Would we be more technologically advanced without religion?

HarveyLewis
Sat, 21 Aug 2010 09:13:22 +0000

I doubt it. I don’t buy into the whole “religion hinders society” thing. People will try to fill insecurities in their lives with one thing or another. Maybe it’ll be philosophy, maybe it’ll be techno consumerism, maybe it’ll even be total emotional despair. Technological advance seems more rooted to societal survival than anything else, see mankind’s development after the fall of the Roman Empire for example. And besides, a tendency to follow religion or spiritual beliefs seem to be biologically based. Throughout history, and across every corner of the globe, it’s universal. Some may call it irrational, but human beings are irrational beings to begin with.

But then again, you can say the same thing about everything else in life. Without wasting time on hobbies, toys, luxury products, or worthless subjects like the humanities, maybe we’ll be better technologically off by now. But in that case, I find myself only seeing a world like the book “Brave New World”… where Fordism (a symbol of a new industrial world) was the new “religion” of the future.

Stop being so damned sensible. You’re spoiling this for everyone else.