Let me explain something really simple-wise...
If the God theory never existed, and all these religions didn't pop up around him/her/it, and destroy societies and knowledge throughout history, we would probably be travelling to other star systems by now.
We would be soooooo far advanced it not for the purge of religion, and burning of knowledge.... and having to start all over again every so often...
Really kicks my ass when i think about that... the religious purges... friggin jerks!
We would probably have figured everything out by now, if not for the constant religious reboots that our crazy beliefs have caused us to do.
So get your butts back to your private faiths, and stop trying to change the world, for something that has no more evidence than Santa Claus... You're ruining it all for the future of mankind!
Geez....Louise....
Man is hardwired to worship. Therefore, he will worship something. The only choice he has in the matter is what he will worship.
You are like almost every other atheist I have met, you only see the bad that men have committed, you don't weight the good. It is not the fault of religion or God. You are literally throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You a vague rosy notion of goodness of life without out religion or belief in a Supreme Being. You don't have to imagine what the world would look like, we have ample examples of the 20th century of what a society without God looks like. Your logic is flawed to say the least.
Here is how I imagine a world without God or religion would look like... their religion would be socialism. They would worship big government and social policy. It would be based on atheism and the deification of man. It would proceed in almost all of its manifestations from the assumption that the basic principles guiding the life of the individual and of mankind in general do not go beyond the satisfaction of material needs or primitive instincts. They would have no distinction between good and evil, no morality or any other kind of value, save pleasure. Their doctrine would be abolition of private property, abolition of family and communality or equality. They would practice moral relativity, indiscriminate indiscriminateness, multiculturalism, cultural marxism and normalization of deviance. They would be identified by an external locus of control. They would worship science but would be the first to argue against it when it did not suit their cause. They would force everyone to believe the same things and think the same way. There would be no diversity of thought, only homogenization of thought.
Here is my proof that that is what that world would look like...
"...boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.
The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.
The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.
I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.
It has made man the measure of all things on earth — imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.
We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.
If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.
It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.
Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.
Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?
If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.
The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward." Solzhenitsyn