Unable to compute
The painful part of this consideration is its magnitude:
How do we model the counterpoint?
Religions are often rightly derided in the modern day; many religious outlooks call for faith to fly in the face of factual knowledge. In history, though, religious faith often played a vital role in binding societies together. It is fair to say that in the current working model, none of us would necessarily be sitting here typing these words into our computers without religion.
Necessarily--a key word.
Because what makes it a painful consideration is when we look at history and attempt to figure the result if we remove the influence of Christianity from Europe, of Islam from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Hinduism from India, &c.
Religion touches many aspects of human life. There is, obviously, some connection between the fancies of God and the psychological manifestation of the evolutionary drive in human beings. The Ontological Proof, symbolically, at least, explores this relationship. Civilizations rose and depended economically on notions of gods. In a practical function, religious sentiment often served to hold a community together when no objective reason could explain the cohesion.
The consideration is further complicated by my personal belief that "religion" is somehow intrinsic to human nature. Christianity can die off, Islam can disappear in a nuclear cloud, and the Buddhists can disappear into caves forever, but baseball fans will always believe that holding their breath at just the right moment somehow affects the outcome of the game; children will eternally fear the mysterious shadows of evil creatures that are not really there; lovers will forever exaggerate the significance of their passions. I'm not sure superstition can be thoroughly stamped out of humanity; it seems a necessary part of the psyche. And, being cooperative beasts such as we are, the notion of organized superstition--e.g. religion--seems to be something that will plague us until the end of time.
After all, when we slay the gods, what next? How many generations will wrangle and sweat and weep and bleed over economic theories? Human moral demands will meet again on this battlefield as competing paradigms square off to the discord of vastly-differing presumptions.
And when we figure economy, what of love and pride and the differentiations that cause our hearts to break?
The headache becomes, simply, that one is not necessarily capable of mapping out the factors, having removed religion from the mix.
What would the pageant of history look like?
It may be that the joy of life derives its legitimacy from a concept that we would call religious. After all--can you imagine a human species that is wholly objective? Do we aspire to become the Borg?
Reading the responses it strikes me that in the Bible God became angry with the people when they attempted to build a tower to heaven. Knocking down the tower at Babel, God scattered the people and set their tongues differently so that it would be harder to scheme as such. Among its shallower lessons the myth suggests why God has differentiated languages among people. But in the same vein, I look at diverse religions and wonder if there is a myth that properly asks why God would differentiate languages, but leave only one common route to scheme. When it comes to making a pile of rocks, you only need so much pantomime. Thus we might suggest that not only did God scatter the languages, but also the ways in which people are to return to Him. Just the daily myth wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a henley, wrapped up for smoking ....
:m:,
Tiassa