atheists: how this world would look like without Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity)?

Question

Please think before answering, and please elaborate. Avoid short answers like "much better". I understand it can only be unscientific guesswork, but the question looks interesting for me nevertheless.

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Answer 1

Prior to revelation at Sinai, there were no ethical/moral laws. Each group of people were governed by their own God, pharoah, king, etc. and were at his/her/its mercy.
After revelation at Sinai, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years as they learned to live in "freedom" with God and His laws as a guide. Since the Israelites had never lived in freedom, they were doomed to wander in the wilderness until their children became of age and were able to function as a free people under God, their king, in the promised land.
In the promised land, everyone was held accountable to God's law -- especially the leaders. It was a duty and privilege for everyone to study Torah, learn the law, and to assure that everyone received equal treatment under God's law. Because everyone studied the law, the Levites could not invent and change laws willy-nilly. They were accountable to God just the same as the lowly sheperd.
Over time, God's laws have been adopted by other nations and justice for all has prevailed in some countries.
Without the laws of the Torah, insane leaders could commit monstrous acts of violence and atrocities without consequences. Men could kill women and children simply from a fit of anger. Everyone would live in constant terror not knowing from where the next threat would come.
In essence, we owe our freedom from terror to the words of wisdom found in this wonderful book we call our Bible!
In today's world of terrorism, it makes one wonder how those words have become so distorted.

Answer 2

It depends. Currently, there lies the huge loophole in Christianity that many a person could/does take advantage of. However, some people need a god to threaten them into staying on the straight and narrow path. What we need to do is teach very strict moral teachings at a young age. There will always be those who stray from the path of good, but perhaps eventually we can make that number much lower.

Answer 3

much better :) seriously though, the initial benefit would be that A LOT more people would have lived if these religions were not around. the theory of God/s would probably have persisted up until now but it would still be an open debate. not as simple as you're wrong and I'm right BS. homosexuality, anti-semetic beliefs, crusades would all have never existed. spanish inquisition, churches robbing people blind (except the mormons). Torture devices would not be as prolific as they are, true thought would exist untainted by religious "views" and bible verses. The notion of God, existence would still be a true philosophical matter and not a blood bath argued by the bat shi*t crazy and the diluted insane

Answer 4

*agnostic* Instead of the bible hopefully someone would have wrote a book of morals to live by untill the social norms of "good" morals were established. Although I don't believe in god, I do credit the church for creating a "social government" that set deceint standards to live by. This process of creating what is concidered right and wrong might take longer than with biblical methods, but eventually the human nature of "We are all in this together" would work to keep people civilized.

Answer 5

The Industrial Revolution would have occurred 1000 years earlier. We would have no religious wars. We would not have a stupid Presidenet who thought he was on a mission from God. We would actually be able to teach science in the classrooms, instead of having to pander to ignorant right-wing religious conservatives trying to get their religion into the classrooms.

Answer 6

Just like it looks right now. Religion is only a belief, it does nothing concrete to the world.
Nothing beneficial has been done because of religion, but a great deal of misery has been and is being caused because of religious belief.

Answer 7

No one knows. The humans always want to know "why" something happens. Weather scientific or religious. The problem with today is as science has gotten smarter religion has no choice but to not believe because science is now showing why things happen with out god.

Answer 8

If Christianity, Judaism and Islam didn't exist there would still be one/several major religions to fill the gap.
People need religion, for whatever reason - the name is immaterial.

Answer 9

I suppose that people would have to find new means of justifying wars. Usually wars are fought over scarce resources, like land, oil, slaves, whatever. However, if there's no religions, we'll have to find some other way of passing the blame. hmm, maybe we could blame the bird flu or Satan, or something.

Answer 10

The world would be a much more peacefull and diverse place to live. People would work together for the same goal (countries) and there would be a lot less war.