Civilisation does NOT need faith in God

[wvwvw]

Civilisation does NOT need faith in God: Belief in supreme being doesn't play a role in forming complex societies, study finds
Scientists at the University of Auckland studied 97 Pacific island cultures
Belief in an all-powerful God was found to not be a civilising influence
Religions that followed supreme deities emerged after complex societies
Instead belief in supernatural and vengeful spirits drove civilised cultures
By RICHARD GRAY FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 04:48 EST, 5 March 2015 | UPDATED: 05:02 EST, 5 March 2015

It is a common thread through many of the world's dominant religions that those who do not follow the same faith are barbarians.
Yet new research has now challenged the conventional idea that belief in a powerful and judgmental God is necessary to form large, complex civilisations.
Anthropologists have found that belief in supreme deities often emerged after complex societies had already formed.

The scientists studied the development of religion and cultures on Pacific islands that make up Austronesia.

They examined 96 ancient Austronesian cultures - including those on Fiji, Tonga, Hawaii and Samoa - that had not had contact with Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Islam.

FLOODS AND FAMINE MAY HAVE KICKSTARTED WORLD'S RELIGIONS
They often form a central part of most biblical stories, but it appears that floods, famines and plagues may have also helped to start belief in some gods in the first place.

Researchers at North Carolina State University found that belief in all-powerful and moralising gods tended to appear at times of hardship in human history.

They claim that believing in such a supreme deity helps to ensure people within a society live by certain moral rules that are necessary when living in harsh environments or in times of hardship.

The researchers studied the origins of 583 religious societies around the world.
They compared these to climate, rainfall and plant growth data for each area to build up a historical picture of the conditions each society was living in.

The findings may help to shed light on how religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam first emerged and why stories of hardship play such a central role.

Dr Joseph Watts, an expert in cultural evolution at the University of Auckland in new Zealand, said: 'We found 22 instances of high political complexity through out historically and geographically distant regions of Austronesia.

'The results presented here cast doubt on the widely held view that moralizing high gods facilitate the emergence of political complexity.

'Although beliefs in moralising high gods do co-evolve with political complexity, believes follow rather than drive political complexity.'
Instead the researchers found that belief in systems of supernatural punishment - such as vengeful spirits - tended to precede the emergence of complex societies and civilisations on the islands.

These tended to be belief in anthropomorphic beings such as the spirits of dead ancestors.
The researchers found that 37 of the cultures sampled had beliefs of this type while just six believed in supreme deities.

Those that believed in a single all-powerful god tended to be clustered in southeast Asia including the Bontok and Tagbanwa cultures in the Philippines, the Batak Toba people of North Sumatra, the Manggarai tribes of Flores in Indonesia.

The names of their gods are Lumawig, Mangindusa, Mulajadi na Bolon and Mori Karaeng respectively.
The researchers then used trees of evolutionary connections between cultures, deduced from earlier studies of linguistic relationships, to explore how the societies were inter-related and exchanged ideas.

Islam is often seen as having been a civilising influence on Arab culture in the past and millions now make the pilgrimage to Mecca, shown above, every year. But the new research suggests that ancient religions like this that believe in an all powerful God may have emerged after complex cultures had already begun to grow

They were then able to model how the different religions influenced the development of the political structure and cultural complexity in each society.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr Watts and his colleagues said: 'For beliefs in systems of supernatural punishment, however, the beliefs seem to help political complexity to emerge, although by no means guarantee it.
'We suggest that the concept of moralising high gods diffused as part of a suite of traits arising from cultural exchange between complex societies.'

Christianity has had a history of trying to convert those of other faiths that were considered heathens but it the latest research suggests that supernatural beliefs played a greater role in civilisation than was thought

However, Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, told Nature that he believed the key to increasing political complexity was language not religion.
He said that societies became more complex as networks of trade and reputation emerged.

Instead he said that all powerful gods perhaps were useful as a tool to help those in power to cement their grip on a society.
He said: 'As soon as you have a large society generating lots of goods and services, this wealth can be put to use by someone who can grab the reins of power.
'The most immediate way to do this is to align yourself with a supreme deity and then make lists of things people can and cannot do, and these become ‘morals’ when applied to our social behaviour.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz3TVfIq3zm

[Prisoner Of Ice]

Hahaha. A couple decades without it and the west is practically eradicated.

[Heart of Oak]

There has only been Death and unrest [War] as a Direct result of Religion, Since the early days when the Pope lead his armies into war on horse back with his Sword in his hand, Religion has been at the forefront of most wars, unrest and Tyranny across the World only IMO....

[Darth Revan]

There has only been Death and unrest [War] as a Direct result of Religion, Since the early days when the Pope lead his armies into war on horse back with his Sword in his hand, Religion has been at the forefront of most wars, unrest and Tyranny across the World only IMO....

Except for Julius II (and maybe some other pontiff I may be unaware of), Popes never led armies in the battlefield.

[Bloodnigger]

Except for Julius II (and maybe some other pontiff I may be unaware of), Popes never led armies in the battlefield.

And yet it was both the temporal and religious power combination of the Popes (both emperor, thus above princes and kings AND prophet, as he sat the Throne of Peter) that caused the first rift in the Church and the Reformation, which unleashed the degeneracy that plagues the West for the last 300 years. The liberties and breach of law by the clergy in the latin west are directly tied to the above as is their Anathema to the eastern church that condemned half of Europe to a battlefield between islam and orthodoxy and brought on the terrible rashness that was the 4th Crusade.

One can argue that this was due to the Imperial nature of the western church as compared to the doctrine of the two swords in the east. Much like Arrian and Protestant christianity had a different nature that demanded a simplification of everything, a total heresy, as compared to Nestorianism or Suffis in Islam. 500 years later, western civilization is still paying the price of Lutherianism which was caused by what I mentioned in the paragraph above. Not, of course, to imply that the eastern church is not mired in similar breaches but intrinsically and mechanically it works in different ways that go a long way into combating such practices instead of encouraging them. I could attempt to clarify on that, if anyone is interested.

[Bloodnigger]

But to answer the OP in a TLDR fashion, there are no civilizations without at least a basic set of principles or ethical calculus that are always expressed the best in faith and religion. The two are tied together so close that they become one and cannot be separated.

[Smaland]

1) Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2) And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3) But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4) And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5) For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6) And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

7) And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

8) And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

9) And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10) And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11) And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12) And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13) And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

Genesis 3:1-13, KJV

Without God to guide us and give us moral strength, what are the odds that a head of state and the people wouldn't fall into temptation?

The greatness of a civilization can be measured by the level of its people's virtue.

[Darth Revan]

Without God to guide us and give us moral strength, what are the odds that a head of state and the people wouldn't fall into temptation?

The greatness of a civilization can be measured by the level of its people's virtue.

Then the Amish are superior to the Roman Empire.

[armenianbodyhair]

civilization doesn't need most things it has.

[Prisoner Of Ice]

There has only been Death and unrest [War] as a Direct result of Religion, Since the early days when the Pope lead his armies into war on horse back with his Sword in his hand, Religion has been at the forefront of most wars, unrest and Tyranny across the World only IMO....

Nope, HRE times the church stopped countless wars. How else did dozens of tiny countries maintain independence so long? Religion is not a cult, Islam is a cult communism is a cult. Buddhism and christianity stop wars not start them. Before that the wars that were waged resulted in total population wipeouts.