A capitalist in some disguise or another, will tap into the market left by the absence of religion. Its community and spiritual function will be removed, and will be replaced by somebody else. Both functions, for some even the supply of a religious object, are more than capable of generating income.
… there are one million takers, and one hundred opportunities … now there are 99 opportunities, what happens next???
Pangloss stated:
Yes, they will tap into the market, as I said in my previous post, but the important question is “to what extent”? Churches are funded by the government as well as the people of the community in which the church is located. All the churches together from around the world, would accumulate into dozens of billions of dollars if not hundreds of billions of dollars. Now if they all were destroyed, who or how do you suppose someone is going to tap into that? To what extent? Do you propose that someone will tap into the billions of dollars? Is such a huge sum of money so easily ‘tapped’ into?
Pangloss stated:
I’m not sure what you mean, it appears as though you are mixing concepts with takers and opportunities. Can you elaborate, I wish not to assume?
What’s your take?
Heres my take on a religionless world…
Why i think a world without religion would be a better place
The fact is, there would be a huge amount less of killing in a world without religion. Lets face it, religion can’t be inherently evil (only people can be evil), just like a gun. But it can only be used for evil purposes (all the petty charity work (yeah even the charity work sucks; 300$ mill to build a church, when you could save a million lives in Africa with that money, so hypocritical; I’m one too, but it would take me 200 lifetimes to accumulate the degree of hypocrisy there) and the hope it gives people is cancelled by the huge amount of evil religion has been used for). Religion is biggest and worst weapon ever created on this earth; not guns, or nuclear weapons or whatever. And people love to use it. It’s a brainwashing mechanism to create soldiers, the source of violence is people, guns don’t kill people, people do. So here is the source, you take away people you can’t kill as many people. Hasn’t anyone played Syndicate? Just fucking persudatron (AKA religion) everyone to get about a few hundred followers, and your firepower and potential to create mass murder goes up that many times. Yeah, the few million of fundamentalist extremist violent religious people do ruin it for everyone, too bad. But lots of people are too easily brainwashed. And these few (maybe its not a few?) extremists have been enough to cause the crusades, inquisition, mass genocide, suicide bombings, persecution, KKK, wtc, etc etc. massive killing of millions and millions and violence throughout history. I’m calling for a massive disarmament, take away your little persudatron Bin Laden. Who is he going to fly in a plane? We call them lunatics, but they are just brainwashed by religion. If they didn’t have religion, who is he going to find? Religion means these people go to heaven and so they don’t worry about dying, and their morality is all messed up thanks to the perversion of Osama and his religion. “uhhh you wanna train, study, work hard, for a year or 2 and fly into the world trade center? The truth is though, after that though, you just cease to exist… I donno though, can you do this for me? I just don’t like America…can you spend your one life, your 70 years of existence to kill yourself for me?” “fuck that I’m going home to my family.” Instead of “you are the chosen ones to kill the infidels, you will attain bliss by god’s side after your sacrifice, you will be martyrs… your death will bring honor and glory… blah blah blah” “gimme a plane”. Of course most of these main demented people have been brainwashed also, and a few use religion just to further their own means. The point is it doesn’t matter whether its not religion’s fault, it’s a weapon, and ideally it should be wiped off this earth, just like nukes. Of course we all know the mass non religious killings that go on (extreme communism, greed), but the bottom line is if we take away more and more reasons and ways to kill, then you have less killing. These religious killings will not all be replaced by something else and so some say somehow the killing amount will remain the same, that is a total misnomer. If there were no guns, nukes, any type of weaponry except knives, would the death count go up or down? Stay the same my ass.
