Suppose There Was No Bible
 

That would put us in the same boat as people five thousand years ago. Except for all the scientific knowledge we have.

Anyway if there was nothing written to hang our hats on and no undeniable big time miracles, what would people believe? What percentage of the world having no organized religion to join, would be atheists, deists, theists in a general sense, or theists in a more specifc sense?

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

Presumably, there would be more Zoroastrians around. Hard to imagine some other organized religion (or pervasive belief system, failing that) not simply taking the place of Judaism/Christianity/Islam.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

As was just said, Zoroaster was the principle deuty in the world before Chrisitianity came about. If the bible had never been composed, a vacuum would have formed, and large portions of the world's population would have to find some other belief structure to serve as the pervasive institution of their time.

Right now religion is waning, but without Christianity coming about and destroying innumerable lives and institutions, perhaps religion would be more popular. It's just too hard to say what would have happened without orthodox Christian theocracy as we know it.

One very important implication is worth mentioning, if Christians had not been present in southwestern europe in the 7th century, the saracen invaders would have routed all of europe, and it would then have fallen under the control of the islamic caliphate.

Ahhh got to go work.

Cam

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

after reflection, I say it is invalid to question what our modern world would be like without the Bible. To say what it would be like without organized religion would be a meaningful question. To ask even what Christianity would be like without a bible is invalid because of the pervasive effect of this treatise on belief and ritual.

I will say that Christianity would not have been as successful in taking over so many hearts and minds had there not been a semi-consistent document outlining the fundamental tenents of the thing. That would have meant alot of things, but again to posit a natural resultant is unneccessary.

Cam

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I really meant to ask what modern people would think if they all woke up with total amnesia of any religion and all holy books had disappeared. In other words if the only evidence for God was what they saw around them, would they believe in a deistic God, a more personal god, a god with specific traits, or no god at all. Put yet another way, with no Bible, would Not Ready be an atheist?

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I think a very large percentage, perhaps even close to what there is now, would still end up believing in some sort of creator, higher power, or something similar.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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I think a very large percentage, perhaps even close to what there is now, would still end up believing in some sort of creator, higher power, or something similar.

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People try to start new religons all the time but the niche being filled makes it hard for them to take off.

Starting from a fresh slate won't make any different except in the very short term.

chez

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I agree somehwat with new001.

Without bible, the irrational in the human mind would still flourish, to wit the number of people that believe in astrology, numerology etc... (a much larger number than any single religion or sect). It is part of the current human mind make-up. Whether the irrational has a an evolutionary benefit or not, is moot, not enough time has elapsed yet to say this for sure. IMO, it is a flaw, bound/doomed to disappear. I base my opinion on its fragmentary nature. They seem all to be working against each other. Like Koestler, I would call it the ghost in the machine. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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Whether the irrational has a an evolutionary benefit or not, is moot, not enough time has elapsed yet to say this for sure.

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Is this true? Enough time has passed for us to learn the evolutionary benefit of many other traits (standing on two feet, etc.). It seems to me that believing in religion/mysticism will be an evolutionary boost as long as more individuals believe in religion/mysticism than do not believe.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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I think a very large percentage, perhaps even close to what there is now, would still end up believing in some sort of creator, higher power, or something similar.

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I was raised in a basically agnostic environment. As I became more aware of the contradictions and superstitions in different religions my belief leaned towards atheism.

Now I make a distiction between religion and the belief in a creator. So while I'm not religious, I do believe in some type of creator or creative force that I refer to as god.

To paraphrase, I think therefore I am - and it seems to be a human condition to question " why I am." All around us we see an effect preceded by a cause, and it just seems logical that we would question the cause of our own being.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

Our mind creates a cause-effect perspective.
The main effect of a fresh start would be a greater intelligence/educated divide but still with a fair bit of overlap.
The bible has a running start in western culture and is say, 60-40 in europe presently, those numbers would be more like 30-relig 70 non if starting from a blank religious slate.

There are two types of people that virtually 'need' a religious view ( although not the same one). The regimented hierarchical minds ( represented in the usa by the far right) and the 'mystical' minds, evidenced in the far left. My 30% is my best guess at their combined presence in a typical population.
luckyme

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

The idea that the Bible (at least the New Testament) is primary to Christianity is relatively new. Early Christians only had fragments of what became the Gospel, and they wrote letters amongst themselves concerning doctrine and practices. The Gospels themselves were composed later. Some of these letters and the Gospels were combined to form what we call the New Testament. By the time this happened, many Christian traditions were already in place.

