[Creggle]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

And who first brought 'religion' into this topic?

I think that if man had lived by the 10 commandments over the past few thousands of years then we would have maybe conquered the universe at least, but would definitely have conquered disease, famine, drought, and even the ageing process, because - had man abided by the commandments - then there would have been no murders, thefts etc, and therefore, the zillion, sqillion, trillion billions which have been wasted,and are still being wasted, on fighting crime and wars, would have been instead invested in all types of research.

Anyway, all of the things you point out are man's doing and man's alone. Religion is man's invention.

Yeah but people as a whole, are corrupt. Something like Religion would perhaps work if chimps figured out what it was but people cannot have something like religion without all of the sh!t that's happened over the years due to religious zealotry. If something is corruptable, we will corrupt it. Religion is the most vulnerable thing to corruption going and really shouldn't be allowed.

Originally Posted by Livia

Maybe if we'd have put all the energy, money, time and knowhow that we've put into hating and killing each other and used those resources for something more constructive and beautiful the world would have been a very different place now. I'm not saying if everyone was religious that would have happened - we all know that religion doesn't have the monopoly on good, moral people - just that if we'd been the kind of species who didn't steal, murder, lie and covet our neighbour's ox, mankind might have been a greater species than we've turned out to be. Also, maybe science and technology might not have been as destructive as it's been because people could have been more ethical. We've gobbled up resources in our pursuit of technological advancement, almost exclusively driven by war and/or money, and in some cases that's resulted in devastation as great as war itself.

Isn't it strange though that the majority of killing and hating has been because of religion? Don't get me wrong we as a whole will use any excuse to commit atrocities but if it wasn't for religion they'd of been much harder to cover up.