@Matias, The Soviet Union was Atheist in name only. In reality, they just replaced worship of god with worship of the state. And the Russian Orthodox church still existed, and thrives to this day.

@KissedbySun, logic is not the absence of emotion. Life isn't Star Trek.

@Matias, a lot of people don't worship anything at all. They're called "Atheists". Worshiping is bad. It's just the evil of faith after it's had time to ferment.

@WeaZ To determine that you'd first need to identify what is considered an "intelligent" species to see if they qualify. So assuming that they qualify, you need to learn how to ask them.

so you admit that we know of only one intelligent species, but feel free to assert that it's part of the development of any of them?

@WeaZ Yeah I was also wondering why you asked the question about dolphins. As I said, you'd have to first prove that they are an intelligent species and since you can't everything after that is just guess work. You won't really know until they start to do something that humanity can recognize as intelligent most likely as building something but more likely proper communication.

If you want to start to discuss my theory of how I believe any intelligent species has a religious period that's a lot more simple.

1. Any species that is not killed off requires survival instincts, fear for fight or flight.
2. Any species that is intelligent works as a unit to do more than it can as an individual creating a society.
3. The first cavemen who prophesized a "god" did so because they were afraid of thunder, pure fear.
4. Following that fear a need to sate the "god" creates a drive for appeasement.
5. When different appeasement rituals garner different results, judgment comes into play.
6. Judgment requires individuals to be the judges over others as individuals or their acts.
   Fear of the Unknown + Society = Religion

@WeaZ you’d have to ask em

@WeaZ I'm impressed you spent so much time proving my point. Here's a few points you seemed to have missed.

Intelligence is noted as the acquiring and application of knowledge and skills, to that note humans are more intelligent than dolphins. You can continue to try and argue that dolphins are more intelligent but since you can't prove it I won't be participating.

An Argument from Ignorance Fallacy is not in fact what I presented you. The first gods were conceived by cavemen to explain thunder and lightning. That's already been proven, it's not an assumption or guesswork, it's one of the facts I used to build my theory. No ignorance on that one, sorry.

In regards to judgment, it's pretty simple to explain that I wasn't debating the possibility of moral judgment without religious interaction. I'm simply stating that judgment exists based off of the gap between correlation and causation which is bred from a lack of knowledge which would exist in the development of an intelligent species.

Your point on #6 relies on your missed point regarding #2 so it's already invalidated.

You seem to have missed my point entirely as I wasn't attempting to deny the possibility of a world without religion. What I was explaining was a theory that in the development of any intelligent species religion exists.

At this point I'm fairly certain that you missed the premise entirely and felt like being contrary to anything religious (common on this page) so started dumping the same old and used arguments you've copy/pasted ad nauseam. If you want to discuss my theory, I'm here but if you want to debate whether a world without religion can exist, that's a different post.

@WeaZ So far we are 1 for 1 on intelligent species that have developed religion. I'd say they are tied already and that since I'm batting 1000 that you'd have to make the case that they aren't tied together. You explained how intelligence doesn't necessarily equate to other skills which doesn't break the link between intelligence and religion and make it "irrelevant" as you decided without proving.

So I am one of the people on this site that doesn't believe in religion. I'm not saying that individual intelligence has anything to do with theism, but I am (once again) saying that during the development of an intelligent species, I bet that religion is a phase that all intelligent species' go through. I think that your inability to separate an "intelligent species" from an "intelligent individual" is hindering your comprehension of the discussion.

I'm not sure how you're missing this part, there is no "Argument from Ignorance Fallacy". This is something THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! Cave drawings have been found depicting gods creating thunder and lightning. This is not an argument but a fact, and I'm baffled at your inability to comprehend that a fact is not an opinion and simpily claim one of the errors of rhetoric instead.

No, I haven't read any peer reviewed documentation from dolphins, have you? If so could you please link them here. In all honest just stop with the dolphins, sure they're smarter than other species but no, they're not smarter than humans. If you want to debate that once again I'm sure natgeo.com is interested in your philosophical thoughts but I'm not because you can't prove it.

