Tomorrow, when everyone wakes, they will realize one thing:
*There is no “God”. None. None, what-so-ever.
*There is no life after this. When you die, you simply cease to exist…FOREVER!
If there were a universal knowledge that there are no rewards nor punishments (after this life) for any deeds done during it, how does that influence the behavior of Earths inhabitants?
Politics.
Sexuality.
Crime.
The Ice Capades.
What happens? Positive, negative, or overall a wash?
Isn’t this what a lot of people actually believe? Look at what such people do, I guess.
It’s not exactly true, by the way. While the individual does die, there is life after death–the lives of others; and even the continued existence of one’s own component mass and energy; all within the life of the biosphere, one’s society, and one’s habitat, of whom one is a function.
So it’s a simplistic realization, really.
As an athiest, it would make absolutely no difference to my life.
It would certainly be an interesting situation if it came to be that the only reason religious people acted morally/ethically was because they considered it necessary for their after-life!
Not all of them, just the ones that think atheists can’t be trusted because God isn’t keeping them honest. Those ones are probably projecting, like the guys who go on about the temptations of homosexuality. No mate, it’s just you.
Well, obviously, everybody would wonder how it came to be that everybody had this revelation at the exact same time, because this strongly implies the existence of a supernatural agency behind it; thus, everybody would now know that there does, in fact, exist some vastly powerful supernatural being, which wants us to believe that it does not exist, hinting at a possible malignant nature; consequently, living in perpetual fear of the unknown deity, society would degrade into a wasteland of paranoia and hatred, false prophets would emerge to capitalize on this situation, selling spiritual snake-oil, promising protection from the fearful one, eventually starting to believe their own madness, and eradicating themselves and their cults in bizarre mass suicides.
So really, nothing much would change.
No, this scenario is different than real life. For one thing, you have actual evidence that there is something real going on. I expect you’ll see quite bit of scientific research into trying to figure out how it was done. And a lot of scientific - not theological - theorizing as to what could have done it.
If anything, such an event would be very good evidence for the existence of a godlike being. I mean, how else could a switch get thrown in everyone’s heads at the same time?
That’s an interesting point.
As to the OP - I think some people hinge their lives around their religion and so such knowledge would have a dramatic effect on them.
There are a few family members who would be utterly lost for a while after such an event.
Man, it would suck to be an Islamo-Fundie suicide bomber who had the epiphany in the moment between throwing the switch and being blown up.
Ah, but then there would be no morals, and ethic would be merely a passing convenience…
It’s reminding me of Harold Camping’s followers finding out the “Rapture” didn’t happen. Maybe the religious people would all start believing in homeopathy or something?
Agreed. The agency that caused this change might not be God, but it would be powerful enough to deserve the label of lower-case god.
I honestly don’t understand this argument. OK, you believe that without God to set moral rules, there’s no such thing as objective morality, just whatever we mere humans find pleasing.
So let’s stipulate this. God creates morality, and it’s up to human beings to live according to God’s rules. And how do we find out what God wants us to do? Read the Bible? Introspection? Consensus?
We humans are fallible, finite creatures. Even ff there is a source of objective morality in the universe, how the heck do we mere humans find out what that is?
He left a suicide note, found alongside the body?
I think about 75% of the population would be just fine, but man that other 25% would go completely and utterly batshit insane.
Oh, it wouldn’t have to be God. I can at least conceive of a universe in which moral rules were absolute with a divinity. My point is as such:
(A) The only possibilities for this universe that it has an Objective morality or not.
(B) Because Relative morality does not actuall exist. That is, if moral rules are such that a group of humans can create the m arbitrarily, then it does not matter how many humans do so.
(C) Therefore, if there is no Objectiv morality, then there are no moral rules; i.e., things which people ought to do because they are intrinsically right.
In essence, I’m saying that unless you believe in an Objective right or wrong, the concepts of good, evil, and morality are fundamentally meaningless. You can hold a purely personal definition, but no one has any good reason to ovey yours, since it amounts to a personal whim or quirk. This is technically separate from Atheism, but they pair of quite commonly as we all no doubt know.
This would not stop people from acting somewhat similarly as they do now. They might conclude they enjoy certain things and act to get them. But we would not be able to rationally say that say, the Nazis did evil, because there was no evil for them do. We would simply say they were inconvenient, and it was more convenient to wipe them all out.
That is a quite different question, and not really relevant here.
