[Locked] Did the Abrahamic religions ruined the World?

Care to elaborate on your reasons to believing that?

Not that I disagree but this is SD and I feel people should say what's behind their reasoning.

As for me, do I believe Abrahamic religions ruined the world? No, not really but at the least do think they stalled our progress on several occasions. The most likely known incident would've been the Dark Ages, which has been implied by many to have been caused by religion.

Some could also argue that religion is the cause of conflict like the Holy Crusades, the Arab-Israeli Conflict and our current War on Terror. My response to that though is that anything can be a cause of conflict so long as its different from one another but religion was a popular one to fight about.

I wouldn't say Abrahamic religions as a whole are a bad thing, they at least try to live out their ideals though their actual establishments more than sometimes fail in doing so.

Well the middle ages came about because of a series of trends. The Western Roman Empire itself certainly did not end because of Christianity. At least not Christianity alone.

A few things held Rome together, one being the shared literary high culture. Everyone who was anybody read Virgil and so forth and it gave people a sense of Roman identity that kind of glued its diverse range of people together.
This culture started to dwindle primarily because society itself was becoming more militarized during the 5th century. The cultured elite was no longer in power, instead the general was. The only literature that ended up mattering was biblical. The culture did, however, survive within the clergy and it is likely that, without it, we would not have many ancient classics today.

I read this text by an Saxon monk from the 8th century, Bede, and he makes several allusions to classical (pagan) roman texts for example.

Another big trend was the decline in taxation. The primary cause of this was the influx of germanic groups of people (Goths, Franks, Vandal). First they came as raiders but steadily they were integrated into the empire, used as foot soldiers for military campaigns and given land rather than money for this service. The primary reason being the people leading these groups, and often conquering roman territory only to later be reintegrated into it, wanted land for themselves and not tax money. That and the Empire was incapable of defending its vast mushy borders against them. Naturally, it was difficult and less neccesary to enforce tax when all this change is happening. The big event that then kind of broke the tax spine was the Vandal conquest of Carthage in Northern Africa. A city that supplied most of the empires grain. The system simply fell apart without this grain and this led to steady localization of the economies across the empire.

The whole process of militization of the empire also kind of ties into this but it is difficult to really ascribe it to any reason in particular. There was also the Huns and other threats to the Empire so maybe just a process of keeping together the empire overtime caused this shift in its leadership?

As for the dark ages themselves, we certainly did see a major decline in material sophistication during this period and it was kind of a period dominated by religious establishment. The clergy had its hand in everything, even land owning with monastaries in possession of a good portion of the farmland in many areas. But I still dont really know if it is fair to blame religion itself for how the middle ages unfolded. It was a major player and often manipulated for the sake of control and subserviance but, in its place something else would have likely just fullfilled the same role. Religion also somewhat kept the European world in contact with each other and gave structure and direction to the societies of the time. Of course there were also massive persecutions like the witch hunts that I cant exactly defend. It is a bit of a mixed bag.

As for the larger question: Christianity and Islam, primarily the former until only very recently with modern extremist groups, have caused war, persecuition, cultural imperialism and antagonist international relationships over the years. These things suck. But they have also given the world a wealth of culture in its achitecture, design, imagery and literature. They also give many people purpose in their lives and have helped shape the world in many ways. The modern binary between science and religion often frames the later as a hinderance to progress but historically science only came into existence through the Christian establishment in the west. There were some bumps in the road like Cappernicus"s execution but the two have more of a dialectic relationship than a binary one.

The only really negative thing Judaism has on it is the whole Isreal Palistine thing and I kind of blame the Allied powers equally for authorizing their migration to it. The holocaust was horrific and I can understand wanting to help heal those wounds, esspecially since prior to wwII most of western world was antisemetic as fuck so everyone should really feel responsible for what happened, not just the Germans. But giving a country that you really are in no position to give is kind of a dick move.

So yeah, the world would not be a better place without these things, particularly Judaism, unless by some offensive logic one think the holocaust would have then never happened..

Aside from the whole contemporary war on terror shitstorm, and other anamolous incidents like those kidnapped schoolgirls, does religion really ruin the world today? First of all, I dont think it is fair to blame Islam and Christianity for said war in its entirety. Neither camp is a homogeneos group.. It is extremists on the one end and sentimental imperialists on the other. Religion just happens to be a part of their ideology but it alone is not the origin of this ideology.

