What if gods never existed?

[Voltaire2]

What would the world be like if there were no gods?

[SoFlaDem]

1. Maybe...

We would have lost our minds when we became sentient only to realize our end game was always death? Maybe we wouldn't have pushed on when we realized that we had almost no control over the world and it's conditions. Maybe we would have stole all the other people in our clan when there wasn't enough food to go around and we wouldn't have cooperated in times of famine? Unlike the other non-self aware animals, we can see how bleak and sad the human condition can be.

By this, I believe the need for ritual, faith and/or religion seems to be ingrained in the human spirit and must have played some role in our evolutionary survival or it wouldn't have been so prevalent.

And I am not arguing in favor or against modern religion, I am just thinking how evolution doesn't always pick intellect as the best survival strategy.

[MineralMan]

2. Why, then, do atheists not feel that way?

Really.

[Mariana]

9. Plenty of theists believe atheists do feel that way

and aren't interested in hearing what actual atheists have to say about it.

[MineralMan]

10. I know. But we don't feel that way. We understand

the reality and live our lives in recognition of it. It is enough.

That frightens religionists.

[SoFlaDem]

14. I am not arguing for religion

But there has been ritual for all of Human history, even evidence that Neanderthals practiced rituals. I have to believe that spirituality has some sort of evolutionary purpose.

[Voltaire2]

3. I didn't ask about belief in gods.

I asked how the world would be if no gods ever existed.

[SoFlaDem]

15. I'm sorry

Didn't realize you were just looking for an argument.

[Mariana]

17. The poster merely clarified the question for you

since you seem to have misunderstood it. How is that looking for an argument?

[Voltaire2]

19. I was just trying to make the question I asked clear.

It wasn’t about belief. The question was about existence.

[Snotcicles]

52. To quote Antonio Porchia

"Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed"

[Duppers]

13. Religions pit groups of people against

Each other.

Early on, small groups fought for territory for their economic survival. Now, they fight for mythological ideologies, i.e. superstitious religions.


The only thing needed for morality is empathy. And that empathy is usually hardwired until some twisted parenting beats it out of a child.


I could pontificate about theories of the psychological motivations of becoming a Republican and formation of the "Republican personality" but I don't have the time right now. Simply put, I think it's rooted in misplaced anger. Most religions forbid appropriate expression of anger within families.


Edited to add: religion is what allows people to look to a god instead of problem solving for themselves. Ever met a global warming denier who wasn't religious?

And their philosophy of procreation is choking the planet and killing all of us.
But pray to god and he'll save us -phooey.

[LSFL]

4. like it is now..

[Voltaire2]

7. ...

[Liberalhammer]

5. I wouldn't have had to sit through...

Hours of boring church and Sunday school.

I'd have regained hundreds of lazy Sunday mornings.

[Mariana]

11. Not necessarily.

What if no gods ever existed, but most people (including whoever made you go to Sunday school) were convinced otherwise? You'd still have had to waste all those Sundays.

[Major Nikon]

6. Coitus wouldn't wake up the neighbors

[Voltaire2]

20. Omfg.

[BigmanPigman]

8. There are no gods.

Perhaps the question should be, "What would the world be like if people didn't believe there are gods/religion?".

The wars that have been fought for thousands of years due to and based on religious beliefs would not have occurred.

[Mariana]

12. I think the question is a good one just the way it is.

Your question is interesting, too, but it is a very different question.

[Voltaire2]

21. for those who believe gods exist the

question is meaningful.

p.s. the iPhone spell checker is a monotheist. It insists on replacing “gods” with “god’s”.

[mitch96]

16. Arn't gods just a construct of the human mind?

I mean I don't see animals or plants with gods..
m

[Voltaire2]

18. Well I think they are, but other people think

they are real. The hypothesis for you and me is answered “as it is”. I’m just curious how those who believe that gods exist think what a world where there were no gods would be like.

[mitch96]

22. A world with out a god...hummm

I think it would kill all hope for them... How would you explain the un explainable? The term "gods will" slips easy off the tongue. Faith and hope from what I've seen, are linked. With out a god all that goes away..
Also how would the church sell to the crowd with out some magic and mysticism??? Wait, if there is no god is there no church?
m

[Voltaire2]

23. But I see no reason why religion wouldn't exist.

Again the question is not directly about belief in gods.

There are two possibilities: we live in a world where gods exist, or we live in a world where gods do not exist.

For people who are atheists, the answer is simple: a world without gods would be exactly like this world.

[guillaumeb]

24. You obviously liked my post.

Glad to be a positive influence on you and the conversation here.

[guillaumeb]

25. Your question implies that gods exist.

My answer is that all gods are a reflection of the Creator.

[Voltaire2]

26. Nope. Let me clarify.

There are two possibilities: we live in a world where gods exist, or we live in a world where gods do not exist.

The question asks you to assume that the second possibility is true about this world, that it is a world where gods do not exist.

[guillaumeb]

28. Understood.

As one person once said:

Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.

That person was Francois Marie Arouet, also called Voltaire.

