It seems that religion was invented to explain away a lot of mysteries for earlier civilizations. If you could go back about 2000 years, say, and explain the real scientific nature of the universe, would we have still needed religion? Or are we hard-wired for it such that it would be here anyway?
Oops, wrong forum, me thinks…
Science fiction authors have examined this question at length. The last book I remember reading on this subject was, I think, Clarke and Baxter’s “The Light of Other Days.”
And what happens when you travel back to witness the Cruxifiction and Resurrection and it all turns out to be true? What then, hot shot? 
Yuk yuk.
The Cruxifiction could very well have happened. That event being true would have no bearing on the existence of teh Og.
I somehow read over this part the first time, but I don’t think the real scientific nature of the universe has changed much in 2000 years. 200,000 years might be informational.
Well the big one, ‘Where did we come from?’ sure has. I think this one alone would have gone a long way to stopping religion in its tracks.
I’m sure I’m missing your point, but the scientific view of the universe 2000 years ago was geocentric, creationist, non-atomic, alchemical, and was based on philosophical speculation rather than the scientific method.
IMHO, other than the possibility that religion might reflect metaphysical truth, the most likely explanation for it is that it’s an artifact of how we developed conciousness and a sense of self- “God” or “the gods” being the preconcious underpinnings of our mental processing, which we usually cannot perceive directly and which is outside what we usually consider our self. If this is the case, then merely providing rational explanations of how the physical world works isn’t going to make religion go away. It’s more of a psychological or existential issue. I doubt religion was developed to explain the physical world- more like such explanations were tacked onto a religious worldview after the fact.
So you claim that you went back in time, but what really happened was:
- You are lying, or
- Satan deceived you with false images.
I must be misunderstanding something, because I don’t see how either of these points has anything to do with “the real scientific nature of the universe” changing or not changing over 2000 years. “Where did we come from” hasn’t changed: people’s understanding of where we came from has changed. The fact that people had “geocentric, creationist, non-atomic, alchemical” beliefs doesn’t make that “the real scientific nature of the universe.” Going back 2000 years won’t help explain the real scientific nature of the universe because you’re not going to learn anything we don’t already know about it from that small a trip.
I know this doesn’t have anything to do with the OP per se, but I’m confused.
You misunderstand his question. He wants to go back 2000 years and explain the “real scientific nature of the universe” to the inhabitants so they’ll get rid of religion.
The point of the trip isn’t to increase our knowledge, but to educate the ancients.
Okay, then, well that helps. Thanks.
From that perspective, any time traveller with that agenda should be equipped with flame retardant blood, because they will be burned as a witch before the echo of their lecture dies.
Instead of abolishing religion, wouldn’t you just supplant it?
I mean, it goes from all-powerful-man-in-the-sky-who-makes-everything-happen … to … all-powerful-man-in-a-funny-machine-who-babbles-about-monkeys.
See Twain’s Connecticut Yankee.
They wouldn’t believe you. If you took back futuristic stuff they’d kill you and take your stuff, and possibly destroy it.
I’d also disagree with your assertion that religion was primarily a means of explaining natural phenomenon. Lumpy gives a good starting point for the more nuanced ideas of how religious ideas evolved in the early days of human civilization.
Also, consider the number of people alive on earth today who are religious, and who also have access to the knowledge you purport to take back in time. If you can’t convince the majority of people alive today to reject religion, how do you think you’ll be able to convince ancient people with the same facts and ideas?
I think that the OP’s question is based on, not one, but several, false premeses, including:
That religion was primarily invented as an explanation of what we now explain via science,
That religion was “invented,” per se, at all, and
That nowadays we do know the “true scientific nature of the universe.” (What’s the latest theory: string theory? M-branes? Whatever it is, I don’t think we have the universe completely figured out at this point. If the nature of the universe includes human nature, I’m sure science doesn’t have everything completely nailed down.)
Travelling back to a pre-human Earth, say, the age of the dinosaurs (don’t step on the bugs!), and proving no humans are present, would discredit the young-Earth creationists. (Not that it would shut them up, of course.) But no information gained that way, or any other I can conceive, would conclusively discredit the intelligent-design theorists. It’s a non-falsifiable theory.
Not all religious belief-systems assume and depend upon particular historical events. What discovery could discredit Buddhism? Even if you could prove Siddharta Gautama never lived, how would that bear on the value of his purported teachings?
You’d have to go back a lot further than 2000 years to cut religion off at the pass. I rather suspect you’d have to get into a very narrow window between the emergence of human speech, and the use of it to explain why the big fire in the sky doesn’t fall down on us, or what happened to Thag after he got eaten by the sabre-toothed tiger. I figure you’ve got a week or so there, tops, to get your message across. And it wouldn’t work, anyway. The modern world is positively overflowing with the tangible products of scientific inquiry, and people still believe in God. If science can’t quash belief in a world with computers, cars, airplanes, spaceships, &c. how much of an impact do you think it’ll make on people who think flint knapping is, if you’ll pardon the pun, the cutting edge?