I dispute your premise that religions have controlled violence. I think they have caused as much murder as they’ve prevented. Morality can be engendered by religion or by atheism; one does not predicate or eliminate the possibility of another.

Probably yes, but utterly and completely unrealistic. Downright silly.

How do you see people “realizing atheism”? People (i.e. most members of society) want and sometimes need to believe in something outside themselves. Sometimes it is to give them strength, and sometimes it is to have a way to blame something else for their misfortune.

People aren’t going to part with a belief system that they have had their whole lives and that (for many) is an essential part of their self-image and worth. Did you ever hear the saying “I’m a good Christian”.

While I agree that religion, in general, causes more death and more problems than any single other factor in the world, I think that it is utterly ridiculous to think that people will one day wake up and “be atheistic”.

Another point: even in the absence of organized religion, people still need something to believe in. (Again, society at large). So if religion as we know it today were to disappear, you can be sure that there would be some other belief system, morals system, values scale, and other set of fairy tales to replace it.

As good an idea as it might be, it’s not going to happen.

@janbb Are you saying that even with the absence of religion our world will still remain the same?

@elbanditoroso I have no interests to discover how people may discover atheism, it’s still, however, a possibility for one to realize atheism and I’m curious “what if” people do realize that.

Are you saying that people inherently need and want to believe in “something”? That they can’t live apart from that “something”?

Not any correlation, religion and passive behavior. Some religions are passive like Society of Friends (Quakers) or Buddhist ( dali lama). Egyptians were fighting their neighbors for the Pharaoh (god).

@Unofficial_Member – yes, that is exactly what I am saying. I think that society (people in general) want something external to believe in, whether it is god or religion. Or even communism. Most people want something outside themselves.

Remember that atheism is a belief system as well.

@Tropical_Willie There must be correlation even in such religions. In most (if not all) religions people are encouraged to do good things to others, avoiding bad things, be inspired that their efforts will be rewarded by their protective deity. If the religions are gone then I suspect that people and their next generations might not be as generous anymore as the system that dictate them to do so does not exist anymore.

@Unofficial_Member No – I’m not saying it will necessarily remain the same, I’m saying we don’t know if it will be better or worse.

It’s an interesting speculation, but an utter impossibility. If all memory of all religions were suddenly eliminated from every living human being at
Midnight tonite, by 6 in the morning most folks would be looking for some cult or another to bow down before.

^^Yup..I completely agree with you.

I don’t think religions create any of the behavior we see acted out in a religion’s name, good or bad. I think they just provide a context for the behavior. There are plenty of people who believe in one religion or another and commit heinous acts, and there are plenty of atheists who are kind and generous (and of course, vice versa).

So I don’t think religions make humanity good. As far as the moral aspects go, I think religions are efficient ways of codifying a culture’s expected behaviors. But the vast majority of people do not need the threat of one divine punishment or another in order to be “good.” Compassion and common sense are usually enough.

I grew up an atheist. My moral teachings were based on a simple premise: imagine the other person’s experience, the other person’s side. This is a capacity that is neurologically wired into our brains in several ways—mirror neurons and our ability to imagine complex scenarios being two—and I’m pretty sure this is the reason most people are good, most people are kind. They don’t want to hurt others—and that would be true whether or not they heard a divine voice telling them not to.

Of course, there are those who would do something immoral anyway—whether they have rationalized their way into thinking it is actually okay for them to do, or whether they really don’t care about whoever they will harm—people who really do need external reasons. That’s what the legal system deals with (and legal systems have existed side by side with religion for thousands of years…. what’s that about if it’s religion making people good?). The perpetrator would still receive punishment, it would just be punishment meted out on this earthly coil, because it’s not like a sudden switching from various religious beliefs to (various) atheistic belief(s) would negate societal laws…. Nor does a sudden switch to atheism negate morality. Murder would still be bad.

(Of course, I would also prefer legal systems that focus more on rehabilitation and effective deterrence, and less on punishment and retribution… but that’s another issue.)

Gosh. Good question! I think about my fundamental Christian friends and wonder how they’d feel if they suddenly realized that there is no such thing as God. I can only think they’d despair. They’d have to reason out their behavior all by themselves, instead of saying, “It’s OK if I don ABC, because I’m a Christian and God is on my side, no matter what. Plus I can always be forgiven, and you heathens can’t.”

You know…It’s a scary thought to believe that there are those who don’t rape and steal and murder simply because their religion tells them not to (“I can see that religions ‘brainwash’ people to not murder, rape, steal, etc,even though it still happens the number is curb down for most people due to religion’s influence”) That is terrifying really. So a certain number of people wake up to athiesim and proceed to go on a raping and murder spree, when they were “good, God fearing” Christians just the day before?