Suppose the Roman Empire decided to really crack down on Jews and managed to destroy nearly all of the Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim scrolls. In this way, early Christians would not have had access to what they call the Old Testament. They still would've told the stories of creation and the promises of God the best they remembered them. New scriptures would have emerged to replace what was lost.

Ironically, if anything, this would have strengthened the place of tradition in Christian theology. This would have undermined the Reformation, and therefore the Enlightenment may never have happened. . . .

----

I just now saw David's second post. I think what David needs to realize is that early Christianity spread primarily by word of mouth, not by people picking up and reading the Bible. It stands to reason that religion would emerge again, but it would look a lot different. Two things--

1. Personification of the creative force behind the Universe is something that is just too easy to do.

2. The idea that this creative force (God) actually became a human being and suffered and died for our sake is an extremely powerful and irresistable idea.

These two ideas are the essence of Christianity. I think the chances are very high that something like this would emerge over the next thousand years, despite our scientific knowledge.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

"If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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I think a very large percentage, perhaps even close to what there is now, would still end up believing in some sort of creator, higher power, or something similar.

[/ QUOTE ]
People try to start new religons all the time but the niche being filled makes it hard for them to take off.

Starting from a fresh slate won't make any different except in the very short term.

chez

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I suppose I should explain my thinking on this. How many religious people today actually critically analyze their beliefs, at least with some rigour? I'm pretty sure the answer is very few. At least in my experience, the group of "I can't fathom how the world was created, God must have done it" is so pervasive that they would just replace their God in that sentence with some other supernatural force.

It doesn't have to be an organized religion. Hopefully this makes sense, I just woke up.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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I think a very large percentage, perhaps even close to what there is now, would still end up believing in some sort of creator, higher power, or something similar.

[/ QUOTE ]
People try to start new religons all the time but the niche being filled makes it hard for them to take off.

Starting from a fresh slate won't make any different except in the very short term.

chez

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I suppose I should explain my thinking on this. How many religious people today actually critically analyze their beliefs, at least with some rigour? I'm pretty sure the answer is very few. At least in my experience, the group of "I can't fathom how the world was created, God must have done it" is so pervasive that they would just replace their God in that sentence with some other supernatural force.

It doesn't have to be an organized religion. Hopefully this makes sense, I just woke up.

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It has to become organised because folk like to gather together for warm and because its an extremely powerful political lever.

Its not the explanation bit though, mostly people don't believe in god as an explanation of how comes the world exists. They believe because they need meaning to their existence and don't suffer from skepticism.

chez

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

But in the absense of that organized religion, you don't think individuals won't retain that same feeling sans God?

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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But in the absense of that organized religion, you don't think individuals won't retain that same feeling sans God?

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I don't know but as soon as they get exposed to the idea they will become infected. and its a very simple idea to generate.

The desire for meaning causes the willingness to believe in god which partially causes the generation of religons.

So the removal of religon won't make much difference, removal of credulousness might.

chez

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

If there were no Bible this would have to come about by Man's not precipitating into the material earthly world.

The Indian Vedas were first written during the ancient Egyptian civilization but the Vedas were a spiritual enlightnment passed on without writing from the Indian civilization which preceeded the Egyptian times. The course of these civilizations were the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Greco-Roman and our present time.

So in the example of the Vedas what came to be written down was presented to others by spiritual leaders. As the periods of time progressed Mankind also progressed(retrogressed?) in certain understandings but for certain we see a gradual seizing of the material external world. Writing was part of this progress.

To ask, do the Vedas only exist in the written form or are they a written external manifestation of a supersensible reality? Did the ancient Indian during the Indian and Persian time period(read, not written) have a closer grasp of the Vedas.

So in the evolutionary process(precipitation to materialism) writing can be found. Would the truths of the OT/NT be any less true? They are written down consequential to our loss of perception of that reality which underlies our presence and only be totally understood and realized by Mankind's return to a perceptive spiritual state.

"No Bible" could only mean that Man had not precipitated into a densified reality and the consequences as such would not have been in our hands(read, no free will).

The Bible shouldn't be looked at as "only a book" but it too has a history and is consequential to the history of Mankind for which terrific spiritual forces have been brought to bear.

If a magician of some sort could at this very moment remove all trace of the Bible from us it would remove OUR HISTORY. In the medical profession there are stories of people who wake up and have lost complete track of their history. Cannot remember a thing. The Ego of Man needs his history in order to have a sense of self and if he loses it we can talk of dementia/Alzheimers/neurological disorders/etc. This type of loss has also happened to younger people. There is a story of a man who experienced this loss, traveled throughout Europe in an amnesiac loss, and was finally found in a poor house in another country(this is a brief synopsis).