Without religion, there would not be more killing. We all know assholes atheists and theists; good atheists, good theists. Morality is independent of religion, until a person lets religion pervert it. So just because everyone is not going to be punished in the end, doesn’t mean people are going to be “yay, free for all” and start killing people. The fact is, theists are not hindered (that much) by their religion in their ability to kill, atheists are not apt to do more killing just because they aren’t religious. Christianity says everyone is a sinner, and so they know it, they are going to sin, become do what they will. It doesn’t even matter to the degree they sin, all will be saved, so in the back of their minds they are going I know I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t; but I am a sinner, so may god forgive me; just before the bullet hits the brain.
Its my theory people don’t search as much when they are religious. Not searching in a religious type of searching, they probably do that more than me. I’m talking searching like, if there is no god…. Why shouldn’t I just do all self serving things… What is meaningful to me… Why should I save the environment… Questions about morality and meaning. I don’t think most religious people search in these realms as much as atheists (some don’t, some do, but I’m talking about majority, statistically more here). Religion provides those answers, that’s why. “religious thinking” takes first and foremost of their followers thinking. Meaning is in god, morality is in god, for all your questions of morality and meaning, read the bible, Koran, Torah, or whatever. The fact is, I think the world would be a much better place if people searched for their own answers by themselves and discussed and shared knowledge with other people. Its analogous to the old fishing lesson story, teach a person to catch a fish, or just givem a fish every day. So these people are given commandments, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not whatever…… No one says why, (well I guess the answer to that is because god says so), but not why in terms of reasoning and philosophy. Why shouldn’t I kill, because god said so… Most of these commandments are good and all, but I don’t think morality should just be given out and imposed, it just restricts the thinking. Morality and meaning should be discovered through thinking and reasoning, discussion, etc. It gives a person the ability to adapt to more situations. Religious thinking turns into a closed thinking form (in terms of morality and meaning), this type of form creates a thinking where people are more apt to do what others tell them to do, and not to think for themselves. Creating potential easily brainwashed peoples, so what happens when the texts and words of god get perverted; these people are the first to jump in line without question to do the mass killings. Uh somewhere in the bible it says to kill infidels, so everyone do that. No one questions why, it’s the word of god. What the fuck is going on, these people should be questioning why, why, why (not in terms of god); and this is what religion does, takes out that aspect. Their main question for them, is my religion right or wrong. Not why or how or anything based on reason…
" Yeah well, that’s just, ya know, like, your opinion, man” – The Dude
A very good point, Harry Haller. Most of the wars in the world have been religious ones or sparked because of religious views. The two world wars, although not sparked by religion, have their roots in religion. World Wars aside, I think many of the problems between people are religious ones, which brings the question to the surface…why do we have religions if they cause so much confusion, argumentation, fighting, etc?
We don’t need to get of religion, we need to get rid of spiritualism.
huh?
Well, except for accidently omitting the word ‘rid’ in the first clause, I think it’s fairly clear. There are many who argue that religion is the problem and God is the solution, “I believe in God but I don’t believe in religion.” I like religion, I have no use for God.
jawaad
An extremely difficult question.
In my opinion, without faith in an unknown God, we would wind up as obssesive/compulsive neurotics, worshipping a known god (fundamentalism), ourselves (narcissism), the state (Nazism, fascism), an economic system (communism, capitalism), a cult, evil, science or anything else that has the power to symbolize our immortality.
Some of us would become enamored of intoxicants.
Man needs to identify with something that is bigger than he is, that is outside of himself, that precedes him and proceeds him, to transcend the fears of his mortal ego.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra encounters a band of atheists on the mountainside. He doubts their depth, but he invites them to his cave for supper. Sure enough, by nightfall, they are on their hands and knees praying to a jackass (“…What magnificent ears you have…”).
Ayn Rand abolished God – then immediately worshipped capitalism (“…What magnificent ears you have…”).
Communists think they have abolished the unknown God (our faith in Whom neutralizes our primal fear). In reality, they have made the fatal mistake of giving Him a face.
I think that if there was no religion, then people would no longer be ‘confined’ to it, and then things like murder would happen and the world would no longer be a safe place. Not that it is, at the moment, anyways. 
=D>