(May 31, 2014 at 12:44 pm)vodkafan Wrote: Here's just a flight of fancy. Suppose there was an atheist "See the truth" ray and everybody forgot about religion overnight ...what sort of society would we like to see set up? I can foresee it should be a fairer sort of society all round , but I can already envisage that it wouldn't be one size fits all.....for instance Vegetarians and Vegans might want to set up independent states so they can live the way they want without imposing their eating habits on others....anybody else got any thoughts?
Yes, I am with Dawkins in blaming Plato for his bad ideas that set up all the bad logic in humanity that followed. His ideas of questioning were not a bad thing. Where Plato went wrong is that he had no clue how important testing and falsification are in reality. Where politics and religion in the future were unduly influenced was his bad idea of "If you simply think about something you can find its essence". Utopian thought in humans exploded because of that bad idea and we still suffer from it today.
If you want a better understanding read his preface to "The Greatest Show On Earth".
Bottom line for me, even when atheists do it it gives me a lip twitch, I really hate speculating about utopias because there will never be any such thing. The world I could see being more peaceful but ultimately humans still have individual desires and still would include cruelty and compassion.
