HAHAHA!! I haven’t heard so much crap in all my life!
Religion is probably the largest reason for war in history. Followed by territory and recently by Oil.
Hmm… remember the Final Solution? The Kosovo Conflict? And the list goes on. Just about every genocide in history is caused by religion. Parts of the bible were used to justify slavery in the past. Religion caused countless ‘witches’ and atheists to be burnt at the stake, hanged or drowned. Religion was responsible for slowing down the development of science in several cases where religion was challenged by science (For instance, the Earth around the sun thing, the theory of evolution, etc). In Indonesia the Christians and Muslims on some islands are killing each other and doing forced conversions in the names of their religions.
Let’s not get religion confused with ‘what holds humanity together’.
To answer your question on what holds humanity together, it’s money, and the threat of World War III if we stray from unity.
What an alien civilization would do is unite humanity as a species because we are not alone. Things like money and the threat of war between each other would dissolve in the face of expansion and advancement of the human race as a whole.
Since I don’t have a cite for what I’m talkin about, I won’t ask for a cite for this.
Der Fuhrer also didn’t like Christians for that matter, or anyone who might think of compassion. Jews were a scapegoat not for their religion, but for their appearance, very different from that of the aryan race.
For this, however, I will ask for a cite.
Your talking about only one religion, Christianity. And besides, most of what you talk about was the cause of people in power using a tool (religion in this case) to manipulate people.
And in Saudi Arabia they kill over oil. Your point is?
Excuse me for one moment.
[from a distance]Ahahahahahahahahahahahaa.
Thank you.
Uh huh. And who would lead Earth? The U.S.? Why? Why not Canada, or Germany, or China? If you ask me, it would start even MORE wars.
Oh yes, and one last thing. What about the religios that have no basis in a god? How can they be disproven?
MAD essentially holds the world together, if we didn’t have nukes then we’d definitely have had at least 1 other world war since WWII to date.
When you ‘unite’ humanity, you don’t have one country ruling all of them, it would be more like the UN but it wouldn’t be bases on power it would be based on us as a species, countries wouldn’t need to exist.
In Indonesia the Muslims and the Christians are killing each other because they think that the other religion is wrong and is a threat to their own.
Let’s pick a genocide recently… Kosovo, A (Christian) Government in Yugoslavia ordering the military to kill Ethnic Albanians (Muslims).
If you had of noticed the thing that makes Jewish People Jewish is their Religion. And it’s this diffence that the Christians in Germany used to blame the Jewish Race for all their problems. And if your going to use the ‘Hitler didn’t like Christians, anyone who might think of compassion’ your just wrong, most of Germany was Christian, Yer Der Fuhrer thought the Russians were sub-human BUT he liked the British very much (Unfortunetly they had to go to war against them which sort of screwwed up that happy relationship.). My Great-Grand Mother’s Uncle, PM Chamberline met Hitler and said he was a pretty good fellow and Hitler said he liked the British People. Unfortunetly Great-Uncle Neville had to declare war on them a bit later on the 3rd of Sept.
I’m glad you said this. Because it proves my point, it was RELIGION that was responsible. The people in power used it to manipulate people, If there was no religion they couldn’t have manipulated them in the same way. And really there was really no point in harrassing science or burning witches. (Except it makes really good monty python movies)
PerfectDark
The short answer to the question is: Religion will disappear through attrition and obsolescence when human beings have lost or relinquished the capacity for responding inappropriately to the Divine.
You might want to mark your calendars.
Perfect Dark, your characterization of RELIGION ™ as an active agent, with the capacity to be responsible for the wise, foolish, and cynical choices made by human beings strikes me as overly simplistic and indfensibly anthropomorphic. Religion is not your enemy, for all that men who treat you as an enemy may be using religion as their excuse.
I was thinking more along the lines of the alien visitors saying 'yes, we believe in God too, and there being very many similar specific details between their beliefs and some earth religion (although of course that still wouldn’t rule out the idea that a third advanced race wasn’t responsible for the whole thing).
Actually, I have always found your posts, insofar as they concern questions of the Spirit, to be admirably full of Love, sincerity, and an acute sense of what is and what is not salient. If I have never made this apparent before, please forgive me.
I will, of course, continue in my skeptical stance with respect to your politics.
And as a mathematician, you’re so far out of my class as to be beyond my comprehension.
Thank you for your kind words regarding my post. Honesty compels me to report that I took the concept from a novel by Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and All).
