What would the world be like if there is no God?

A common argument from those who are religious is that the world is exactly how they would expect it to be if their God exists. This argument is commonly used in all religions but they obviously have different world views because their beliefs are different. Since 100’s or even 1,000’s of different beliefs all make this claim, it actually demonstrates how religion can adapt its beliefs to explain how they see the world.

So what would the world be like if there is no God?

To keep this short, I won't discuss the fact that bad things happen to good people, or that people die from lack of food and water or how children are often born with life threatening defects etc. Instead the focus will be on religion so we have to skip to the point in time when humans started to developed language.

Once humans developed to ability to communicate they would have obviously had many questions, and one of those would have been, “how did we get here?” With their limited knowledge, they would have come up with the concept of a creator/god who put them there. The sky would have been very mysterious to them; water, lightning and thunder would seem to come from nowhere, and objects such as the sun and stars would most likely be worshiped in the early years.

As human societies develop throughout the world, they would continue to create new religions to help explain the world around them, but since a god doesn't exist, all societies would come up with something a little different. (This is exactly what we would expect if men created god. If God had created man, they would all have the same story.)  Some societies would hear about other religions and adopt some ideas and reject others.

Now, let’s fast forward to the period in time when these civilizations started to engage with each other. These many religions over the years have been passed down for generations and each society would believe their relationship with their gods or god is a life or death situation. They would believe this because if they make their deity angry, their god might not send them rain or may send them a disaster of some kind which could kill them. Because they believe it is life or death, they will be willing to fight other societies who don’t worship their god. By fighting for their god, they may even believe they will be rewarded for it.

Many of these ancient religions would have died off for various reasons. For example, one of these reasons would be due to societies conquering each other and forcing them to worship their god. The most powerful societies would have had a greater chance of spreading their religion. However, people in the future will most likely say their religion survived because it is true (even though 100’s may still exist).

Humans may develop a system that observes the world in a way that is unbiased; if they do, many will give up their religion due to it not matching up with what this way of thinking discovers. (Luckily, we did develop a system like this which we call science)

If humans still haven’t given up their ancient beliefs after many centuries of science existing, they would still be killing each other over their religious views. However, as a society becomes more educated they will also become less religious and less violent.

So this is what the world would look like if no god or gods exist, and this is exactly what has happen. Humans like to have answers and when we don’t know, we often make one up to satisfy our curiosity. Religious people often say, “If a god doesn't exist, then how did we get here?” But if a god doesn't exist, how would we be expected to know? There wouldn't be a deity to tell us. If a god exists, he wouldn't make himself undetectable by science yet visible to ancient men with little to no understanding of the world. It is completely reasonable for us to say we don’t currently know but that we hope to discover the answer eventually.

Prediction: If humans never give up their religion, religious violence will continue to exist. Even if one religion did conquer the world, there will always be individuals who end up questioning it and this will continue to cause more violence. However, because we are not perfect, even if religion does get set aside there will still be violence but it will be dramatically reduced.