If you could click your fingers and make all religions instantly disappear, would you?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine what could replace religion as a source of solace.

A loved one dies. The reality is they’re gone forever and you’ll never see them again. And the same thing is inevitably going to happen to you. It certainly is a lot more pleasant to believe we still exist somewhere after death and we’re going to meet up again. I can see the attraction of religion in such a situation. But I just can’t bring myself to believe in it.

As for morality, ideally I’d like everyone to have a solid morality based on their own sense of what’s right and wrong and empathy for other people and appreciation of good social order. But if people can’t manage that, I’ll settle for them behaving out of fear of an invisible sky giant.

Sometimes a beautiful lie works better than an ugly truth.

22

I don’t think it’s moral to decide what other people think, so no I wouldn’t do it.

But for that same reason, if I could click my fingers and make people incapable of indoctrinating their children with religion, I’d do that.

If people come to it on their own, great. If they’ve simply been brainwashed, that’s just creepy. The best evidence is that 99% of people wouldn’t be religious if they weren’t raised so.

23

These scenarios to end religion always require the most miraculous premise ever to make it work.
Go back to the drawing board until you find something that ends religion without the need for prayers. You’ll have to end religion the hard way without magic or it just sounds like choosing satanism over godlyism.

24

Yes, in a heartbeat, but I’m not voting in a public poll.

25

I said No.

I’m not religious and I don’t know many people who are.

Australia isn’t a very religious place on a day to day basis, and those people who are religious are pretty quiet about it. Going to church is out of the ordinary, not the ordinary and religion and church is not something that ever comes up in normal conversation.

So, in essence whether religion exists or not would have very little difference to my life . Despite the bits about religion I really don’t like, it does serve some good purposes as well, so overall I’m basically staying with the status quo.

26

I picked a third option: just getting rid of the ones I personally don’t like, and the factions of those that I tolerate that I don’t tolerate.

27

What exactly is being removed and what would be left? Would we have things like holidays, cultural traditions, philosophies, modern moral frameworks etc. with no idea of how they developed? Does civil religion count? How about political ideologies? Sports?

28

They give out free cruises. You should go.

29

Do you see a lot of difference between raising a child as an American and raising a child as a Buddhist? I’m honestly asking. Also, do you have some data for your 99% claim? Thanks!

30

I agree with both of these ideas.

I agree with this one, also…although perhaps a bit more reluctantly.

31

I am somewhat of an outspoken atheist, and even I regard the OP as a silly proposition.

Why not snap one’s fingers and instantly turn all of us into a collective hive mentality; just think of all the fun we could have living as industrious bees.

We could ditch silly fashion trends and adopt wearing smart, yet, utilitarian Chairman Mao smocks. Not the olive drab smocks, but with yellow and black stripes to pay homage to the true socialist utopia of nature, the bee hive.

As noted in the “women and cleavage” thread, we’d finally be free of such abominations like women parading their breasts around, but it would come at a very steep price. Because we’d no longer have simple delights like women parading their breasts around.

Naw, as much as I’d like to play like the god that I routinely scoff at, and make the huddled masses jump to the snap of my fingers, I realize it is an absurd idea.

32

A person born as an American citizen is factually an American citizen and must, legally, subscribe to its laws, so it would be a bit silly to ignore the fact entirely.

But no, I don’t agree with indoctrinating children into blind patriotism. The nation had some good hard logic that went into is foundation, which it’s good to understand, but again that’s just factual information which one is free to agree with or disagree with as suits their interests and personalities.

The 99% claim is based on research analyzing how often people change to a different belief system from the one they are brought up with. Unfortunately, Google books isn’t showing the text for me from my cite, so I’m not sure whether that’s a temporary issue or if they’ve taken it down. But here’s a quote, as preserved in an old thread:

Most of us stay the religion in which we were raised (Star and Finke 2000; Hadaway and Marler 1993). For instance, in the United States, more than 80 percent of us born Catholic stay Catholic, more than 90 percent of us born Protestant stay Protestant, and more than 90 percent of us born Jewish stay Jewish (Greelet 1991). And even if people do choose another religion, they can only choose a religion that crosses their path. They can only switch to a new religion that exists where and when they do and is introduced to them by someone–a friend or missionary–or something–a pamphlet or television show–that intersects with their limited existence. It simply cannot be escaped: time and place are the most unavoidable and salient determinants of religious identity.

[…]

As Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (1975, 30) conclude, after reviewing extensive literature on the subject, “there can be no doubt that the attitudes of parents are among the most important factors in the formation of religious attitudes.” Potvin and Sloane (1985) found that teenagers whose parents are regular church attenders are five times more likely to be religiously active than teenagers whose parents are infrequent or non-church attenders. Stark and Bainbridge (1985) found a significant correlation parents’ beliefs in God and their children’s beliefs in God, succinctly concluding that “believers tend to have believers for parents; nonbelievers tend to have nonbelievers for parents” (1985, 330). As cited in the previous chapter, more than 80 percent of Americans born Catholic stay catholic, moer than 90 percent of Americans born Protestant stay Protestant, and more than 90 percent of Americans born Jewish stay Jewish (Greeley 1991)/ Cornwall (1988) and Storr (1988) looked at Mormon religiosity, finding parental influence on religious identity to be empirically significant, with Stott concluding that his data “clearly support the belief that parents play a dominant role in the religious socialization of their offspring” (1988, 261).

