The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, is a book written to show that god most likely do not exist and to explain why the world would be a better place without religion. Dawkins placed an ad in a number of newspapers internationally for his book depicting the New York sky-line with the World Trade Center buildings in place, it was captioned in bold letters "Imagine, A world without religion"

This got me thinking, would a world without religion really be a better place?
ITT I'd like to suggest to you the same thing, imagine a world without religion.
Would it really be a better place? How would things change?

how would it be a better place, just because a few zealots take it to the extreme, how many people are devoutly religious and do no atrocities...where will the ideals of humanity come from if no one has any guides?

there really was no real religion for thousands of years, and what was man like...society didn't even blossom until they started to organize their nomadic tribes into groups worshipping aspects of nature.

Prehistoric Religion

it's easy with what religions have become, to say the world would be better off without it, using those like suicide bombers, fundamental freaks and other bad apples as examples, but if religion never existed we'd still be cavemen beating rocks together, little better than monkeys with sticks, human creativity didn't even start until they climbed into the caves and came out with manimal gods and sacred spirals.

Well religion is just a small part of the dangers of group thinking. When people chose to be or believe something the opposite automatically becomes the enemy of that choice. You see it in racism, hatreds for other cultures and religions, clothing styles, types of music ect ect.
The truth is people fear change and people who manipulate religions feed the fear that the others are out to destroy their way of life. Most religions teach peace just all leaders are corrupt and use it for their own means. If you got ride of religions people just fight over what color is better or type of music and what not.

Ask the Nazis or Joe Stalin, they hated religion too.

If religion and God are so man made, than truly we have nothing real to believe in. So why not just say religion is a tool of mass organization- or reasons to put babies in ovens.

People do say that, one of them put babies into ovens, he started the 3rd Reich.

A lot of people mistakenly view organized religion as the CAUSE of a lot of bad things. It isn't. It is an EXCUSE for people to do bad things, and there is a very big difference. Take away the excuse, and all of the hatred, ignorance and violence is still there. People will just find some other excuse to justify hating and killing each other.

Don't hate religion because of the things that people do in its name. Hate the people or hate the things they do... but hating the excuse is pointless and, in many cases, just what they want you to do.

i agree compeletely. religion is all too much like politics. there are movements like neo-paganism, wicca, etc. that is empowering to the individual and basically have no WORSHIP deities but rather works in harmony and partnership with them.

besides you don't have to believe in god to feel like you are worth something or that life has a meaning. YOU are god, we are all connected to that energy that just exists, and its your choice if you call it god or not.

Neo-Paganism HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAH!

Exactly!

Like the crusades, people think it was about religion, but it was much much more. It was really about taking the fight to the Persians and Arabs who had been invading Europe for centuries. But since that doesn't sound as good as "serving god" it was said like that.

What's funny?

the various forms of neo paganism around today, aren't any better than any monotheistic reliigion, they're just getting trendier, more outrageous with their claims and breeding a world full of charmed girls and boys thinking they can do things, that really...they aren't but being used to manifest energy for entities no one really or truly knows who or what they are...

but i'm sure billy's laughing at those faiths for an entirely different reason, but all religion goes down the same path when it's embraced by masses of people, wiccan "circles" have as much he says, she says popularity contests as any other group of people gathered.

if the occult was what it once was, i probably wouldn't have changed my colors, but i got disgusted by what the neo pagan movements became, long before Gd reached out and snatched me free, they became trendy cliches of coolness, and most of those pushing the ideals, had no clue where it came from...i needed some higher strength in my life to inspire me to clean up my act, that didn't take anything from me.

real or not, Abraham's Gd was the only one that was able to smack me upside the head to realize that i wasn't freed by my choices to do as i will, but only being bound by my flesh to material needs and unhealthy choices.

that's what religion should do, build a person up; not encourage them to embrace their beastial id side of selfish want and ego.

Neo-Paganism is whats funny.

I think that a world without any religion would be a devastating place. Despite the ills it has caused and the decimation its required to survive in many cultures, religion does attempt to give humanity some semblance of structure within its actions. People have corrupted and distorted religions for their own greedy purposes. But at the same time there have been people whos religion inspired them to initiate equality, peace, and freedom where it had not been before. Religion is a tool---a valuable one---and though we may not accept it wholly into our lives, each of us has at least questioned whether or not it could improve the quality life /after-life.