I’m having conflicting thoughts about religion in shaping human history.
As an atheist, it seems obvious to me that if there were no religion from the start, the world would have been a better place than it is now. There would be no religious wars, honor killings, more freedom, no religious leaders abusing their powers, no waste of labor and money on religious things, etc. It may seem that we would be more educated and have better understanding.
My whole conflict arises from the fact that “fear is a better driver than education and reasoning.” As no system is efficient and perfect, the absence of religion would have caused more crimes. Religion promotes fear (the concept of an afterlife, hell) if you do something wrong. If there were no religion, humans may have committed numerous crimes without fearing consequences. You could say that it is due to religions that numerous wars have happened in history. But that is a tiny percentage of the whole population. Most people lived happier with religion as it introduced morals ,ethics and consequences for wrongdoing(big factor). One would think and question before doing something wrong.
You could also say that if we were non-religious from the start, we would have had better education, reasoning, different type ethics and morals etc. But as I said earlier, no system is efficient, and since non-religion doesn’t promote fear if you don’t get caught by others, there would be more crimes without fearing consequences if they don’t get caught by others, which was easy in the old days.
So, I’m thinking if religion did better in the early days.
And I know that nowadays it’s a different story, and non-religion is obviously better.
I’m a mortician/postmortem scientist, who used to run the WSU Funeral History Museum. Based on my research, I don’t think humans could exist without some type of religion/code/customs. As long as there has been death, even in ancient/prehistoric times, humans have been doing specific procedures, to say goodbye to their fallen loved ones.
There’s writings in almost every culture that teach us about what these civilizations believed, and some are beautiful, while others are kindof terrifying, but it all wrapped around people trying to cope with death.
Even if we found out complete proof for what actually happens when you die and after death, some people are still going to prefer their religion’s ideas because it brings them more peace. Death seems to be the clinch pin for all religions, and I honestly don’t think we’d have religion, if we didn’t understand the concept of death. People just want something to believe in.
Now, the garbage parts of religion are created by people seeking power, money, and control, and as long as there’s those who desire to conquer others, religion will be made up and used as a scapegoat, as to why certain people deserve power.