If everyone was atheist

[Cyberman]

Ah, now that is a good point. All that contraception and compulsory abortion going on - no more free-range babies means we'll be stuck with the battery ones (and everyone knows they don't taste as good). I don't think we thought this through.

[Longhorn]

Jarvis, cancel world domination plans

BabyQ at my place tonight

[jesus_wept]

Someone needs to look into this more thoroughly.

[Cyberman]

How about if we keep a few of the 'quiverful' xtians on ranches? The rate they breed, the price of the meat would drop but the sheer amount of it would keep the farmers in profit.

[Crossless2.0]

How about if we keep a few of the 'quiverful' xtians on ranches? The rate they breed, the price of the meat would drop but the sheer amount of it would keep the farmers in profit.

No, the price of baby meat would drop, and that would cause the baby farmer industry shills in Washington to pressure Congress for subsidies to prop up the price.  Farmers would be paid to not breed babies.  Whole industrial scale nurseries would sit empty while the working poor would find it harder and harder to afford baby meat for their families.  Efforts to redress this situation would lead to charges of 'class warfare' by members of the GOP, who would suddenly -- ironically -- favor government-sponsored contraception and agricultural abortions on behalf of their faithful donors.  In the end, welfare programs for needy people who require baby meat would be cut, while corporate welfare for baby farms would continue indefinitely.  Guilty, health-obsessed liberals would turn to free-range babies at such outlets as Whole Foods, while working class people would have little choice but to buy an inferior grade of baby (pumped full of hormones and who knows what else) imported from China and sold at Walmart.  And the baby eaters on both sides of the political divide would continue to ignore or openly sneer at the vegetarians.

In other words, not much will have changed.

[Anomalocaris]

How about if we keep a few of the 'quiverful' xtians on ranches? The rate they breed, the price of the meat would drop but the sheer amount of it would keep the farmers in profit.

We are a wealthy society,  we need boutique Christian baby meat, not the cheap quiverful kind.

[Anomalocaris]

And the baby eaters on both sides of the political divide would continue to ignore or openly sneer at the vegetarians.

No need. Even vegetarians can partake. The stuff in Christian craniums are nothing but vegetable.

[Tonus]

Do you think the world would be a better place if everyone was atheist?

Please explain your answer below.

Possibly.

Religion is just a form of tribalism, which is something that we take part in as a social species. We form groups of "us" and define those outside of it as "them." We see this in the way we identify as being a particular race, or from a particular country, or from a particular state, or city, or neighborhood, or street. We see it in the way we form groups to follow particular performers (actors, singers, writers) and organizations (sports teams, businesses). We see it in good-natured ribbing between the members of such groups (sports trash-talk). We see it in ugly behavior in those circumstances (crass comments, insults, violent acts). A world without religion would still have tribes, and we'd still see the good and bad from those.

Where religion differs from those other forms is that it introduces a powerful guiding force that demands unquestioning obedience and may excuse otherwise horrible behavior on the part of its adherents. This puts such behavior outside of the reach of reason: if every utterance from god is good and god asks you to do something pretty extreme, there is no question that you must do it because your eternal future is at stake. This can lead people to do some pretty terrifying things while feeling justified in doing so, or even righteous. So without religion perhaps we take the most dangerous edge off of tribalism. And that would open the path to allowing reason to count more often, and that could be a very good thing overall.

[Crossless2.0]

And the baby eaters on both sides of the political divide would continue to ignore or openly sneer at the vegetarians.

No need.  Even vegetarians can partake.  The stuff in Christian craniums are nothing but vegetable.

Well, I suppose straw could count as a vegetable.

[Pyrrho]

That's^ ridiculous and completely pessimistic. The only way religion would take hold again in a world full of atheists would be if society collapsed and we went back to the stone age or something.

A population free of dogma entering the technological age no less would be far less vulnerable to such superstitious dribble, religiosity would be a ulta-minority position like atheism was for most of history.

You have way too much confidence in the intelligence of the average human and way too little understanding of the creativity of the selfish.

But what would people be like in a world in which people would all become atheists?

This world is not going to give up on religion, at least not any time soon.  But if people were such that they would, they would be different from the way they are now.

Also, if you think about the way people are now, very few people who are raised as atheists ever become religious.  So once we got to a point where everyone starts out as atheists, religion would have a very difficult time catching on, even if people were otherwise exactly as they are now.