I have no desire to steal, but it’s not because my religion tells me it’s wrong. It’s because I know it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it hurts other people.

I am pretty sure my son and his wife are atheist, or on the cusp, and they’re teaching their kids the difference between right and wrong, and it has nothing to do with God.

No, I’m an Atheist and one of the most annoying things is this premise that non-believers are some sort of immoral beings. I have much integrity, am kind to others, animals, and have my own moral compass that follows the Golden Rule minus following the mythical deity behind it.
I am sure, as @Dutchess_III says, that believers would feel a lot of upset and disappointment that they no longer have their spiritual safety net to explain away all the good and bad they encounter but I’m pretty sure most would not take to the streets looting and shooting and committing crimes against humanity.

Everything would stay pretty much the same, percentage-wise. There would be many religious people who would not be able to handle the supposed reality of Atheism, that life would indeed end at death, and would kill themselves.

@kritiper…. in order to test that theory for themselves?

@elbanditoroso Precisely!

Ha ha!

I can tell you how I felt when I let my idea of a God go….sad. I miss it. I miss believing that He will really take care of me, no matter what. I miss not having a hotline to tell someone my problems to.

Well, nothing has changed. Nothing evil has happened, it’s been up and down like it always has, only it’s more up, than down, finally. And I still sometimes drink too much beer and start talking to myself to help me figure out my problems. I’m a good counselor.

I actually do know people who became born again Christians and straightened out there life. I think it’s great religion did that for them, and scares the shit out of me that some people need religion to behave in a decent manner. If God disappears from their life will they revert back to bad behavior? Some might.

I think most people in most societies will behave as they do now whether there is belief in God of not. Whether there is organized religion or not. As a planet we now have country borders and governments in in most countries, and rule of law helping to govern society. Of course, there is also our own internal moral compass and customs and mores that keep is behaving in a certain way.

Think about it. The Israelis and the Palestinans will still have a conflict, because the truth is (in my opinion) about the land. There are similar examples we can find.

What if we look at those who use religion and God to commit acts of violence? What happens to them when God is gone? I think that would be a good thing. Some of gem might have a serious mental breakdown though. Real difficulty living with things they have done. Also, they are likely to grapple with a difficult identity crisis.

Religion really doesn’t make you more inclined to be charitable. If you exclude donations to churches, mosques, temples, etc. atheists actually donate more to charitable causes. All religion causes in for religious people to donate more to religion.

You claim that religion “brainwashes” people not to murder, rape, steal, etc. Well, let’s look at some of the statistics. As of 2007, roughly 80% of the prison population here in the US considered themselves to be Christian while 0.2% identify as atheist (this is according to the FBI and these findings were backed by Gallup and Barna). This isn’t to say that religion causes criminality, rather that religion has no sway in controlling criminal behavior. I am aware that one could argue that in prison there are high rates of prisoners converting to Christianity and that would explain the disproportional high rate of prisoners who identify as Christian… but it doesn’t. Sociologists in the United Kingdom found a majority of individuals that practiced “socially unacceptable behaviors” (prostitution, stripping, gambling, drug addiction, etc.) who aren’t part of the prison population are drumroll Catholic. Once again, I’d like to reiterate that these findings led to the conclusion that religion has NO sway in controlling criminal behavior. And let’s not forget that nearly every major religion has some form of sanctioned murder in their respective “good” book usually in the name of god or because god commanded it.

In short, religion or no religion, people will be just as scummy as they are today.

There is nowt to “realise” the burden of proof is on the believer & so atheism is well chilled

This is a painful question to read and try to answer. I think several of your assumptions are incorrect.

Yes, any large sudden unbalanced social change will cause some chaos and have some negative effects.

Large sudden unbalanced social changes do happen and will happen.

“I am wondering what will become of our world if all people suddenly realize atheism, and that religion is a lie.”
1) It would never, ever ever happen that everyone flips a switch suddenly and immediately abandons all religion.
2) You seem to confuse organized religion, belief, ethics, morality, and spirituality, combining all examples of all of them into “religion”, which is far too crude to be accurate, and makes the question invalid.
3) The “is a lie” part is also simplistic and very inaccurate.

That’s sentence one. The rest is built on the strange assumptions of that sentence. Rather than go into detail on the rest of it, I’ll just say:

* Religions may preach good behavior, but being good and loving is already the basic nature of humans. If there are some lies in religion, one of them is that some religions try to assert otherwise. Undoing that lie would, I think, have a massive positive effect, not a negative one.

Realises atheism? Everybody already realises the existence of atheism. Atheism exists, most people accept that.

Regarding religion being a lie? Well to be honest religion is just used as a system of control and extremism for a lot of radicals. It’s just a label bigots and radicals hide behind. You take it away. It will be replaced by something else. It might be environmentalist extremism, political extremism, corporate extremism etc.

