Oh! I disagree! I think religion probably served an incredible useful purpose in our social development.
Think about this: 500 years ago, or 1000, in some village somewhere, John hates Micheal. Or maybe John just wants Michael’s cow or land or pants. What’s stopping John from killing Micheal? Like, who’s gonna even know it was him? Some magical man in the sky who sees all and knows all? And what would that guy even do! Does he have powers to send you to a horrible place? Or curse you?
Oh…
So does he have rules you gotta follow? What’s the payoff?
Oh…
So how do I learn these rules, and stay on this guys good side?
Guess John probably won’t kill Micheal. Not yet anyways. Best keep sky daddy happy.
Now did the “good” outweigh the bad? Did it ever? And at what point in human history did that ratio shift and the good no longer outweighed the bad? Are there reasons/situations/people where this is still a valuable tactic?
Most people don’t want to kill other people. It turns out this is true with or without religion. We never needed it to do this. However, religion does tell people it’s good to kill people from other religions.
Edit to add this quote I remembered:
The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.
You could say this at basically any point in hunan history and it would still be true
Oh! I disagree! I think religion probably served an incredible useful purpose in our social development.
Think about this: 500 years ago, or 1000, in some village somewhere, John hates Micheal. Or maybe John just wants Michael’s cow or land or pants. What’s stopping John from killing Micheal? Like, who’s gonna even know it was him? Some magical man in the sky who sees all and knows all? And what would that guy even do! Does he have powers to send you to a horrible place? Or curse you?
Oh…
So does he have rules you gotta follow? What’s the payoff?
Oh…
So how do I learn these rules, and stay on this guys good side?
Guess John probably won’t kill Micheal. Not yet anyways. Best keep sky daddy happy.
Now did the “good” outweigh the bad? Did it ever? And at what point in human history did that ratio shift and the good no longer outweighed the bad? Are there reasons/situations/people where this is still a valuable tactic?
Discuss.
Most people don’t want to kill other people. It turns out this is true with or without religion. We never needed it to do this. However, religion does tell people it’s good to kill people from other religions.
Edit to add this quote I remembered:
-Penn Jillette
A lot of religions were quite progressive at the time they came up. The proplem is that the world changed a lot, while religions didn’t.