I dream of day when

[Violet]

I don't necessarily think that religion and art go hand in hand. Neither do spirituality and religion. Neither do god and spirituality. As far as altered states of mind, I agree that probably has a huge effect on art. I know plenty of atheists who are creative. Logical thinking does not equal lack of creative interests.

I never said it didn't. However, it does distance one from certain subject matter in artistry: singularity of purpose, which suffers hard outside of theism ("monotheism" in particular). Spirituality and art, on the other hand, are very well connected... one can be creative regardless, but creativity is not also an intimate experience with that which one is attempting to represent.

If every religion on this planet dies tomorrow, art will not die... it will, however: be far more monotonous. There will be few new hymns inspired by the glory of god(s), there will be few more frescoes of piety, few more lovingly crafted sculptures of religious icons. Perhaps it's just as well, and they'll simply adopt new content... but that's the thing:

The culture of religion will be gone, and good or bad, culture is largely responsible for artistry... and significantly impacts art form and style.

And as far as getting rid of the 'isms' goes... I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. Until all humans as a whole transcend ego and this nagging need to constantly be stimulated and keep busy, there will always be structure to society and structure means 'isms' because our brains as they currently are have a need to organize everything. This set of ideas with this set of beliefs must have some label so we call it this. Until we transcend the very idea of structure and ego that will never happen. I still think an atheist world would be MORE peaceful, not that it would necessarily fix everything.

Balance is more important than peace... where would we be without our wartime epics? Imagine if in the era of electronica... imperial dubstep

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Also think of how many wars that have occurred concerning religion. Including the ones which are not recorded in history, which may be irrelevant to consider, I don't know. Although it's not too far off to assume that we would find something else to fight about if religion was abolished, it's not something that is NECESSARY for society to continue, although our small-minded, narrow view of the world may tell us that it is.

War does seriously propel progress, technologically and culturally alike. I love the artistic themes available to different planets of civilization... alien art that converts through their sheer awe-inspiring cultural achievements.