IF.... just IF.... It's a hypothetical. What do you think?

Question

I think that if we had no "religion", there would be NO WAR. But then doing away with religion would create war. If no one had a religion, and everyone were ENLIGHTENED to accept everyone else regardless of their socioeconomic status or soiciocultural upbringing, there would be PEACE ON EARTH! What do you think would create PEACE ON EARTH and GOODWILL TOWARD MEN?

When I say "WE" I mean every damn human being on this planet.

Answer 1

I think if we could restart human life at the beginning, but somehow make it so that there was never any religions, there would be one less thing to fight about, but there would still be wars.

its a pretty simple chain of events. think of a tribe of cave ppl. one of them wants something, and merely takes it from another thats weaker than him. this idea catches on, and eventually the strongest one takes all he wants, food, women, possesions, whatever. he is now the leader. this causes jealousy, eventually ppl try to overthrow him, and others move away. now there are different communities with different points of view. eventually, they're going to disagree on things and one of them is going to pick a fight.

anything can be used as a weapon, a stick, a rock, anything. that leads to the invention of better weapons, if you have a knife, i create a sword so i have longer reach. so you create a bow, so i create a gun..... etc.

its human nature to do this, and if it all started over again, it would turn out much the same, but there would be one less thing to fight over. but, we'd just create another reason. we suck. lol.

Answer 2

Religion is only half the problem.

Property is the other half of the problem and it motivates many to do a lot of damage. WW2 and WW1 were wars of conquest not religion. So were the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, The War of the Roses The hundreds year war and so on.

Greed is a big motivator in society.

Survival is not enough it seems.

If you want peace you have to find love, trust and understanding in your relationships. This is something you might gleen from the writings of St. Augustine who wrote volumes of philosophy on many subjects including love. Relationships depend on love trust and understanding or as he put it honesty. They work like three legs to a table. The more weight you put on one the less weight you put on the others. Optimally you are looking for balance, but there are many ways to balance the table. Hate can replace love in the equation but that means that trust and understanding are being strained to the breaking point. That is when pride, envy, and greed can lead one to war or in the case of marriage break up. The Ying Yang thought on the subject is that there is a little good in what it bad and a little bad in what is good and that is what keeps the two attracted to one another. Those are the little dots in the symbol. If you want to make an agry man lay down his weapon you have to get him to find that little dot in the middle of his anger and restore the love in his life. If this has anything to do with the middle east skirmishes then you have to accept the fact that this has as much to do with land as it has to do with religion. The Islamics want Jeruslem back but they also want the land around it back too. They don't want to compromise. they want to conquer and they will not let this go until Israel is but a memory. Israel on the other hand doesn't want to leave. Until this property issue is settled any religious greavances will used to get the young to hate their neighbors. It is sad to say but that is the way they are fighting these days. Tell the young it is for God or Country and hand them a gun. Funny how I never heard God or Allah speak the word, "Go kill that guy before this all began."

Answer 3

I think people would still wage war, even without religion. There are people who are power hungry and want nothing more than to control someone else, or steal what they have and make it their own. There are people who believe the one who dies with the most toys wins. People will still fear what they don't understand and lash out at it instead of trying to understand.

Peace on earth will only occur when EVERYBODY, yes every damned human being on this earth, stops picking on the differences we all share and starts focusing on the similarities. Just think of the technological advances we could make if we could only cooperate with each other instead of each of us thinking we are always right and the other person is always wrong. Each of us has ideas with merit. Those ideas could be combined for the total good of us all. We could solve some real world issues if we could do those things. I don't know how we're going to get everybody on the same page though.....Hell, I can't even get 6 people on the same page about where to go for dinner!

Answer 4

Although religion has been the cause of many wars, there has also been a lot of fighting that had nothing to do with religion. I don't think anything will ever create peace on earth unfortunately. Everyone is too angry, power hungry, and anxious to further themselves in this world.

Answer 5

If their were no religion, war mongers would just be honest about wanting to invade someones land to take their resources. We use religion to justify that. Peace on earth and goodwill towards all men wont happen anytime soon. But in the far future, I could imagine that people could be given neural implants in their brains to regulate their emotions, block all aggressive and violent emotions and make people feel unwavering respect and concern for each other. I know its a bit far out, but so was your question. Good one too.

Answer 6

Most wars are political in nature, not religious. That's not to say that religion has no role to play because religion and politics have been so intertwined throughout history. The Crusades, for instance, regarded as a religious conflict, revolved around the location of Jerusalem as a geographical/political location in relation to the dominant religion of the region, which at the time was Islam.

So no - religion is often abominable and its followers disgusting, violent idiots, but they do so in relation to political interests (politics is about the distribution of power, which most religions have an interest in). Wars may be stopped by detaching religion from any political process, and necessarily by any relation between religion and power (which would take out the Bush administration at a stroke).

The problem with religion is merely that it deludes large numbers of people into believing that their leaders are right. Do you think Bin Laden is just as happy to be judged by his god as Bush is? Do you need any more proof that religion needs to be detached from any sources of political power?

Answer 7

Enlightened? Unreligiousness is equivalent to being enlightened?
You are basically asking us all to walk around with no convictions, no morals, no beliefs; nothing that could possibly offend anyone. Sorry, some things offend because they are true. Good will toward men is great. But if I were not a Catholic Christian (that's my religion), it would be because I disagree with the teachings of the Church- things like 'Thou Shall Not Kill' and 'All life is sacred'. And if I did not believe those things, what would stop me from doing anything? My religion does not say 'hate others as you would like to be hated' as you seem to imply. It is the agnostics; those who believe in no higher being or greater good, that are not bound morally to respect others.
By the way, tolerance and acceptance are not synonymous with permissiveness.
God Bless!

Answer 8

Religion itself is not the cause; it's the concept of the self that sees itself as separate from others and the rest of the universe (making alliances with different groups or with special loved ones, etc.). Religion can be one group manifestation of this. There are countless other group manifestations of this, that have led to war (nationalism, racial superiority, ethnic and cultural superiority, etc.). The ONLY way to get peace on earth is for each of us to work on reducing our self/ego -- and this means in ALL forms, including the very subtle 'spiritual ego' where we see ourselves as working towards peace, helping others, etc. This latter stuff is often met with outrage by most but the paradox is that one can only really do good when one's actions are coming from a place where this is no concept of 'someone doing good'. Again, the issue with ALL problems is this concept of the self as separate from others; there are different mind training paths to bring this change (e.g. Zen is one of them).

Answer 9

You are touching on a couple of very different issues in your answer here, particularly the interrelation of "war" and "religion" and then the interplay of "status" and "war". Sure, differences in "religion" have led to some of the bloodiest wars on record. But at the heart of that is the belief of "we're better than/more righteous than/ more entitled to resources than" some Other. And it's the casting of this "other" as less than righteous, less than enlightened, less than "us" that leads to war, poverty, corruption, exploitation, etc.

A great book to read on the subject is "King Leopold's Ghost" which is about the aftermath of colonialism in Africa. Lots of scary things happened (war, slavery, outright theft of goods, people, etc) ostensibly because these were "pagan savages".

But the real reason was outright greed, and the ability to see the native inhabitants as less deserving of proper respect and dignity than those who were exploiting them.

Anyway, just a few thoughts...

Answer 10

No way. The variations in human nature are too intense at state of mankind. For as much as we think we're sophisticated, we are deep down highly barbaric still. Current events attests to that.

Peace on Earth? HA! Not in this life time, or the next, or the next and down unto fifty-plus generations from now. Hate to sound pessimistic but I see it as reality and I'm not usually wrong.

arf effing arf!