What If- Religion Was Never Born

What If Religion Was Never Born?

I recently watched Assassin 33 A.D., a science-fiction story built around an extreme premise: time travel is accidentally discovered, and someone goes back in time to assassinate Jesus. What struck me wasn’t the sci-fi spectacle, but the aftermath. In the film’s timeline, the Resurrection never happens—and the world doesn’t simply adjust. It collapses. Social order fractures. Violence spreads. Moral structure dissolves.

That ripple stuck with me.

It raised a question that’s uncomfortable precisely because it has no clean answer: what if religion, in all its forms, had never existed at all?

Even as an atheist, I find myself acknowledging something most people on either side of belief rarely admit. Religion, for all its flaws, has played a foundational role in shaping human morality, social cohesion, and restraint. Without it, what would have anchored human behavior beyond survival, power, and self-interest?

The Case for Religion’s Necessity

Human beings are not naturally gentle. We compete. We dominate. We rationalize harm. Left purely to instinct and advantage, history suggests we don’t default to compassion.

Religion—imperfect and often misused—has historically imposed a moral ceiling. It told people that life had meaning beyond material success, that actions carried consequence beyond immediate gain, and that restraint mattered even when power made cruelty possible.

Faith embedded ethics into culture:

  • laws derived moral weight from belief

  • communities were bound by shared values

  • compassion was elevated from preference to obligation

Without that framework, would morality have survived as anything more than convenience? Would empathy have become optional rather than expected? Would ethics have existed only when profitable?

These aren’t religious arguments—they’re sociological ones.

The Case Against Religion’s Influence

And yet, the other side cannot be ignored.

Religion has also justified violence on a staggering scale. Crusades. Inquisitions. Terrorism. Genocide. Entire populations erased under divine banners. The moral authority meant to restrain brutality has often been used to sanctify it.

I think of September 11th. The Twin Towers. Thousands of lives extinguished by people convinced they were acting in service of God. It’s impossible not to ask: if religion did not exist, would some of humanity’s worst atrocities ever have occurred?

Or would power simply have found a different excuse?

History suggests the latter.

The Paradox We Can’t Escape

Religion appears to be both:

  • a civilizing force

  • and a catalyst for destruction

It teaches forgiveness and love. It also enables fanaticism and intolerance. It inspires charity and self-sacrifice, while simultaneously drawing rigid lines between “us” and “them.”

That paradox isn’t accidental. It reflects humanity itself.

Remove religion, and we don’t remove violence—we remove one of the structures that tried, however imperfectly, to contain it. But keep religion, and we accept the risk that belief will be weaponized by those seeking power.

The problem may not be faith.

It may be human nature operating through belief.

Would We Have Replaced Religion Anyway?

Another uncomfortable truth: even if religion had never existed, humans would likely have invented something similar.

We are meaning-making creatures. We create stories, symbols, and shared narratives to explain suffering, death, purpose, and obligation. If not gods, then ideologies. If not scripture, then doctrines. If not heaven, then utopia.

History shows this clearly. Secular ideologies have produced atrocities on par with religious ones when they became absolute—when they claimed moral infallibility and demanded obedience.

The impulse to believe may be more fundamental than belief itself.

A World Without Faith: Better or Worse?

A world without religion might be:

  • more efficient

  • more centralized

  • more rational

It might also be colder.

Ethics could become transactional—based on outcome, not principle. Compassion might exist only when useful. Art and culture could lose much of their symbolic depth, stripped of transcendence and mystery.

Or perhaps humanity would have found a better moral framework grounded entirely in reason, empathy, and shared survival. It’s possible. But history offers little evidence that reason alone restrains power for long.

Personal Take

As someone who doesn’t believe in doctrine, I still recognize religion’s role in shaping who we are. It imposed moral friction where instinct alone might have failed. It gave people reasons—sometimes flawed, sometimes profound—to choose restraint over brutality.

At the same time, I can’t ignore the damage done when belief hardens into certainty and certainty turns violent. Religion didn’t invent cruelty, but it has often given it language, legitimacy, and scale.

So I don’t see religion as salvation or damnation. I see it as a human tool—powerful, dangerous, and deeply revealing. Its absence would not have made us angels. Its presence did not make us saints.

It simply amplified what was already there.

Final Reflection

Whether we believe or not, religion has shaped our laws, cultures, conflicts, and moral vocabulary. A world without it would not be neutral—it would be radically different, and not necessarily better.

The more unsettling question isn’t whether religion should exist.

It’s whether humanity, with or without faith, is capable of wielding meaning responsibly.

That question remains unanswered.

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