Yes I totally agree with that,I can only imagine the good things that we could accomplish if we worked together and respected each other .
Of course it won't be enjoyable, because you'll be dead. It's not like you'll be able to contemplate the fleetingness of your experiences after you die, because you'll have no awareness of anything. Our lives are inherently temporary, so why should these activities bring us less pleasure just because they are temporary, too?
Very few acts of scientific and moral progress were undertaken because of religion. The people that were involved may have been religious, but it didn't inspire them to do what they did. On the other hand many acts of blocking scientific and moral progress have been and are inspired by religion. Think opposition to stem cell research, gay marriage, abortion, interracial marriage, slavery, misogyny...
Indeed, it is the illusion of afterlife that I miss. Maybe I'll join a cult. Falun Dafa seemed promising until I read that homosexuality and drug use is prohibited. Maybe I'll start a cult.
Religion is meant (or was or whatever) to give people peace of mind, to feel like someone gives a crap when it seems like no one else does. The sad part is people have taken it twisted it into something else, no sure there is a word for it. I am friends with a Pastor who makes great points in favor of gays and bible. If more people viewed God's (whichever you worship) teaching they way she did then we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I think Dogma said it best: "People took a good idea and built a belief structure on it. It's better to have ideas than beliefs, you can change an idea changing a belief is harder."
I think it's done both. I find a lot of organized religion has become rule based instead of principal based.
I still believe religion has its good and it's bad points. What I hate is basically how it pits people against one another, how it practices conforming not acceptance. Raised as a Jehovah's Witness everything was always good if I conformed. The moment I choose to step out of the box and either challenge or decide I didn't believe in everything I was looked at totally different, a bad influence. It seems so many religions have lost the point of the religion, it was to make rules. Being short, against the rules. Being black, against the rules. Being gay, against the rules. Purple hair, against the rules. Rap music, against the rules. My biggest issue is how it can be ok, to disown your child for something that wasn't in their power to control. How can you believe in something that would allow you to turn your back and your child. It is something as a former Jehovah's Witnesses I will NEVER understand.
Religion has help but it has also held us back. I dont view religion as a bad thing only when people go crazy about it is when it gets bad. Like how in the past if you werent christian you werent considered human. which was taking it too far
It can't really be said to have done either, because without the history of religion, human civilization would be unrecognizable from its current state.
Well the Muslim world keep much of the knowledge collected in the western world prior to the dark ages alive while everyone in Europe when crazy and started killing each other. Of course, the Catholicism of the Europeans led them to rampage across the middle east until it was weak enough to allow one of those hordes the Mongolian steppes are so good at making came to destroy what civilization remained. Its not the religion itself, its the stupid people who belong to that religion and take it upon themselves to force it upon everyone else.
We can certainly look at what it's doing today and see that it is undoubtedly holding things back; obviously we can't say with complete certainty how things would've happened in the past without religion, but we can safely say a lot of terrible things wouldn't have happened.
Most of the progress during the Islamic golden age occured in Spain. And it only lasted a few hundred years before Islam (the religion) stamped it out. If you think the Islamic religion contributed to the scientific and intellectual progress of the peiod you would be mistaken. The political hegemony of the Caliphate created peace and through peace came progress, but the actual religious influence of Islam did nothing except stifle the independent reasoning and intellectual exploration that occured during the Islamic Golden Age.
Similarly, India had brain surgery before the West. (Sure it was primitive and fraught with error, but the Indians did understand sanitation and the scientific method, which is to say learning from mistakes.) Then they kind of went and stopped advancing once that kind of inquiry became sidelined.
I can totally relate to you I'm an ex JW myself and I never understood alot of the stuff they did like disfellowshipping hojw is making everyone shun you gonna help you repent? Or not associating with anybody but JW,s that always pissed me off my friends at school were way better then the kids in the hall I hated not being to go Hang out with my school friends outside of school.And now im like the black sheep of the family my sister has all but disowned me. I still don't have the courage to tell them I'm bi.
Out of me/ my sister and 2 cousins.. 3 of us were disfellowshipped and reinstated. The result, 3 of us choose not to be involved in the religion anymore. That is another practice I do not understand how it's to be beneficial. I know I went back for all the wrong reasons. I have a friend who was disfellowshipped his year for being gay, he now wants to go back "because I miss my friends" HOW is that beneficial?
As people have stated before, religion really shaped the world to what it is today. I'm not religious in any way, but I acknowledge that I probably wouldn't have been raised, or even born into this world without it.
