If everyone was atheist...

[Russ]

I was referring to the question in the title, whether everyone would become athiest or not.

[Eriny]

I think there's still room to argue about spirituality, even if everyone identified themselves as an atheist. For instance, plenty of atheists believe in The Secret and rubbish like that.

There would also be lots of other things to argue about, like politics, science, music, art, who owns what, etc. There probably would be less conflict though, I suppose.

[schmalex]

There might be less conflict if everybody thought the same way about everything. A lot of fights about really are really wars between different races of people, who happen to have different beliefs, but they also disagree about a lot of other things, and they're fighting more because they are of different races. And when you look at the core texts and beliefs of the major religions, none of them really appear to condone conflict or war.

[Chavi]

No. It's human nature to fight and to partake in war and to kill. We are all just animals clothed in parochialisms such as political correctness, conformity and society. These invisible constraints are the only thing stopping us from descending into anarchy right here and now.

Man generally fights over three things:
1) Money
2) Women
3) Land

Even if everyone was Atheist or Catholic or any other group, the innate need to fight would not disappear. Do you fight with your siblings? Well wars are simply a larger scale of that.

Also, has anyone heard of militant Atheism? I hear that they can get pretty extreme

[Chavi]

Whilst religion would be gone, many people would remain passionate about moral values which they personally believe in and upholding these is still likely to lead to conflict.

From other debates i've come across on VCEnotes, some individuals here have demonstrated that they draw their morals directly from their religion, and while it may be a generalisation (and thus unreliable), i'm sure many people in the wider community would do so as well.

Do you deny that our society is built upon the morals taken from Judeo-Christian theology?

[Souljette_93]

would there be less conflict? Operating on the definition that an atheist is "One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods," could such a lack of religious belief benefit the world through less conflict (in religious matters)

Also, do people believe it would work another way; for example, if everyone was Catholic? In considering the second point, keep in mind that within a single religion, there can be many different interpretations of a single deity; one could view 'God' as an omnipotent force guiding Earth's goings-on while another may just view 'God' as a representation of what is 'good'.

Anyone care to discuss?

Some members have already said it, and it was the first thing that came to mind when I read your post.

No-human nature won't allow it. I don't see how God or belief in God would be the cause of conflict, and believe me, if there was no religious conflicts, people are going to search for "other" things  they can fight about.


Sometimes in religion there is conflicts, and they begin to spread into different sects-for example, in Islam, it is narrated in our tradition that we are going to be broken into 73 different sects, and if you look around today, you would find this to be true.

But I say we cannot just leave it as "human nature won't allow it". Conflict is inevitable. ( lol I studied encountering conflict in VCE ok) It's going to happen whether you like it or not, but that is not what is important, but how to deal with it is.

Just my 2 cents.

[Cianyx]

Humans are generally social animals. Every aspect of man's life is organised into certain groups and hierarchies. Anyone outside of these groups would be treated with some degree of animosity. I don't particularly enjoy playing the human nature card but this has been prevalent and was a key to the survival of the primitive human.

Just like race and culture, religion is a key to social cohesion. Without religion, the people's allegiance to a social group would be weaker. Whilst the term human nature is I believe, a bullshit term, I also hold that mankind appears to be most concerned about survival (anything else is secondary). Every war is done in order to protect something. So really, remove religion and man would have one less thing to protect.

[MuggedByReality]

No. It's human nature to fight and to partake in war and to kill. We are all just animals clothed in parochialisms such as political correctness, conformity and society. These invisible constraints are the only thing stopping us from descending into anarchy right here and now.

Man generally fights over three things:
1) Money
2) Women
3) Land

Even if everyone was Atheist or Catholic or any other group, the innate need to fight would not disappear. Do you fight with your siblings? Well wars are simply a larger scale of that.

Also, has anyone heard of militant Atheism? I hear that they can get pretty extreme

Bah, I think "militant" is idiomatic in that context
 
 Not sure if your last sentence was serious there    

[Yitzi_K]

*fetches can opener for a huge can of worms*

I contend that if everyone was atheist, there would be MORE conflict. As it is, several billion people subscribe to a moral code which forbids murder and theft. (Yes, I know that some of those people commit murder nonetheless, but most don't.) If all these billions of people were to switch to a purely arbitrary, ever changing, manipulatable moral code which is different for every person, I would imagine that we would see far more conflict as a result.