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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Anyway if there was nothing written to hang our hats on and no undeniable big time miracles, what would people believe? What percentage of the world having no organized religion to join, would be atheists, deists, theists in a general sense, or theists in a more specifc sense?

[/ QUOTE ]

Someone would start an organised religion, probably by writing some book that every one could follow.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I think people are inherently spiritual and left to their own devices would believe in some sort of higher power regardless of holy scriptures and organised religion.


That being said people who come to a forum like 2+2 are probably more math science people that would most likely not believe in any higher power at all if organized religion didn't exist. The ones that do in the real world are exceptions and are probably brought up that way.


If there was no bible (or other holy books) I think people would be equally spiritual in general but there would be much less uniformity. I think over a period of thosands of years things would end up pretty simalar to what it is today or even more uniform considering the world is connected now communications wise.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

If there was no Sklanskyanity, we'd have to invent it.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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Whether the irrational has a an evolutionary benefit or not, is moot, not enough time has elapsed yet to say this for sure.

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Is this true? Enough time has passed for us to learn the evolutionary benefit of many other traits (standing on two feet, etc.). It seems to me that believing in religion/mysticism will be an evolutionary boost as long as more individuals believe in religion/mysticism than do not believe.

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Yes enough time has passed to recognise the benefits of standing on two feet, but too little time has past to know so abour religion. The startof those two events are a ver long time apart. Religion has in fact existed for very little time. (I assume an abosolute maximum of 50,000 years).

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

[quote
Someone would start an organised religion, probably by writing some book that every one could follow.

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SSHE? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I think many people would immediately feel uncomfortable with the idea that "everything" always was and always will be or that it all came into being without some external contribution. As a result, God and religion in some form would emerge.

For some reason, for most people, the prospect that the whole thing was an accident is much more intuitively illogical than the idea that there is a God or metaphysical explanation that isn't within our grasp yet.

I don't claim to have a supeior IQ like many here do (130 isn't too shabby though), but intuitively, it seems obvious to me that something is going on that we don't understand and/or that our limited senses cannot pick up on that explains everything. However, it's not SCIENCE in the form that is generally hostile to religion.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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Someone would start an organised religion, probably by writing some book that every one could follow.

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Enter the flying spaghetti monster.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think a very large percentage, perhaps even close to what there is now, would still end up believing in some sort of creator, higher power, or something similar.

[/ QUOTE ]
People try to start new religons all the time but the niche being filled makes it hard for them to take off.

Starting from a fresh slate won't make any different except in the very short term.

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

If a book came along right now implying that the universe were geocentric, and claiming that it was basically made for us, it'd be laughed at and only followed on a cult basis.

Think about writing stories, books, poetry... it's a very difficult task. Pointing out why they suck is much easier, but still requires a certain level of knowledge. If a guy walked up to you today and told you that the entire universe was 6000 years old, and started telling you something about a boat with 2 of everything on it, you'd laugh in his face. You'd wonder where he got the ignorance to claim that it formed long after Pangaea existed. But back then, they couldn't dispute it correctly, as they lacked the requisite knowledge to do so. Today, it would be immediately disregarded on grounds such as these.

It would fall on its face immediately in trying to convince people of its veracity. There would be no apologists jumping through hoops to say why it doesn't really say what it says, and picking out which verses are metaphor and which literal. There'd be no reason to, as it's an obvious fantasy. It would likely be seen as a fantasy with certain moral guidelines and interesting tales by which to live, but not to believe as truth.

Today we look back on the older religions, some that lasted a very long time, and wonder how anyone could ever have believed them. It's only a sense of familiarity and knowing a lot of people who find something of value in those faiths that prevent many of us from using that same critical eye on the Judeo-Christian mythology of today.

As for the effect of that, I think we would have already devolved into the 2 groups that I foresee for the future: there's a reason for it all, there isn't any reason to it at all.

I think that specific faiths are a relic of a time when it made much more sense to have them.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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As for the effect of that, I think we would have already devolved into the 2 groups that I foresee for the future: there's a reason for it all, there isn't any reason to it at all.


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Nice point.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

Maths or myths? One would probably be uninteresting without the other.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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If a book came along right now implying that the universe were geocentric, and claiming that it was basically made for us, it'd be laughed at and only followed on a cult basis.

