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I’m not religious, but I can see the immense value that religion had historically as an imperfect guide to ethics and practical knowledge.

Sure, we can scoff at the hypocrisy and flaws now with our years of schooling, but the common person didn’t have the same access to academia back them. Short, memorable stories that show people getting punished for misdeeds and others rewarded for positive deeds is much easier to impart onto peasants than the nuances of collectivism.

Someone could point to the horrible acts done in the name of religion, but just imagine if those people didn’t have the fear of god in them. Tribalism would have separated humans into different nonreligious groups to genocide in a world without religion.

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Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Someone could point to the horrible acts done in the name of religion, but just imagine if those people didn’t have the fear of god in them

Lol no. Imagine if these people didn’t think they were still righteous in the eyes of god, maybe they might not have felt the need to torture in the name of their god.

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TheDoozer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Short, memorable stories that show people getting punished for misdeeds and others rewarded for positive deeds is much easier to impart onto peasants than the nuances of collectivism.

I would agree if the stories consistently portrayed that. In the Bible and Torah, Job is the most righteous and good and gets fucked because of that. David has a faithful soldier that goes so far as to refuse to go home to his wife while his comrades were still fighting, and David has him killed in a fucked up way (told his general to send him where the fighting was worst and then have everybody pull back from him), all to try to cover up fucking the soldier’s wife. David’s “punishment” was he married the hot widow and the child conceived in the affair was miscarried. And as soon as she miscarried, David shrugged it off and moved on with his life.

Also, the entire Christian religion is based on absolution for whatever evil you do, you just have to be part of the club. If Hitler had “come to Jesus” right before he died, he would be in heaven while an atheist who spent their whole life doing good would be in hell. Deeds are irrelevant for punishment.

And let’s not even get into Greek Mythology, where how good or bad of a human you were was completely irrelevant to what happened to you at the whims of the gods. Same for Norse.

I don’t know how it is for any other religions, as I haven’t studied them, but I don’t think religion was required to establish a moral code and accountability. The Code of Hammurabi didn’t require religion to have a legal code (while recognizing the relief at the top showing the god of justice handing it to Hammurabi, it seems pretty clear that was artistic expression), and it pre-dated the Ten Commandments.

Someone could point to the horrible acts done in the name of religion, but just imagine if those people didn’t have the fear of god in them.

I just… what kind of argument is this? Do you think the people running the Spanish Inquisition would have tortured harder if they didn’t have the “fear of god” in them? That the Crusades would have been bloodier? What reason do you have to think that the horrible acts done in the name of religion would have been worse if it wasn’t for religion?

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guy@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Short, memorable stories that show people getting punished for misdeeds and others rewarded for positive deeds

You don’t need religion for that when there’s folklore

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stupidcasey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I can see the value I can also see the harm I can also see the hypocrisy in asserting there is no God or that the universe came from nothing, in the end it’s all the same and humans are just humans being humans.

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