I think it would be a nasty first year or so. Very likely a temporary increase in depression and suicide. Remember that the structure and community of religion helps many people who have or had difficult lives and experiences and given them reason to carry on. I’m also sure that many that have spent much their lives devoted would possibly feel lost and meaningless.
There would also be a lot of transitional problems, what for instance would happen to institutions like the Catholic church if nobody was Catholic anymore. Would it simply shut down? What would happen to the various charities and shelters run by churches?
After a while things would probably return to normal, eventually people would find something else to follow and new “churches” would appear. Perhaps the great Church of String Theory or the Church of Latter Day Scientists.
I think that nowadays most morals, ethics, and rights and wrongs are determined more by societies laws and cultures rather than religion. So I don’t see it as an issue. After all most atheists don’t go around raping and murdering, and on the other side of the coin a rapist or murderer can still be religious.
The thing is, this brainwashing doesn’t make people realize that there’s no such thing as God. It simply gives them the belief that there’s no such thing as God. It’s not the same thing.
The existence or non-existence of God is an empirical question. All our beliefs about God don’t serve to make God real or unreal, God is either real or unreal despite our beliefs.
If you could wave a magic wand to make everyone into a Scientologist, that wouldn’t make Scientology true. And waving a magic wand to make everyone believe that the Earth is round doesn’t make the Earth round either. Either the Earth is round, or it’s some other shape, and if you can brainwash someone into a true belief it’s just as easy to brainwash them into a false belief.
So one major consequence of such a mass brainwashing (although it is brainwashing people into what I believe is a true belief), is to introduce radical skepticism about every other belief we hold. Is the sky really blue, or have we been brainwashed to believe it is blue, when it’s really yellow? How do we know that yesterday we believed the sky was blue, maybe we believed it was purple.
The existence of that kind of brainwashing would demonstrate the utter powerlessness of human decision making. It would logically lead to radical nihilism and solipsism. Of course, if we know our brains are broken so badly that a magic wand can change them like that, maybe we should reject such logical conclusions as nihilism, even though nihilism would be logical maybe we shouldn’t trust logic. But if we’re shown we can’t trust our own brains, even to the limited extent we could before, then we’re utterly helpless.
So what? Life after death has a clear idiomatic meaning; it refers to the personal survival of consciousness after the death of one’s physical body. I doubt anyone thinks that all life on the planet will cease when a given person dies, and people who fear death (which includes me) fear the cessation of being as much as anything else.
No, it’s not a simplistic realization at all. It’s only simplistic if you deliberately misunderstand the terms.
I would actually take the optimistic view.
I think one of the common assumptions is that religion keeps people in line. You’re hesistant to commit murder because you know God will get to you. And I do think that’s a valid concern, but not so widespread as people would expect.
For one thing, deeply religious people already do all sorts of shit to violate their religion. Tons of them cheat over their wives for the longest time - which is much more deliberate than a one-off passion-filled murder. I do wonder if how much a lot of religions emphasize forgiveness contributes to this. If you truly believed that if you committed adultery or murder or theft, you were convinced that you were damned forever, the disincentive should be ridiculously high. But if in the back of your mind you know you’ll be forgiven, it already eliminates a decent chunk of that disincentive. (Still, this leads me to believe that a lot of people don’t truly believe - if there was even the slightest chance that your action could result in eternal torture, you’d be insane to do it)
Moreso, I think the social contract is pretty strong. I think most people are fundamentally reasonably decent. They won’t commit crimes against people because they know how much it would suck to have those crimes committed against them.
There would be a pretty massive spike in depression and people who are barely functional. So many people base their entire lives around the presumption of religion that they couldn’t cope without it. It’s, quite frankly, hard and depressing to accept that the universe is a random place and there’s no great meaning behind everything, no great plan, no one in control. Shit happens. Very few people accept this - even non-religious people usually concoct some sort of concious entity that they ascribe things to. Some sort of self-aware universe, some sort of karma, whatever. The OP only specifies that there is no god, but not that there’s nothing supernatural. Some people will latch onto non-god supernatural bullshit, and some will accept the universe for what it is - but become very depressed. Societal productivity as a whole would go down for a while.
But I think ultimately the aftermath would be positive. I think if people realized that this is it - this is truly all you get, this isn’t just the opening stages for an infinitely longer afterlife - they would cherish what they had more, and they’d strive to make this as good as it could be. On average, that is - plenty of people more or less would mentally self destruct and become permanently depressed and nearly useless. But I don’t think there’d be a huge spike in crime rates or anything like that because people are free to get away with stuff without god watching them.