[…]

While the bulk of existing research does support the conclusion that parents clearly influence the religious beliefs and practices of their children, there is debate about the definite strength and actual time span of that influence (Kalish and Johnson 1972; Hoge, Petrillo, and Smith 1982; Bengston 1975; Dudley and Dudley 1986; Francis and Brown 1991). The fact is, of course, that it is not an absolute, air-tight causal relationship. Kids don’t always and in every instance automatically adopt the exact same religion as their parents. Far from it. Anthough changing religions is a rarity in the United States–Stark and Finke (2000, 115) estimate that fewer than 1 percent of Americans convert to a completely new religion–most of us certainly know some people who didn’t stick with their parents’ religion and grew up to choose different religious paths.

Consider my friend Doug, who wrote that piece of prayer for the introduction to this book. Doug wasn’t raised Mormon, but after his marriage to Michelle, he converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And what is interesting sociologically is that Doug’s process of religious conversion/change following his marriage to Michele is actually quite typical (Musick and Wilson 1995; Alba 1990; Hout and Greeley 1987; Bahr and Albrecht 1989; Hoge 1981). It fits one of the major patterns of religious switching: it is other people in our social world–usually those closest to us–who exert a strong influence over our religious choices/paths (Stark and Bainbridge 1985; Roberts and Davidson 1984; Richardson and Stewart 1977; Gaede 1976). As Stark and Finke (2000, 117) assert, “conversion is seldom about seeking or embracing an ideology; it is about bringing one’s religious identity into alignment with that of one’s friends and family members.”

33

A good chunk of the fanatics will just embrace Marxist-Leninism or National Socialism or Libertarianism.

34

Only if they were replaced with something innocuous and incorruptible.

There are some things about religious organisations that serve a genuine purpose, of support and community and organisation of social gatherings. But the same is also done by non-religiously affiliated organisations, so that’s what they ought to be replaced with.

Presumably you don’t also stop people from believing in the supernatural origins of the universe or an afterlife etc. It’s just organised religion being eliminated.

35

I have no issues with religion, but I’d gladly snap away extreme leaders of all faiths. It seems to me the problems come when someone with a pulpit decides that they have all the answers and the first answer is to convert or destroy anyone who believes otherwise. If they stuck to love, tolerance, and the Golden Rule and stayed out of politics, I think the world would be a much better place.

Yeah, I’m a dreamer.

36

Without religion or a higher power this world would suddenly become incredably dangerous. I am a kind, considereate, compassionate, compromising, flexable human who has never hated anything or anyone in his life. But, I feel if I felt humans had no soul and God had no plan it would be up to me make decisons for the bettermnet of man kind regardless of how tough these decisions were to make. It is pretty scary to think of the things I might feel obliged to do considering that I am actually a very nice person.

37

If the threat of magical punishment by an imaginary boogeyman is the only thing keeping people moral, then the problem is that we’ve raised a society of intellectually stunted man-children, not that atheism is bad.

If anything, religion is then a crutch rather than a leg up, because it’s teaching people they can ONLY be good people if they worship properly.

38

I don’t see the point.

First of all, the 20th century sufficiently demonstrated humankind’s capacity to be rapaciously destructive without religion (take a bow, Joe Stalin; you too, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot) or in ways that may have been nominally allied with religion but where religion was hardly integral to it (your turn, Adolf).

The mindless patriotism of the European powers that led to the carnage of World War I had little to do with the nominal religiousness of those powers. And the America - fuck, yeah! patriotism that this country has too much of right now, certainly gets a boost from religious tribalism, but absent religion, America’s cultural tribalism on the right would have surely coalesced over other things, and found other excuses to be hostile to people different from themselves.

Finally, if all the existing religions disappeared along with everyone’s memory of them, new religions would surely spring up overnight to replace them. These religions would likely be even crazier than the ones we’ve got, and would be unrestrained by any body of tradition.

39

I fail to see how we would suddenly become cartoonish villains who wreck havoc upon each other at a rate any greater or less for that matter.

Assuming we still had the construct of social behavior and the order of law, we’d be no different.

People would probably still deviate from the social norm at the same rate. People still try to make decisions for the betterment of others, regardless of god and his mysterious plan.

However, the OP is just a preposterously large hunk of troll bait. We’d better quit nibbling at it or we might bite into a big ole fish hook.

40

I voted “Third option” - the OP says “the disappearance of all religions, memories and artifacts” but that last one, especially, gets tricky - I mean, are we including the Pyramids? Stonehenge? Tombs like Taj Mahal? The sorcerer in Trois-Frères? Then no. But if it’s just current religious belief and trappings, then sure.