You disagree with my reasoning but have yet to refute even one point I provided. You've diverted the points I was making to something you could argue better but haven't made a constructive dent in anything I've noted. I'm leaning towards your inability to comprehend the discussion as opposed to a simple lack of effort but I could be wrong. It seems like you have a round-about method of discussing something that avoids the points by throwing so much text close-to-but-off-topic at someone they simply concede as opposed to the effort it would take to continue the discussion.

Take care.

@WeaZ I never left, I've been having fun the whole time, & I'm not sure how many points I've earned.

@WeaZ Nope, thanks.

@Matias For himself and his crime family, he is! But yeah, good point. However, I don't think that is due to lack of religion. It's due to him being a defective human being. We'll always have those people. But remember, it was religious people in large part who helped raise him to the highest post in the land because they wanted judges to get all up in women's uteruses and vaginas.

Donald Trump was elected largely on the influence of the fundamentalist christian right, who believe they need "salvation" in the form of a demagogue, so I think it's a bad example of a-religious people making the world better or worse, i.e. his election is directly attributable to religious folk.

I answered the hypothetical case, but I tend to agree. I don't think we have long enough left, unless some drastic changes are made, to move past it.

@HereticSin I think if something "drastic" were to happen, it would only become worse.

@KKGator you're likely right.

It might be a little chaotic in the beginning, but in the end i think things would improve greatly.

what, precisely, would be terrible about it?

I can't think of any benefit religion has in the current world as a whole. While I admit that religion may have helped a few people with personal crises, I believe it has caused more harm to more people than it has helped.

@HereticSin I think we are living in a spiritual vacuum because of the declining interest in religion. That decline would be very welcome if humanist values were replacing religious values but that hasn't happened yet. I fear the effect of that vacuum in society.

@brentan "spiritual vacuum". I don't believe in spirits, so I don't know what that means.

"humanist values": not sure which humanist values you think aren't replacing religious ones, so that also doesn't tell me much. humanists believe in compassion, empathy, ethics, strong social organization, government for the good of the people, social justice, equality, science informing policy, art inspiring humanity, I'm not sure how these aren't able to replace any "religious value" you might have in mind.

@HereticSin I was disappointed with your first comment because not only is ‘spiritual vacuum’ in common usage, it’s meaning is easily found with Google.

As for humanist v religious values, my point was not that one cannot replace the other but that I don’t see it happening. I think this point was also very clear.

@brentan my point in the first case was "spiritual vacuum" is a religious term. I am on an agnostic website. I don't believe in any "spiritual vacuum", because I don't believe in spirituality.

as for the second case, if you cannot tell me which values you are discussing, how can I possibly respond. which "religious values" are you discussing? what is a "religious value" as opposed to a humanist one, other than belief in the supernatural?

if you're just going to repeat yourself, then you are committing the fallacy of argument by assertion, and aren't actually discussing it. if you just don't want to debate, then don't.

Unless you can find me a source for a definition of spiritual vacuum that does not rely on supernatural terms.

Spirit, of course, is not limited to religious belief – the Olympic spirit, for example. Spiritual vacuum is a moral vacuum, as you must know. The problem is not repetition on my part but a deliberate obfuscation of meaning on your part. It might not be possible to find a dictionary definition that defines expressions the way you would like them to be defined.

Get used to people disagreeing with your views. This is an agnostic site.

You ask what values I’m talking about? I’m talking about them all.

ambiguity fallacy, there's no connection between the usage of spirit in "Olympic spirit" and it's use in "spiritual vacuum".

if you think there will be a moral vacuum without religion, then your contention is that religion is a source of morality. it simply isn't. it's a source of rules meant to be followed, not a system of determining what's right.

You create ambiguity fallacies that don’t exist. You cannot take a statement explicitly said to be an example of various interpretations and claim that that one example doesn’t fit your argument. It is really quite dishonest.
Your second comment is too daft to be worth a reply.