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of course it wouldn't make those claims, these claims are residues of the time but are of no importance to religon in general.

chez

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I really wish there wasn't a Bible, a Quoran and etc. They cause so much harm and evil and death in the world. People should believe in science, not myths and legends and voodoo. The world would be a better place without religion of any kind.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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I really wish there wasn't a Bible, a Quoran and etc. They cause so much harm and evil and death in the world. People should believe in science, not myths and legends and voodoo.

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You can believe in both science and religion. They have a different subject matter.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

And the same eventual aims. To demystify everything.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I think it would be something along the lines of the potential evaporation of government. Sometimes I wish all acknowledgement and recollection of organized states could just dissappear. But I know that, inevitably, they would just form again. It is part of our evolutionary nature to form coalitions. It is also part of our nature to want to believe in something, particularly for things science and intuition can't answer yet. Eventually, "religions" would form again. But the difference is that they would be built upon modern logic, and would not be influenced by preachings made thousands of years ago that people cling on to because they stubbornly believe in the divinity of their religion's word. Thousands of years ago, Christianity (and Judaism, Islam, etc.) probably made a lot more "sense" than they do to intelligent people today.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

Boy, are some of you going to be surprised by variance across an eon.

Or to borrow from poker. 2,000 hands just ain't enough of a sample size.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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Boy, are some of you going to be surprised by variance across an eon.

Or to borrow from poker. 2,000 hands just ain't enough of a sample size.

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What is your point? The bible wasn't created "eons" ago.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I dont think this is their aim at all. Science doesnt claim or aim to demystify everything - merely those topics amenable to the scientific method. I dont think religion should either (although some do) - I think they are talking about quite distinct subjects.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

That the "Dark Ages" pre-Renaissance isn't the lowest possible point in history, much as we like to think of it as such. And throwing human timelines across a million years... There isn't always going to be consistently upwards increases in knowledge, technology, and life spans.

There have been low points in history. We've yet to see the highest points in human history, AND the lowest.

It's a near-mathematical certainity that we will have a planetary population descend into Stone Age savagery at least a few times in the next million years. That's far more likely than the trend lines towards extinction or continued, sustained upward progress. You can probably thank the Victorian Era for the regression towards repression and public condemnation of our sexual freedoms, for instance.

Look at the flux in progress of knowledge among differing civilizations in different places of the world in the last millennia alone concurrently and the impact of mutual discovery and the extremination of civilizations that were ahead in mathematics and astronomy, for instance, yet couldn't defend themselves against the civilization that invented gunpowder, for instance.

Afghanistanis, Bedouin, Mongolians, indigenous tribes in Eastern Russia are a few of the peoples I can think of that are better-equipped to slide through the transition a major nuclear conflict would do to the Earth as a whole. And on a very basic level, their main ways of life has been unchanged since the advent of Christianity.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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Science doesnt claim or aim to demystify everything - merely those topics amenable to the scientific method. I dont think religion should either (although some do) - I think they are talking about quite distinct subjects.

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They are both talking about "what is". The fact that science limits itself to testing and correction leaves any current grey areas open to those who just want to claim they know something about "what is" ( by some mysterious means.

Or to swing it around - if religion doesn't claim to be talking about "what is" ... then what is it talking about, simply imaginary stuff?

Gould did neither view a favor with his non-overlapping nonsense.

luckyme

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

I'm pretty sure you're not talking about Elliott Gould here.

Yes, the methods between science and religion differ. The demystification process still stands, but with different aims.

Science looks outward and tries to figure out why things work. Most religions, things work, ok, and we don't know how they do. They just do. Look within yourself and listen to what we have discovered to find out why you work in the scheme of things.

Re: Suppose There Was No Bible
 

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They are both talking about "what is". The fact that science limits itself to testing and correction leaves any current grey areas open to those who just want to claim they know something about "what is" ( by some mysterious means.

Or to swing it around - if religion doesn't claim to be talking about "what is" ... then what is it talking about, simply imaginary stuff?

Gould did neither view a favor with his non-overlapping nonsense.

luckyme

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If you allow the possiblity of things existing without being physical then it isnt a problem. If you are a materialist then I agree that religion is talking about imaginary stuff.

What I was suggesting was that there are physical things and non-physical things. Science talks about physical things and we can have a lot of confidence in what it says. Religion talks about non-physical things and our confidence is not as great - there are much more limited ways of testing its claims.

I dont think a non-overlapping view is nonsense at all. If religion has any subject matter then I think it is precisely those areas which arent examinable by science (even in principle).