[/0]

I think the most crucial thing to ending violence is education. In the future, the most important things education needs to teach (aside from maths&english) are history and philosophy (esp. ethics). Learning history prevents us from repeating mistakes, and philosophy teaches us how to think and live a meaningful life.

presumably Alexander the Great learned ethics and philosophy from Aristotle, as well as the (military) mistakes of the past. didn't stop him going to war though

Yeah, but you can't compare ancient greek philosophy with modern philosophy. I mean, Greek religion came even before Christianity. It is clear that Alexander had great training in the waging of war, something which we wouldn't teach nowadays because we don't have a culture of war. (On second thoughts, perhaps America still does)
 
Also, although we still have monarchs in our modern civilization, they don't command the same amount of power that kings of Alexander's time would have. And in the future, with any luck, monarchy and theocracy will be gone. This means that people are not obligated to obey commands and wage war, unless they can justify it to themselves.

[binders]

Yeah, but you can't compare ancient greek philosophy with modern philosophy. I mean, Greek religion came even before Christianity. It is clear that Alexander had great training in the waging of war, something which we wouldn't teach nowadays because we don't have a culture of war. (On second thoughts, perhaps America still does)

I think the comparison between Aristotle's philosophy and modern philosophy holds up so far as ethics goes.  I'm not sure our moral philosophy is much improved, or that it teaches you to think for yourself any more than Aristotle's insistence on taking the real world into account rather than idealism.  I thought the topic meant religion in general, not just christianity. there were wars before christianity, as well as piety and religious persecution - in other words, conflict.

What i was getting at was that even people who have been educated in philosophy, history or science still engage in war.  Alexander must have been educated in ethics, and a system of ethics which probably rings somewhat true to our own world-view today.  Churchill himself wrote history, including an account of what he termed the first world war, and Robert McNamara minored in philosophy and mathematics and still worked towards increasing the efficiency of the aerial bombings of civilians during world war two.

[Spreadbury]

I contend that if everyone was atheist, there would be MORE conflict. As it is, several billion people subscribe to a moral code which forbids murder and theft. (Yes, I know that some of those people commit murder nonetheless, but most don't.) If all these billions of people were to switch to a purely arbitrary, ever changing, manipulatable moral code which is different for every person, I would imagine that we would see far more conflict as a result.

So if everyone was atheist, what morals do you believe would collapse and be detrimental to society?

[letsride]

@

*fetches can opener for a huge can of worms*

I contend that if everyone was atheist, there would be MORE conflict. As it is, several billion people subscribe to a moral code which forbids murder and theft. (Yes, I know that some of those people commit murder nonetheless, but most don't.) If all these billions of people were to switch to a purely arbitrary, ever changing, manipulatable moral code which is different for every person, I would imagine that we would see far more conflict as a result.

that's fucking retarded. You're saying the only thing stopping murder/violence is the belief in religion? lmfao those people are fucking retarded then. That's why prisons are filled with atheists right? terrorists attacks are done by athiests? nice (Y)
If religion is the only reason you're not murdering people, you should put a bullet in your head since your too naive and worthless to society. You might not believe this, but atheists are PEOPLE TOO and have MORALS just like anybody else. Most atheists are good willed people, stop talking shit you have no idea about.

[Eriny]

*fetches can opener for a huge can of worms*

I contend that if everyone was atheist, there would be MORE conflict. As it is, several billion people subscribe to a moral code which forbids murder and theft. (Yes, I know that some of those people commit murder nonetheless, but most don't.) If all these billions of people were to switch to a purely arbitrary, ever changing, manipulatable moral code which is different for every person, I would imagine that we would see far more conflict as a result.

I've linked to this before, and if threads like these keep popping up, I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop: http://www.mrwiggleslovesyou.com/rehab477.html
(God prefers atheists!)

Besides, I don't think killing people in the name of a holy war is very ethical. Do you?

[Chavi]

@

*fetches can opener for a huge can of worms*

I contend that if everyone was atheist, there would be MORE conflict. As it is, several billion people subscribe to a moral code which forbids murder and theft. (Yes, I know that some of those people commit murder nonetheless, but most don't.) If all these billions of people were to switch to a purely arbitrary, ever changing, manipulatable moral code which is different for every person, I would imagine that we would see far more conflict as a result.

that's fucking retarded. You're saying the only thing stopping murder/violence is the belief in religion? lmfao those people are fucking retarded then. That's why prisons are filled with atheists right? terrorists attacks are done by athiests? nice (Y)
If religion is the only reason you're not murdering people, you should put a bullet in your head since your too naive and worthless to society. You might not believe this, but atheists are PEOPLE TOO and have MORALS just like anybody else. Most atheists are good willed people, stop talking shit you have no idea about.

And this is the point where you've completely lost the plot with a non-argument masked over with a childish attack on someone you disagree with.