Religion takes alot of heat and I can understand why since it doesnt have the best track record. More and more people also find it hard to really respect the religious framework because a good portion of the belief is "superstitious". And what is framed as such is generally scoffed at. It kind of serves as poetic justice given all the esoteric traditions it has condemned as heretical and so forth but iunno. Dismissing or condemning it only really repeats this process and sets our humanity back. Anywho, long post.

First of all, I'm going to point out that it should be, "Did Abrahamic religions ruin the world?", because I'm a picky bastard.

To answer the question, no I don't think they did. In terms of wars, whilst many were caused by religion, I think in many cases it was simply an excuse (and a way to keep up morale) and conflict would have broken out anyway.

And even so, would the world be better now without those wars? I doubt it. The high death rates slowed the rate of population increase, without which we would have a massively increased population. This would lead to an even greater food shortage than we already have, not to mention the huge amounts of extra energy we would be consuming and the subsequent climate change issues.

In terms of scientific advancement, while it is true that Christianity has often been rather closed-minded, and violently opposed changes to what they believed was right (take Galileo as an example), that was not always the case, and Islam have always been pretty good about collecting knowledge. The Romans were a Christian nation (near the end of their rule) but were amazing architects, and built and maintained many useful facilities across their territory, which only fell into disrepair after the fall of the Roman empire (which was mainly down to the sacking of Rome by pagan raider).

As for Islam, after the fall of Rome, they collected many of the surviving books on medicine and science and stuff, rather than burning it, as some people did. Not only that, but they made copies of it and translated it into several languages, as well as making improvements on that knowledge. In addition, they did not keep that knowledge to themselves, but sold it back to Christian nations, as well as other nations, thus spreading the knowledge once more around the globe.

As for Judaism, I'm not sure of what their effect on Scientific advancement has been as a whole, but that in itself is evidence that it may be negligible.



So? One could argue that Judaism also had a direct influence on Hitlers persecution of the Jews, but I would hardly think that they should get the blame for the Holocaust.

The dark ages aren't really a thing historically any more, and where always pretty vague. Rome coming apart at the seams is more of a military thing as Solanin illustrated. In the time from the decline of Rome to the Scholastic era (really when technology got on the move again) monks and missionaries weren't so much teaching 'barbarians' (Germanics, Slavics, ect) to read as creating systems of writing for their languages more or less from scratch (with a lot of help from Latin characters ect) These groups going from no literature whatsoever to early universities in 400 years or so is pretty damn good IMO.

Rome fell apart, but Europe as a whole just started budding, and a lot of that had to do with missionaries\monks themselves.

The problem is that a lot of the Arab countries are now against science and logic in some way or form, as opposed to Israel which has a number of Nobel Prize winners. Israel is also a very advanced country with equal opportunity where Muslims are also involved in politics. As opposed to some Arab countries where only Muslims can have political power or are monarchies.

Christianity and Judaism learned to live in peace and be more modern and civilized. Sure, there are some backwards thinkers everywhere, theists and atheists alike. However, if anyone says anything similar to genocide, they are sure to get in huge trouble.

I think that a lot of what comes across as anti-science in Islamic nations is really a product of being anti-west. And after their persecution by other religions (particularly Christianity) in the past, I don't think we can really blame them for that. The lack of their own major scientific community I believe is down to the lack of resources in the country (and possibly the education system, but I'm not sure about that), which again is partly down to the West taking a fair portion of what little resources they had.

As for being 'modern and civilized', I think most religions are lagging behind the world as a whole, with many still being homophobic and sexist, among other things. Although to me it seems, in most cases, individual opinion differs from the official religious line.

A lot of the Middle East is religious education and depending on the country, technology and science is not a good thing. However, there was a leading logic and science city several centuries ago. But due to the incompatibility with religion, it got banned.

Depends on who you talk to and from where. From liberals to conservatives and on far left and far right people.

Should we revive the Mayan and Aztec religions and cut up people on stone beds instead? Maybe mummify our dead loved ones like the Incas and Egyptians while we're at it?

This is my take to this question. I mean if there was no religion the world would have fought over something else, resources, land, cake(Patton Oswalt joke). Religion gave people a sense of purpose and sort of gave people an idea of why they are alive. Those 3 religions have terrible things to their credit, but they also have helped so many people and so many other good things. It is humans that "ruin" the world and not a idea. So to me if you are looking for what caused the most people look into a mirror cause we all damage the world to some degree.