<p>Idk, but it seems that in religion you focus more on your afterlife (which is still debatable) than the life we're experiencing now.</p>
<p>Without religion, instead of trying to fulfill salvation most of your life, they would spend the time on science and try to improve society technologically. Perhaps we would have flying cars with laser beams by now without religion. </p>
<p>Just me?</p>
<p>refer to science and religion discussion thread.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/924944-science-religion-wins.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/924944-science-religion-wins.html</a></p>
<p>I take the liberty to think that this topic has been, in one way or another, discussed fully in that thread.</p>
<p>I doubt it. I don’t buy into the whole “religion hinders society” thing. People will try to fill insecurities in their lives with one thing or another. Maybe it’ll be philosophy, maybe it’ll be techno consumerism, maybe it’ll even be total emotional despair. Technological advance seems more rooted to societal survival than anything else, see mankind’s development after the fall of the Roman Empire for example. And besides, a tendency to follow religion or spiritual beliefs seem to be biologically based. Throughout history, and across every corner of the globe, it’s universal. Some may call it irrational, but human beings are irrational beings to begin with. </p>
<p>But then again, you can say the same thing about everything else in life. Without wasting time on hobbies, toys, luxury products, or worthless subjects like the humanities, maybe we’ll be better technologically off by now. But in that case, I find myself only seeing a world like the book “Brave New World”… where Fordism (a symbol of a new industrial world) was the new “religion” of the future.</p>
<p>Of course we would, religion is detrimental to society in every which way.
There’s a graph I’ve seen a few times on the internet about the development of technology over the past few thousand years, it increases at a steady rate until it’s killed by the christian dark ages and then shoots up exponentially in the past two centuries or so.
Look at it</p>
<p>Religion is pointless much of the time. I have no proof that anything anyone believes in exists.</p>
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<p>Bull****. That’s what happens when you take an utterly Eurocentric, Christian-centric, Western civilization approach to looking at this problem. Was the rate of technological advance in any way falling when they worshipped the gods of Sumer in Mesopotamia? Was it declining when the Egyptians worshipped Ra and Isis? Was it declining when the Greeks and Romans paid tribute to Jupiter and Mars? </p>
<p>And in your theory, modern anti-religious sentiment was responsible for the vast technological improvements in the last two centuries, not the industrial revolution, nor a growing systematic educational system, nor gradually lessening inequality between people of all classes. In fact, the global rate of religious worship has probably increased in the last two centuries, with the advent of mass communication, cheap printing, and world travel. I’m not defending religion, but BS ignorance exists on both sides of the line, and the “facts” they use to attack each other I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.</p>
<p>^ Was a belief in Isis or Hephaestus central to their progress?</p>
<p>Was a belief in the divinity of the Bible and the Christian God central to the Church’s suppression of heliocentrism?</p>
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Stop being so damned sensible. You’re spoiling this for everyone else.</p>
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<p>How did this graph possibly calculate a reliable y-axis? Also, religion has existed throughout practically all of human history - you can’t determine a correlation between the two. Not to mention that technology has been advancing at different rates at different levels throughout different areas of the world.</p>
<p>I think it’s a rather useless question because some kind of religion would exist in any society, even if the religion was atheistic humanism.</p>
<p>If your real question is “would we be more advanced without theistic moralistic religion”, then I’d say that it’s unlikely.</p>
<p>We would know more about human biology without moral scruples against using living subjects… And maybe we would know more about ways of undermining opponents and waging war if we didn’t have religion to unite people into sides.</p>
<p>But until recent history, religion was the only unifying force that allowed scientific discoveries to be preserved and spread. In most ancient societies the priests/clergy were also the academics.</p>
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<p>This statement is probably true for any graph supporting any opinion.</p>
<p>Well, whatever flaws religion may have presented throughout history, you cannot argue that it has not facilitated the growth of quite a few nations in the world. You could certainly argue that religion has acted as sort of catalyst to speed up the development of the world as a whole.</p>
<p>The few original states of America were created because many people were attempting to escape the religious persecution brought on by King James in England. The Crusades, while deplorable as far as any war goes, brought back heaps of knowledge, items, and increased trade in western Europe. Even Manifest Destiny, the idea that it was “God’s will” for America to spread out and conquer neighboring states, helped to facilitate the growth of this country (albeit as a result of bloodshed).</p>
<p>You could just as well argue that religion has inhibited the growth of society. In the end, it’s really more of a double edged sword, don’t you think?</p>
<p> it increases at a steady rate until it’s killed by the christian dark ages </p>
<p>Obviously, youre ignorant about the history of technology in the Middle Ages. Much of it arose in the monasteries. Heres just one example:</p>
<p>[No</a>. 9: Cistercians](<a href=“http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi9.htm]No”>No. 9: Cistercians)</p>
<p>Not true. While the Christians in Europe were going through the dark ages, they made many technological advances. The Muslims during this time, made advances in math, medicine, and science. Religion will always be apart of humans. Its what helps build a culture and hold a certain identity. I can go down a list of hundreds of inventions and advances during various periods of human history. Especially during the middle ages.</p>
<p>I think I win
[■■■■■</a> (Internet) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet]■■■■■">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet))</p>