Does the World Need Religion?

[Jesster]

At best, all but one of the world's religions are false religions, so, phoenix31, what does the world need with that ??

In my mind, accepting the truth bears a heavier burden of responsibility to discover for oneself what is appropriate and inappropriate action. But nobody is required to bear that burden of responsibility. So if a majority of people decide they want to be entirely self centered and live in a ruthless society, there is nothing to stop that from occurring.

Or even on a smaller scale, if people want to rape and steal and murder, if they can do so without getting caught, they will. Whereas the majority of religion generally teaches peaceable actions toward others with a divine consequence for disobedience, and helps reign people in from doing whatever they want.

And if societies live by these values, they will die out from internal issues faster than societies that live by more successful values. Society is self-correcting that way. On a smaller scale, people who can perform those acts without getting caught will only be punished by divine means if there is a divine being, which changes nothing in this life anyway. Believing that there is a divine being does not suddenly make divine punishment real in order to punish them. People who want to rape and murder are also going to attempt that no matter what the dominant religion says. Meanwhile, if we focus on actually improving our society to catch them without relying on divine means, we might actually be able to do something about it now.