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Considering this messageboard has been going for more than 25 years, and still has daily activity, I think that's quite remarkable. Out of all the messageboards I've been at since I went online, I think there's only one other one that's still around. IIRC, that one went down completely, and was restarted by someone else, so it's more of a different board with the same name as the first board. This one has been active since the 1990s, and underwent migrations between hosts and servers. It's outlasted the entire hosting company on which it started.

For the sake of this forum, I will examine from the position that all beliefs, including all religious beliefs, have stemmed entirely, 100% from people, with no exceptions. If so, that would mean all the religious beliefs- which people have based things on- would have that origin, as would every other belief upon which things were based. So, to posit a world where some of those beliefs were never developed, the question is, what would such a world be like? We're not imagining a world of magic and dragons here, we're imagining something deterministic and "realistic" (not fantastical.) I would expect it to look almost identical to our world. As has been pointed out, technology may change over time, but man has not changed. Improving technology has made some changes in society possible, but man is still man. We have the printing press, which helped to try to usher in universal literacy (a radical concept for history, and a recent one.) We have the internet, where someone can use that literacy to read things all over the world. We have the potential to have the best-informed Earth population EVER. Do we have it NOW? No, we do not. People go into an echo chamber and don't get impartial, fair and neutral information on things, just a lot of bias confirmation. (Can't blame ALL of that on Facebook, even if they made it easier.) What happened? Technology may have changed, but man has not changed. Hippies tried to eliminate capitalism, and make things free for everyone. It failed miserably. What happened? Man has not changed. MOST of the people went along with it. But it only takes a few freeloaders to ruin things. A minority of people showed up, and sponged off of the hippies, and tried to get everything they could (including "free love.") So, I could see the brands changing- from religious to any other brand. But I'd expect the same problems with a few cosmetic differences. Man has not changed. So, maybe somebody makes their identity in a philosophical group, or a political group, or even their bowling league. But there will be sectarianism, and sabers rattled. People form societies, and take on labels, and take on "who is an outsider", which strengthens group cohesion. That's going to stay the same as long as we HAVE people.

I think evolving is a good choice of words especially in progressing away from Christian/religious beliefs being imposed and enforced on others. The "others" here would not only be non-religious folks but also the people within a religious institution who are required to obey its expectations, rules and regulations in order to be accepted and avoid abusive consequences. GSC has been good, especially with posts from Rocky, Penworks and others, about the rights and ways one has to stand against the control of authoritarian leaders. The reality, though, is that all churches and "spiritual" institutions have expectations, rules and regulations. Most of all, Yahweh and Christ have mandates that must be followed in order to avoid the consequence of hell (however it is defined). This is why I think atheism (which is simply a non-belief in the existence of god/gods) is not a very bad, difficult or unpleasant thing.

I reactivated this thread because of a recent event that took place in Butler, Pennsylvania. Almost Immediately after the shooting there, it was being declared as a miracle of God that the ex-president was only slightly injured instead of being killed. The obvious question then is where was the miracle of God for the man who was killed and the two others who were shot and in critical condition? The logical conclusion to this would be that God clearly picked and chose who to save and who not to save. Different Christians will have different reasons for why God is justified in doing this. One belief might be that God had/has a purpose for the lives of each shooting victim and that His plans will continue to ripple out to include their loved ones and maybe even further. If you take God out of the picture, what is left is just the facts.