Not all religious individuals are motivated to do extreme acts by their religion. What you are talking about is a fringe group of extremists. Most theists are actually peaceful law abiding citizens.

All human beings have a tendency to embrace morals from alternative sources to religion. People using religion as an excuse to perform vile acts, are only using religion to hide behind.

You remind me of myself when I was younger. I used to think religion was basically the entirety of he limbs of bigotry, violence, evil and corruption and cutting it away from society would set us all free. It won’t. Without religion humanity will b just as screwed up. We’ll find some othe ideology to hind behind as the excuse for our corruption.

The problems us humans have are the result of extremism. Not just religious extremism, but all extremism of every kind and form.

The reason religion helped them turn their lives around @JLeslie is because they believed it would. They started associating with people who believed it would too.

I went to a funeral at a Methodist church a few months ago. The preacher attending the funeral took the opportunity to preach a sermon to us, who were not of his congregation. I was struck by how many times he said, ”You have to believe….!” Now, that was common in the services I went to almost every Sunday, and even more Wednesdays, as a born again Christian, 20 years ago and I didn’t think much of it, except, “Of course you have to believe or it won’t work!”
Hearing it from this distance though…I realized it was a form of brain-washing, a mild hypnotism. ”You must believe….!”

Well..it;s a well known fact, psychologically speaking, that sexual repression causes a lot of acting out. The more forbidden the fruit the sweeter it’s allure. Not much different than refusing your child all things with sugar and they then start shoplifting candy. haha

The world is already quite chaotic and everyone has their own opinions. You will never get everyone to agree that ‘religion is a lie’. What does that phrase mean anyway? Is a cathedral a ‘lie’?

Social contracts have been formed and have succeeded without reference to religion or theism. There is no reason to assume that a lack of religion would lead to chaos.

As usual, some flutherites are getting caught up in the details here. The OP isn’t trying to get into the specifics of ‘how the world would become religion less.’ The OP is asking ‘how would it be different. ’

Hypothetically, if all religious people were atheists, how would the world be different?

I’m in agreement with most here that people would simply hitch their wagon to something else. It might, or should bring an end to many conflicts in the middle east (temporarily ) , but I think many issues there are civil rights issues. Religion gives them an excuse to hate each other, but I don’t think they wouldn’t hate each other all of a sudden if they were atheists.

There would be, or should be less violence tied directly to religion. Like killing someone for drawing a picture of Muhammed. Or killing a girl for being rapped.

But people just suck. They will never get along. They will always rape, steal, and murder etc.

I think if more people individually opted to be atheists, the world would be better, but if you yanked religion out from under this world, it would just be a void to be filled for most.

It would be different for some @MrGrimm888. To hear some talk, God is the only thing keeping them from committing mayhem. I think for those people, there would be mass confusion from not knowing how to act.

So essentially, (some) people would have no moral compass without their religion ?

This is now bleeding into @Hypocrisy Central’s thread about the potential correlation between evil and God’s existence.

I’ve heard some Christians say exactly that @MrGrimm888. They’ll say, “If you don’t believe in God, what stops you from murdering and raping?” Well, Jesus! Is that the only thing that stops them from murdering a raping (and with no success sometimes)? Kind a a scary thought, actually.

It’s a scary world Dutchess.

Sure can be.

Apparently, humans evolved a god center in our brains. I recently heard that when china outlawed religion, people just became very superstitious. there is a place in our brains that wants to believe in some unseen power. Perhaps it’s an emotional need. Could anything prove there is no god or afterlife? My logic says there isn’t, but my intuition says there is. When i realized part of our brains naturally seek and believe religion, I freaked out.I imagine lot’s of people would if they learned that they have been living a lie. Religion is part of personal identity. I can’t just through my values to the wind though. I still have empathy. I decided that it might be better just to keep believing because number one, i’ll feel better, and if it is real i’m covered. None of us really know for sure. One of my friends said “Just try to do as much good on this earth while your here”

@greatfullara Not everyone has a strong/large God center. Like everything with the brain, it varies by individual. The big question in my mind is, do we develop and grow the center ourselves? Or, are we born with a certain size of that part of our brains?

Religion isn’t a part of my personal identity any more @greatfullara.

We question because we are incredibly intelligent. We try to find answers to our questions. Religions started thousands of years ago, in the void of science, to try and explain the questions our crazy-smart brains come up with.

Oh, and if you think that leaving a religion will cause you to “throw your values to the wind,” you need to rethink those values and decide what they’re really worth on their own merit, @greatfullara.

I think that we, as human species we would be better off without religion. I think religion is what holds us back in understanding the real power the we have, the power of our mind. The power of mind is so big that it created religion itself.

^Welcome to Fluther @FireBlaze.