I think it would be a hugely interesting, although possibly very cruel, experiment to strand say 100 very young and uncorrupted children, of all creeds and colours, on a lush and fruitful tropical island.
To start with there would have to be some outside influence, but absolutely minimum, by leaving food medicine or clothing. Once established and fairly autonomous they should then be left alone for 250 years.
What do you think we would fine when we returned......
There would be a society, possibly very different from what we expect, but there would be games and sport of some kind, maybe even a type of football, I would have thought so all other societies through the ages have played such a game. It wouldn't be 11 a side, the pitch would be different dimensions, but there have been too many examples of sport involving getting a ball over a line for it not to be replicated in this society.
But what of religion. I would wager my house that there would be no tales of talking snakes, men on a cross, Mosses in the rushes, Mount Sinai and the 10 Commandments, the good Samaritan, etc. and why should there. Although, if the bible is the book of God why would these pure and uncorrupted children not know of these things.
I suspect that this experiment, which unfortunately will never happen, would prove, once and for all, that the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Moonies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists and the rest of the religions cults are all nonsense.
Also, in the absence of the influence of religion, there may be some social harmony, women may have equal rights, homosexuals may not be persecuted and there would hopefully be no racism - why would there be.
I guess that if this society felt the need to worship, that they would worship the sun, and why not. It exists, it is reliable and without it you die. If these aspects of Sun worship were actually the prerequisite for all religions, we would have far fewer of them, and any that did exist I would have no problems co-existing with.
Societies only need 'god' if they have questions that can not be answered, it has been said "where knowledge ends, religion begins" -and so this will take me on to Thought Experiment 2 shortly.
1 comment:
I think you would find god-like characters in their ceremonies and their narratives. What you wouldn't find is dogmatic traditions of modern religions. What people believed would be less important than how they acted, and the gods would play a smaller role in determining the latter. They would not be absent, however.
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