Ok.....So you killed off Religion...

[ronedee]

Being new here I have obviously missed previous discussions that have covered this ground so I am happy to take these as genuine questions.

There appear to be a number of assumptions in your questions which are probably not reasonable. If we did manage to prove that there is no God I could not see religions simply folding up their tents and closing down. Most atheists would regard God as largely disproved today and yet see little reduction in numbers in the religions of the world. Some, in fact, are booming.

I would imagine, whatever the evidence, that religion would continue as if nothing had happened. Never underestimate the propensity towards denial of believers.

Best case scenario - it would take hundreds of years for religions to reduce to covering, say 10% of the population of the planet.

Even if we were to assume religion did shut down what evidence is there that morality would change as a result one iota?

That is not to say morality won't change - it does, even now with religion, merely that the loss of religion won't cause further change.

Proving that there is no God consequently proves that morality is a man-made construct. My guess is that we would discover that it was a natural, evolutionary development that allowed larger brained, social mammals to live and cooperate together in communities, supplementing the instinctive behaviour that suffices for less intelligent mammals.

Obviously this would explain the relative nature of morality that we have observed throughout history.

Society continues pretty much as it always has done.

A more interesting question would be how we deal with those that find the idea of no heaven and true, real, permanent death so frightening.

Thanks for "seriously" addressing the question(s). I think you are right on several counts.

It would need to be very big medicine for religion to just go away. And it would be several hundred years even in the face of that reality, just for the "faithful" to die away.

But, I'm imagining that a world w/o [a] God (real or perceived) would also lack a check & balance system.

Think about this: "IF" we knew that there was [absolutely] a God, and consequences for immoral actions we would somehow "try" to do good. At least most of us; as we would know about that better place, and the not so better place...because we saw it!

What would happen if we "absolutely knew", without a doubt this was it? When dead, we're gone? Like a lot of you "intelligent" guys think.

I'm thinking that it wouldn't be a pretty picture. Why? Because only "survival" would be of importance. I'm not saying that everyone would subscribe to this...but an awful lot would!

Most would deny that it would be chaos w/o God. But, if the aforementioned would change life w/ "proof" (as most atheists have indicated), why wouldn't the opposite be true?

This is worth pondering about.... a society w/o God, or a moral compass.