(April 22, 2013 at 8:46 am)Dawud Wrote: So would a world in which everyone was atheist have more, less or the same amount of war?
I think that religion is just an expression of our desire to form tight-knit social groups which become a part of our identity. Nationalism and racism are similar-- people form groups that create a specific identity for its members. Political groups and ideologies can serve the same purpose. We can make social groups and identities out of almost anything... we're discussing this on an atheist forum, after all.
Wars are fought by people. Remove religion and there might be one less reason to fight war, but I'm sure we'd find something to fill that gap with.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
