If you take the view that we can only know about the world around us what our senses tell us, and that our senses are far less reliable than we might think, you have to start questioning how reliable our supposed knowledge of the world really is, and that opens a whole new can of worms which is why I would rather leave the thinking to scientists who know what they are doing. I think.
Does any of that make sense?
"'scuse me"
"quack!"

Maybe mi lord but that's not the whole story is it?

Much of the 'evil' committed is by people who have no religion, and I expect  removing religion would actually make little difference to the state of the world.

Paedophiles would still kill children, American gunslingers woud still massacre college classes, rival Asian tribes would still fight, racists would still behave in a racist manner, yobs would still rob pensioners, animal activists would still dig up graves  ..... etc etc. Do you agree with that mi lord?


John W

Wouldn't go that far myself.  What about Helen of troy, eh?   What about good old-fashioned envy? Any of one's various emotional states can become a cause for genocide under an authoritarian regime : )


However, at least in mathematics; various schools in Hindu cultures had made discoveries far in advance (for instance, calculus two centuries before Newton or Leibniz) of the western scholars.  And what about the But yes, in Britain the Enlightenment seemed (from what little I know of it) to be very much tied up with the religion developments of the time.  Of course, scientific was actively stifled in the environment that reigned in the Medieval period (not just because of religious causes, but still).


I think it would.  Much as I would agree that many bad things are committed by people who have no religion, a good many of these people all the same make use of organised religion to control other people.

And rape, indeed; but they wouldn't have been actively protected by a large authoritarian organisation who saw no need to answer to local authorities or members and were in and of themselves seemingly incapable of dealing with the practice.


indeed.

Yes, but what about homophobic killings and assaults?

Indeed.  One thing that does happen in a lot of poorer communities is that you have Christian missions who are the only outlet for people who want to lead a more orderly and generally peaceful life.  But they do have serious downsides as well (issues with contraception, involving submission to a foreign regime which is usually not accountable to them &c.).


Well without religion maybe people would not be so worried about using up real estate for the storage of family relics ...

hear hear!

No.  People aren't just born disliking gay people!  I think in this case it's pretty clearly a nurture-issue   Of course, they're only in a few cases self-justified directly by religious reasons. However, like it or not, the more literalist christian cultures that are around in America do very much foster the idea that gay folks are morally inferior to others (by not even wanting to repent of a specific sin).

Yes, wasn't there a High Church in Southampton or somewhere someone told me about recently, where no clergy had arrived for the Sunday morning service because they'd all, every single one of them, been arrested cruising the common the previous night?!

Undoubtedly, but not openly.  Maybe I'm too much an idealist/literalist myself :/