I got to thinking about why religion is so pervasive with humans. It seems that we started developing religion pretty early on.
I don’t mean to offend the believers but it seems to me that religion is born out of ignorance and fear. Not understanding the bigger mysteries of life and the fear of death, what happens to our collection of memories and love for other people after that.
These are natural thoughts. But today science provides answers to most of these in my opinion. I don’t believe in Moses, historical Jesus, the great flood, parting the seas or turning water into wine.
If someone invented a time machine and anyone could go back and observe that these claimed events didn’t happen as described in the Bible would the visual evidence be enough for the faithful to cast out their belief system?
I only use the above as examples, I mean this to apply to all supernatural religions not just Christianity.
No. You’re talking about people for whom facts and evidence are literally immaterial. You might convince a few fence-sitters, but ignorance and fear are much more powerful than science and fact. The retconning would be epic.
Noop! The hope that we will be reunited with those that love us after we die along with the desire to see “true justice “ meted out (bad people get sent to hell) is stronger than rational thought.
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I agree with DCnDC. Believers already believe without any evidence. Why would they change their mind if you gave them even more lack of evidence?
If you sent them back to the exact time and location of a biblical event and there was nothing going on, it would be trivial for them to explain their way out of it using anything from ‘historical timeline is a bit fuzzy, maybe it happened earlier/later/elsewhere and that’s why I didn’t see it’ all the way to the ever popular ‘god works in mysterious ways’ and everything in between.
I think a lot of people also wouldn’t want to go and seek real proof, for fear of upsetting their belief system.
I know a lot of Catholics who don’t believe any of the abundant “nutty” aspects of the religion yet they still “believe.”
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Let’s ask the same question about 9/11 deniers. If we could transport them back to September 11, 2001, and showed them planes crashing into buildings, do you think they would change their irrational beliefs?
Religions can be thought of as using wisdom to combat the unknown, an important skill for someone in a primitive society, and also there are satisfying answers for the person. Now science competes using knowledge to combat the unknown.
But religion goes further, as it only simulates a relationship with God. I say simulate because that’s what it is. At first the person who knew God tries to explain it to others, but they, like many here on the SDMB, can’t understand what that means. So instructions have to be set up for them (like many here ask), rituals etc. It’s all BS except it’s based on a personal interaction of God and the attempt to explain that. But that simulation does help, not only as it is a pattern to dismiss as false, it is also patterned after the relationship with God to help us learn what that means and to see how it works.
And it does work, the relationship with God is awesome, it explains the shit in one’s life, giving great insight. And that’s why so many people used religion, because it works.
Sure but I understand faith, relating to religion, as belief that the teachings and events in the Bible are true. Such as God in heaven or Jesus rising from the dead. No one alive today was there so I can’t know if they are really true or not. Were I a believer I would have to have faith they were true. But a time machine would circumvent the unknown aspect of these things.
Sounds like your focus isn’t necessarily supernatural religions but event-based religions: religions that depend on specific historical events having happened.
You would, of course, need something more than a time machine: it would also have to be a place machine. Merely being around at the same chronological time that something supposedly happened won’t tell you whether it actually did.
And, of course, how do you observe something not happening? If you’re looking for evidence that the Crucifixion, for example, didn’t happen, how do you time-travel to where it didn’t happen and say, “Yep, it didn’t happen”?
And I could turn the question around and ask someone like the OP: if you could time-travel and see that certain events actually did happen, would that make you a religious person?
Of course this is all hypothetical: it assumes the existence of a time machine—and could you trust what it showed you? could it be used to change the past? and if so, would the concept of “what actually happened” even still make sense, since that could change? Are some of those religious claims you hope to disprove any harder to swallow than a time machine itself?
That said, I do think that some people would indeed rethink their beliefs if they could somehow witness the historical truth behind the events that their religion says happened.
There are plenty of ignorant, evidence ignoring religious people, but certainly not all of them are. I think with access to a time machine, religion would certainly change, but it wouldn’t go away. And yes, lots of followers of existing sects would continue to ignore any evidence that is contrary to their established beliefs, but for a lot of people, their beliefs will change and gain some nuance. But for the most part, it was never about factual historic accuracy in the first place.
I have faith that there will never be such a thing as a time machine.
But think about it. There are no such things as miracles, because they violate the laws of science. Here is a machine that violates the laws of science, telling us that nothing violated the laws of science. Why should I believe in the one miracle, but not the other? And vice versa.
If someone said they had a time machine and it showed that the miracles of the Bible (or whatever) actually happened, would you believe it?
If there were a time machine that went back in time, ***and ***these events never happened, ***and ***people trusted the time machine as truth itself, then yes, religion would be debunked.
FTR, I do believe all the Biblical miracles happened. But if they didn’t happen, then they didn’t happen.
The deeply devoted can (and often do) spin something like that into even more evidence. How often is the ‘god’s plan for me’ line of reasoning used, especially when it comes to some type of setback in someone’s life.
For example, the time traveler could say “Seeing the crucifixion isn’t part of god’s plan for me. I have faith that it happened and that’s all I need”.
The book *[The Light of Other Days/I] is about the consequences of the invention of a wormhole generator. It generates only microscopic wormholes, but they can open to any place on Earth and any time in the past (including 0.01 seconds ago.) You can’t transmit information to the past, but thanks to applied phlebotinium you can see and hear everything from the past. One thing that happened in the book was a project for thousands of volunteers to collectively watch every minute of Jesus’s life to document everything about it.
(eta posting from Chrome for the first time and no idea why it screwed up the URL, if a mod could please fix the link and Italicize the book title.)
It’s time for some artificial speciation. Those who prefer to use “belief” as the foundation of their worldview and “prayer” as their primary means of effecting change can live in one society; and those that rely more on “reason” and “action” can live in the other. Shouldn’t be too long before one population or the other collapses. No need to go wreaking havoc on spacetime with a time machine.
The problem is that most of the event-based tenants of religion are supernatural. Talking burning bushes, living inside of whales, rising from the dead. Events yes, but supernatural ones.
My hypothetical of a (for all practical purposes, magical) time machine supposes all of the time/place issues could be solved.
The point of the OP is not how accurate a time machine could be but would visual evidence of biblical events not happening change believers minds.
Instead of a time machine, insert a crystal ball or better yet a wormhole and a really powerful telescope if that would be more palatable to you.
The OP seems to be going on the assumption that *faith *is a “backup plan” for when actual facts and knowledge are not available. To the faithful, this is not the case at all. Faith itself is a gift, an end in itself.
I don’t believe there has *ever *been a society without religion of some sort or anther on this planet. It seems to be an innate part of human nature. Of course, much like colorblindness, there are always a few *individuals *who seem to lack the essential ingredients, but I don’t know of any society where lack of religion has taken over the culture. If there were any, I’d love to hear about them.
How is that “the problem,” though? It seems to me that your question wouldn’t be much changed if they weren’t supernatural; but it would fall apart if they weren’t events.
