Asklemmy

Something i read during the beginning of the Iraq War put things in perspective. During the time of monarchies it was suicidal to challenge them . Religion provided a balance because you can't kill God. Kings and queens learned to work with religious leaders to help deal with the populace. Democracy made it less necessary. I don't know if any of this is true but it does make sense

Yes, but not just because of the lack of religions, but the lack of superstition that would require. Basically if everyone believed things based on physical evidence, rather than feelings, the world would be better. But, also, we as a species might not have survived our earliest days.

Yes

Maybe, if there was a new better-fitting, revolutionary superstructure that would replace it

I think by its context, religion was the ideology of feudalism and the medieval times' economy (eg. Hinduism)...

And while it was progressive for its time, when the dawn of a new system came, its weaknesses were exposed...

What's the difference between religion and any other belief systems?

The answer (to me) is a resounding yes. I firmly believe that belief in the Supernatural is in-built into all of us. It’s an off-shoot of us being incredibly good at pattern matching combined with our need for parental guidance for so long and a fear of death -

To get past this, we need two things: A personal willingness to ask questions and follow the answers (which is a basic description of science) and we need a society that is willing to embrace these individuals.

That we aren’t quite there yet means we end up with leaders embracing religion, which is reinforced by the masses accepting their dogma. The whole thing about “religion creating morality” is BS and just another form of dogma.

It may be entirely simplistic, and it probably puts too much faith in human capacity, but I think we could move in that direction if we just prioritized learning and inquisitiveness. Note, this is not the same as making people go to college. Learning is a life skill…

What I would want is that some people wouldn't try to bend religion to their will. But anyway what are religions but something that has been shaped over time by people... Sigh, whatever.

Religion exists because it's a way to control people you can't reason with for whatever reason. It's definitely a net negative now, and has been for centuries imo, but back at the beginning it was an important cornerstone of civilization

No. If it wasn't religion people would be assholes to each other about something else. Religion is just an excuse.

I don't believe so. I believe religions are human creations and as such, they can't be awful if people don't have that awful side to begin with. If religions disappeared overnight or were magically erased from existence we would still struggle with the same issues, only with a different flavour. Perhaps there would be no lies on certain topics but I'm not too sure that would make a massive difference overall.

You'd have to cut out the part of our brain that's responsible for religious thinking. So what does that do to humanity?

Hasn't the question been settled by the Beatles? *Imagine no religions, we'd all be in peace ohohoohoho, you may say Iama dreamer. *

But we may still find other reason to fight