Imagine a world without faith or religion.

[DetlefK]

10. The world would be better in multiple aspects:

1.
Religion divides society into those who have the correct religion and those who have the wrong religion.
Without religion, this permanent hostility, otherness and partisanship would be gone. There would be less social/political tensions and therefore less conflicts.



2.
Religion has held back the advancement of science.
The evolution of modern science (the "scientific method&quot came from a combination of several historical and philosophical coincidences happening over a very short period of time of no more than 2 centuries. (~1500 - ~1700)
A main obstacle was that research was done with the philosophy that if theory and experiment contradict each other, the theory is correct and the experiment is wrong. And that theory was based on Bible, greek philosophers and famous Christians one happened to agree with.

Imagine what the world would have been like if the occult experimentalists and alchemists of the Renaissance had been free to draw conclusions from their experiments. Imagine, them not being forced to interpret their data according to church-approved doctrine.

Imagine what the world would be like if the philosophical and scientific advancements that happened in 1800 had instead already happened in 1600 or even earlier. Science would have at least a 200 year headstart compared to now.



3.
Europe would have been spared the 30-Year-War. (1618-1648)
A war between a catholic international alliance and an evangelical international alliance that devastated Europe for 30 f**king years.
And it began because the people of Bohemia were Evangelicals and were tired of being oppressed by a catholic ruler. (Actually, it's more complicated, but that's the gist.)

Imagine WWI or WWII... except 5 times longer.
Imagine the US Civil War... except 7 times longer.



4.
Without an oppressive church exploiting society, the question is whether Karl Marx would have developed his theory that the driving factor of history is the fight between different classes of society. Karl Marx was rabidly anti-church.

What kind of Communism would Karl Marx have invented if there had been no Church to draw his anger?