Do you think dictators would give up their power so easily? Would the president of the U.S. give up his position for the greater good, making the U.S. less so that the world can unite? Humanity will never unite itself as a whole unless forced. And aliens showing themselves isn’t going to be powerful enough.
And Hitler, who used the economic slump in Germany to get the people to rally to a cause, didn’t use something other than religion to encite his people to a ferver? Many things can be used as the basis of control. The U.S. government doesn’t use religion to manipulate its people, but the people are still manhandled like sheep. Just because religion has been used doesn’t mean it’s responsible.
Harrassing science allowed those people in power (the people of the church) to stay in power by not allowing the truth to dispell the myth. Stalin didn’t allow free speach, is there any difference?
Burning witches was at a time when superstition ran high and people didn’t have science to guide them. I find it interesting that you haven’t mentioned Ares yet, the god of war, or the fact that ancient polytheistic religions often had human sacrifices, and there are still some religions today which call for such. I don’t see why you focus on Christianity.
My Great-Uncle Neville wasn’t impressed that Hitler had the German econonmy on the road to recovery by the use of war. The recovery of Germany’s economy came first, that’s why so many foriegn leaders said Hitler was a great man, infact most historians would say that if Hitler had of died before he started the war he would have gone down in history as one of the 20th Centuries greatest leaders.
If your right then in this scenario, where the aliens show them selves and introduce us to the Universal Community, we could be one of the only races that is fragmented, which makes us weak overall. Of course the alien race that were our God long ago isn’t going to try to kill us but they could warn us that there are other more powerful races out there and if we don’t get on the track to Unification of the Human race that we as a species would be doomed.
And you may be right, the aliens showing themselves and telling us of the horrible beings that could await us might not unify us, BUT as you say we could be forced by the aliens to unify.
I tended to focus on Christianity because it’s the biggest and one of the most successful in terms of influence.
He was one of the 20th Centuries greatest leaders, except of course for the fact that he had no understanding of military tactics and that in the end he was quite insane. Unfortunatley, not only did he lose, but he lost while fighting for an ideal not held by most nations.
If the alien race posed as a god so long ago, don’t you think it would have been to prepare us to be it’s little peons in the almost positively occuring wars between intergalactic civilitions. And even if it were just the two of us in the universe, don’t you think that the aliens would have wanted us prepared to serve them, by making us think them god?
if somehow it were proven 100% that god does not exist… dumb people would still say “oh… your proof is just god testing our faith… praise the lord” and go about their worthless little lives. So, the answer to the OP is: as long as people exist, there will be religion. People need it to get through their miserable lives… because without religion there is no “afterlife” and nothing to wake up tomorrow for. Sad, but true.
Why would an alien civilization prep us for slavery? If they had the technology to travel to Earth to help humanity then they would definetly not have any need for a slave race. Either way you have given a scenario where aliens posed as God’s long ago and then they come back and tell us the truth, destroying religion.
The Fromesiter I do agree with you that Hitler had no idea of military tactics and that he was insane. But I was saying that before the war, foreign leaders thought Hitler was a pretty good guy.
Kalt, your probably right about that in todays society but in the future humans will be genetically and artificially enhanced using neuro-implants, more like a race of scientists. Yes, you stated that ‘people need religion to get through there miserable lives’, but let us assume that if we had gained the knowledge to prove God doesn’t exist then we would certainly have rather happy lives provided by the high level of technology, in which case we’d have to accept that we all die after a few hundred years and we have to make the best of it while we are here.
I think it’s interesting how much people will cling to the assertion that ‘religion/faith/god was invented by man because he’s afraid of death (or some other reason)’ - maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t, but it seems to have become something of an article of faith in it’s own right.
And how does one expect to prove the non-existence of god, who by definition is outside of the realm of detection by ‘natural’ means?
Who are we to divine the ways of a species not of this planet and not even necessarily carbon based? They would have their own reasons for doing something.
But they cannot prove they were those who posed as God, if indeed God was not a god, but rather an alien race.
And I just pointed out that Hitler was a great (read as in Alexander the Great), if insane, man.
Lib’s post reminds me of something I once heard in a bar while playing trivia with Ogre… when we play, Ogre tends to use the name “God” and I use the name “NoGods”… anyway, I won a game and overheard a table of good ol’ boys behind us say, paraphrasing:
“Ha, NoGods… with all his learning, he thinks there is no God!”
I doubt it ever dawned on them that the implication of such a statement is that with their lack of learning, they think there is one.