However:

Déiste, et non athée, le philosophe trouve la religion nécessaire, pour donner des règles de bonne conduite au peuple : « Je veux que mon procureur, mon tailleur, mes valets croient en Dieu ; et je m’imagine que j’en serai moins volé. » Il n’est pas le seul bourgeois à le penser.

https://www.histoire-en-citations.fr/citations/voltaire-si-dieu-n-existait-pas-il-faudrait

Deist, but not an atheist, the philosopher found religion to be necessary as a source of rules...etc.

[Voltaire2]

45. Well sure. I think it is vanishingly unlikely

gods exist, and yet here we are in a world full of people worshipping make believe gods.

[guillaumeb]

59. Voltaire disagreed. eom

[Voltaire2]

60. Well no. Again you seem to think the question

was about belief, but it wasn’t. It was about the fact of existence.

[Major Nikon]

58. In other words...

Voltaire didn't believe in an interventionist god, but he found such belief beneficial in keeping totalitarians in check and his maid from pilfering his possessions. This idea is obviously elitist, but such was the world in which Voltaire lived.

[RockRaven]

27. Exactly as you are experiencing it now

because that is what is.

[guillaumeb]

29. Or...........

that is what you believe to be true.

[RockRaven]

33. it's all I have evidence for or reason to believe

I'd think otherwise if there was anything to persuade me it was so. But thus far,

[guillaumeb]

34. I understand your position. eom

[elleng]

36. Right

[Sneederbunk]

30. Depends what your definition of existed is.

[doc03]

31. Probably be a lot fewer wars nt

[progressoid]

32. Fewer Charleton Heston movies.

[elleng]

35. As it does.

[thucythucy]

37. We wouldn't have Bach's Mass in B Minor

or his Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring.

No Sistine Ceiling.

No Acropolis (temple to Athena).

No Paradise Lost.

No Dante's Inferno.

No Ovid's Metamorpheses.

No Angkor Wat.

Of course, we might have art and music equally sublime, but not through "divine inspiration."

[edhopper]

40. But what about Wagner!!??

[thucythucy]

42. Well, yeah, not to mention all that awful "Christian Rock."

Then again, there's all that amazing Gospel Music.

Like most everything, there's some good, lots of bad, some amazing (Mozart's Requiem, most everything by Bach) some hideously awful (Jesus Christ Superstar) and lots and lots of shit too dull even to be remembered.

Gluck's Orpheus is pretty amazing. The other day I saw Cocteau's "Orpheus" which used a lot of Gluck as sound track.

Wasn't Orpheus something like a god? Mythological anyway. And without the gods to mock, Aristophanes would have been right out of a job. But then again, we wouldn't have had all those cheesy Italian Hercules movies.

Just gotta take the bad with the good, I suppose.

[edhopper]

51. And we couldn't collect these

[thucythucy]

53. Yikes!

And who could forget "Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life"?

[Mariana]

56. Those are creepy as hell. Just saying. nt.

[Voltaire2]

43. Why? Religion does not require that gods exist.

I see no reason to believe that a world where no gods exist is a world without belief in gods.

[thucythucy]

49. Quite right.

I didn't get that distinction when I first read your post.

[Cartoonist]

48. I don't think you know how art works

Artists can't stop themselves. They have to express. Bach would still have written masterpieces.

Without gods, Lennon would never have written Imagine. He didn't need any to write the rest.

[gibraltar72]

38. You mean what if men never invented gods.

[Voltaire2]

46. No. I mean if it is a fact about the world.

[edhopper]

39. It would look exactly the same

as it does now. Because, you know, no gods.

[thinkingagain]

41. I think it would be a vast void

I will try to put this in words because my thoughts always don’t make on to paper correctly if you know what I mean (plus I’m doing this on my phone makes it even harder)
In my mind I think humans have to have someone of something to look up to (and to blame for things that go wrong) So we always need a leader for some you may be the leader but in times you may turn to another.

As for wars if it wasn’t a religious war it would be about something else.
Ownership of something, the size of something whose better at something etc
Whois correct etc.

I even think animals and plants have their “God’s” in their way. animals have their leaders some animals collect things and store them away in away and would fight to not let others get them this is worshipping in a way plants lean toward the sun again could be sorta a worship after all it is life sustaining for them to do it just like for many the hope and faith they put in their Gods is life sustaining for them.

[Voltaire2]

44. Again you are referring to belief in gods.

I did not ask about belief. I asked about existence. Either gods exist or they don’t. Assume they don’t. How is the world any different?

[thinkingagain]

47. Maybe you can tell us how you think it would be different

I still think there’d be a nothingness a void.
A black hole.

By the way I like how you make me have to think & think it is not a simple answe. There may not be a real answer. At least in my opinion that the way you say does not boil down to gods & belief of some sort in the end.

[Voltaire2]

50. I think this world is exactly that: a world

where no gods exist. It is exactly the way it is now.

[Snackshack]

54. Better.

[Snotcicles]

55. Man would conger up a different loophole to escape responsibility for being inhumane. nt

[NeoGreen]

57. Exactly...

...as it is now.