Archimedes basically invented calculus in his work known as "The Palimpsest". However it was copied over with prayers in Greek by a 10th century Byzantine monk. Had this document survived and been widely disseminated we might have been on the moon by 1650....

I understand where you're coming from, I really do. Unfortunately Nothing in life is that simple. Wild the religious have been a gigantic stumbling block to human development certain points in history they have also contributed to it. The greatest bars intellectual Utopia ism in the modern era is not even a religion but rather nationalism and militaristic Doctrine mixed with the desire to compete. I hate to admit it but I honestly believe that in the absence of religion nationalism capitalism and militaristic tendencies would be just as prevalent in society and just as damaging to an intellectual Revolution.

I agree. Some people actually need to answer all question immediately to satisfy there ego, mortality and fears so they are able to move forward each day. Religion does this for them. Religion also provides community. Having said as much, there are definite down sides and you've identified one for sure. It really is too bad that the majority of the world can't free their minds. Wow... that would be powerfully.

What a concept. Religion free world. I honestly never considered the ramifications of no religion. I am going to ponder this one.

At least we are going forward now. And we are learning from past mistakes too. The future has potential again.

Science has not been compromised by religion. Quite the opposite. If it had not been for the striving for knowledge of the Islamic scholars 1,000 years ago to translate all classical texts and knowledge into Arabic the world would have lost any knowledge of Plato, Euclid, Archemides, Galen, Pythagoras whose concepts are the cornerstone of Western thinking.

I figured this out, if we didn't have the dark ages we would have been on other planets out side of our universe by now. Religion has really slowed down the human race.

While religion can and has been a tool to thwart progress, those things can and have been done without religion as well. China had it's "Cultural Revolution" which stifled progress for ideology. And Germany never developed the Atomic bomb, in part, because of Nuclear Physic's association with Jews. While such philosophies come and go, religion is probably the more systematic.

Instead of thinking of religion as an evil force that controls and obstructs humanity, I think of religion as an integral part of who we are. That same human, awareness, imagination and creativity that is expressed as religion is also expressed in philosophy and science.

What has been an impediment is organized religious groups under the control of ego-ridden, power-hungry political types. In the case of Christianity, they caused the burning of valuable books and brought us crusades and inquisitions. And they imposed a regimen of strict belief in church dogma, imposed through fear and guilt, thereby causing untold grief.

Throw out the bath water but keep the baby.

Setting aside Geoffery's valid points, Religion has always been a mixed bag. It has a CO-hesive effect on small tribal societies, binding people together by a shared belief system and worldview. This causes cultural clashes when societies grow and encounter other societies, squashing both such social structures and religions out of existence (The Huge Rampant worship of Alexander no longer exists, but his Temples are often the foundations of Christian religious sites today).

I think it as wishful to think religion held us back (in that Futurama /South Park Model) as to think Religion moved us forward.

It bound people together into similar paradigms, but NOW, in the Digital Age, ALL cultures and Paradigms are not only meeting, mixing and clashing, they are being actually examined for factual basis. Not since the enlightenment has that happened, and they did not have mass forms of social media for communication.

An object in water is buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the water it displaces. F=VW. This is the first law of physics to incorporate mathematics. It is Archimedes Principle and Archimedes figured it out 2000 years before Issac Newton. If humankind had been able to advance without the impediment of religious dogma, maybe we'd be 2000 years beyond where we are now.

An optimistic view of where we could be is having fully colonized the Solar System, developed large-scale space engineering, utilizing a significant percentage of the Sun's total energy output, and exploring "nearby" star systems. A pessimistic view would be long gone, extinct from climate change.

Well, the Dark Ages set us back at least a thousand years, so start from a point just prior to them and add on a thousand years of unhindered progress, then add on however many years more progress there'd be until the present. It's staggering how far we'd have gotten. We'd have figured out almost everything by then, in that alternate timeline... At least, I think so.

In many ways the path of civilization required religion to unify it, common beliefs bonded societies together. It is only relatively recently that science and technologies have reached the point where we can leave belief behind. I think of it more like human beings as a whole going through the progression of a child growing up: at best we are at the pre-teen stage.

I tend to side with this view.

We would not end up with people like trump in charge

I do wonder where astronomical science would have got to by now if the Arabs who invented it (and mathematics) hadn't freaked out and gone super-pious a few centuries ago.

Think of this — by the time the crusaders arrived to break their skulls, the Muslims had created exquisite stone architecture and mind-boggling geometric artworks, whilst the Europeans were still wading knee-deep in their own filth and scraping together shacks made from wonky wood and horse manure.

Christianity gave us the dark ages when books were burned, Science was banned,and heretics, Atheists, Jews, and homosexuals were tortured and killed. It can happen again if Christians control our Gov't.

Right there with you.It is so sad that the religious do not relate to this damage.They see the wars as efforts to save their beliefs.How sad,

I believe our species has evolved remarkably considering everything in the universe that’s working against us. Statistics should dictate our extinction by now. So although it would have been nice for religion to have never existed, our species needed it to survive at the time and I think we are here today because of how history played out.

Imagine! Perhaps it would be a world governed by intellect!

How could we possibly know? What's your control? As bad a religion is, the alternative, and there always is one, might be worse.

Did you ever think that UFO's were created by aliens that never had religious wars, burned libraries or spent all their time and money building bombs to wipe competing tribes off the planet and instead focused on science and building UFO's?

Awakening is an exponential process. Starts very slow and eventually reach a critical point where starts to pick up speed faster as it keeps going faster. We are getting really close to that point now. The day will come when all religions will be forgotten

I'm always undecided on this subject.
No doubt religions have caused harm and a lot of it, and need being shed of.
But.
To assume all would be swimmingly well, progressed or advanced had they not been conceived of is errant I think. We've simply no way of knowing how humanity would have evolve d - we only have a history with them to judge by. And given our history with or without, it isn't beyond reckoning that things could be far worse for those on the sharp end of the stick.

I think the concept of worship is a tool of the patriarchy and Christanity - thoughts?