on to the land they lost their gills and flippers, which were no longer needed, useless.

A quite significant pile of evidence suggests that religion is useful, and if this is true, it is also rational.

This doesn't rule out the possibility that some or all religious beliefs may be fantasy. If such beliefs are fantasy, then we come to the question of the usefulness, and thus rational basis, for fantasy.

Further examination of the evidence reveals that religious believers are not the only people interested in the experience of fantasy. As example...

Ardent atheists claim there is no God. That is, they claim to know what doesn't exist in all of reality, an arena they can not define in even the most basic manner. Just as with religious beliefs, a great many people all over the world have willingly embraced this wildly speculative assertion for a long time too, and so like religious belief, we can reasonably propose atheist belief too is useful, and thus rational.

because control of the masses above and beyond law is societally and hence evolutionarily viable, there has been religion since the Neanderthals and maybe before, are we going to say that the Neanderthals believed in God? No that would be crazy, they believed that strange things happened and people died, and to cope with that they invented religion a mysticism to cope with death, nature and all the other things they did not understand. There's nothing more to it than that, ok it got more sophisticated, then later on powerful people in politics corrupted it to use it as a means of control and conquest, and now we have grown so used to it we can't even see how 200,000 years of nonsense no longer makes sense because it is now a part of our genes. We are genetically now programmed to see significance in birth, death and so on, so we do. Whether any God exists is beside the point, we will never know, but we are here now and dealing with the past.

No one can claim anything logically does not exist but then the onus is not on atheists to prove God does not exist, as always in any area of logical concern the onus is on the person making the positive claim not on people who say they do not think it is true. Religion says God exists prove that, and if you do then we can talk, we don't need to prove something that has no tangible evidence exists, we can just say well go on...

I'm a great believer in Odin and the viking religion, prove why Christianity is right and Odin doesn't exist? Meh see two can play at that game.