this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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We would be ~1000 years in the future right now without Abrahamic faiths.
Talked about this a ton with an LLM a couple months back. The thing is, there was never an alternative that captured a similar psychotic zealotry. All groups have their faiths throughout the same eras, but none match the exported hate, murder, and industrial scale slaughter of other humans like the Abrahamic faiths. Confusion Monks never invaded France. Buddhists never occupied Scandinavia. The hate, death, and constant conflict of the Abrahamic faiths are the absolute most toxic and harmful aspect of all of humanity. The most deadly conflict since WW2 has been in Africa over the last few years. Most of the west isn't even talking about this. It is a Abrahamic in origin. Gaza is the same. It has all been like this for 2500 years of constant killing. Other places had minor issues, but they never exported and in the present, these others are mostly in decline. If you take away the Abrahamic faiths, I bet all are gone in half a millennia. The man was as schizophrenic as the nations and peoples he left in his wake. Taming the ghost of the worlds most psychotic killer changes everything for the better.
You're getting religion mixed up with technology and opportunity.
There's been plenty of violence, war, and extremism in the name of Buddha and Confucius. They absolutely can be used to justify genocide, just look at Myanmar. It's very difficult to find a major religion that has never produced fanatical sociopaths.
Never on boats across seas and continents. Nowhere on earth now is really safe from the history and influence of colonialism. All of those expeditions carried a strong religious underpinning that was the primary capital motivation in case of loss. Myanmar is no exception. All of it only happened because it was underpinned by religious bullshit. Many cultures were motivated by trade in the past but none of those that only cared for trade ever had the kind of history of death accompanied by Abrahamic faiths. This is the primary commonality with all of the worst acts in human history in one form or another. Shedding this one awful thing would be the largest positive change possible. Abrahamic faith is the single greatest disease in all of history.
I am equally confident there will never be enough time
I'm an atheist and think we'd be better off if we moved beyond religion. That said, I don't think it's true we'd be so much farther ahead without it.
Looking at early humans I think religion was a competitive advantage, because it organized groups of people who might not otherwise have worked together. It allowed us to move beyond tribal affiliation, to create a common "operating system" for societies and conceive of and pursue multigenerational goals.
I think we can do all that stuff now without religion, but also think we need more explicitly defined structures and institutions to fill the role religion has played.
I really liked that in Raised by Wolves it was an alternate timeline where there was no Christianity.
Instead the religious fanatics eradicating the atheists were Mithraics.