CH: Biggest Religion Has No Gods

[Frige]

Well, what widespread atheistic religion is possible

Perhaps, if there's a POD deep in the 19th century that there's a philosophical and political movement that adopts parts of Spiritism and some approachable occult elements, with belief in historical progress punctuated with civil and international war, and the power of a few revolutionary great men above classes. Maybe call it Minervism, like in the phrase 'sprung armed from the French Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove'. It's extreme and difficult to co-opt by the establishments of different countries.

This later takes a place similar to OTL Marxism in Asia. Reverence for the leaders goes far beyond that shown to the mythical Lenin of Stalinism and the Mao of Mao Zedong Thought, and without even a pretence to irreligion and materialism there, sacraments and ritual spring up in an ad-hoc way. Minervism is the official religion of the Eastern Bloc. Masses that were meant to be atheist OTL are Minervist here.

 

[democracy101]

The same holds true for Hinduism, another family of Dharmic religions. In fact I would say that the differences between certain branches of Hinduism are even greater than those between branches of Buddhism. They include belief systems ranging from monotheism through pantheism to genuine polytheism, with atheism being historically important in the past as well (i.e. Carvaka, which may have had a direct influence upon early Buddhism and Jainism).

Hinduism has the same type of philosophy, for example Advaita Vedanta, which I find to be VERY close to the Buddhist teachings:

Yes, and this is mostly due to the fact that Buddhism was heavily influenced by Hinduism, but that still doesn't change the fact that there are a multitude of "gods" in the latter. Of course, the situation differs within each specific region, as you stated, but just as there are various different tenets within each branch of Buddhism, the same holds true for Hinduism as well, which is why I think it would be extremely difficult for everyone to believe in the notion of no "gods," rather than the syncretic versions prevalent today.

 

[oshron]

Buddhism, Taoism, or a combination of the two would be the most likely candidates of OTL religions, that or general animism

but define "god", because when you get down to it alot of entities in various mythologies don't really fall into the category of "god" (like the various thousands of kami in Shinto). unless by "gods" Killer300 meant "deities", which would apply much more broadly

 

[Mongo]

I had mentioned Carvaka several posts ago. Dating from around the time of the founding of Buddhism and Jainism, it already held many of the tenets of an atheistic religion:

1. All attributes that represent a person are contained in their physical body. Therefore, there is no soul independent of the body, or any afterlife. There is no heaven, hell, or reincarnation.

2. There are no supernatural causes for natural phenomena, everything has a natural cause. Therefore there are no gods or supernatural entities.

3. There is nothing wrong with pleasure derived from the senses. Austerities accomplish little or nothing.

4. The Vedas (foundations of Vedic religion) were created by men and have no inherent authority. Rituals based on them also accomplish nothing.

5. In general, truth, integrity, consistency, and freedom of thought are held as the highest philosophical virtues.

This is about all that is known of the Carvaka tenets, almost all of their writings have been lost. The remaining writings consist of about 60 verses known as the Barhaspatya sutras, with an unknown number of additional verses possibly still extant but uncollected.

From the same time is the Ajivika school. Followers of this philosophy were strict determinists, and most followers were non-theistic or atheistic. They held that time was an illusion, since all events -- past, present and future -- were already fixed.

This school was actually quite popular for a time, rivaling Buddhism and Jainism, until Ashoka ordered the execution of all Ajivikas in territories ruled by him. (He evidently regarded Ajivika as a serious threat to Buddhism, and decided that it needed to be destroyed.) As with the Carvaki school, almost all their writings have been lost.

It is commonly accepted that both of these schools appeared at the same time as, or slightly before, Buddhism and Jainism, since both religions appear to have incorporated a number of ideas from them.

This would also make them somewhat earlier than similar Greek philosophies. I would not be surprised to learn that there was a flow of ideas from India to the Greek-speaking lands at that time. Could the Greek development of rationalism in general have been inspired by the Indian schools?

If Ashoka had not suppressed the Ajivika school, it might have survived to the present day, possibly merging with the Carvaka school to form an early materialist scepticism. In fact we could possibly have seen an early flowering of the scientific method, at about the same time as the Hellenistic version -- and this version might have survived!

edit -- Actually, most of the pieces of a full-fledged scientific revolution were already in place at that time, from philosophy (discussed above) to mathematics, for example Panini (520-460 BCE) who developed Boolean logic and the foundations of programming language, Pingala (3rd century BCE) who studied combinatorics, binomial coefficients and Fibonacci numbers, and Katyayana (3rd century BCE) who produced results in geometry. I am now curious why a scientific revolution did NOT develop in India at the same time as in Greece, unless one did happen but has been since forgotten.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I don't know what this means, but you should probably keep 4chan memes out of serious discussion.

Nothing offensive really into that - it was whimsical, and the guy had erased copies of same posts.

 

[democracy101]

-snip-

Yes, but Wikipedia describes both of them as philosophies, not religions, which technically does not fulfill the conditions of the OP. It also looks like Buddhism and Hinduism essentially absorbed many of the philosophical arguments of the ones you mentioned, and even in an ATL, a few belief systems amalgamating both religious and philosophical viewpoints would have eventually become more popular. In other words, as I stated earlier, while it would certainly be possible for syncretic religions to form after spreading outside of their places of origin, the core tenets would be severely diluted to the point of becoming essentially unrecognizable from the original.

As a result, philosophy and religion can certainly coexist together within a region, but they are generally distinct because the former tends to focus on general guidelines and analogies, while the other one tends to have (a) codified text(s) consisting of detailed stories that people generally believe in, and/or use for prayer. For example, some Greek philsophers still believed in gods, and while Descartes was a Roman Catholic who formulated certain assumptions in philosophical fields, his religion still remained the same.

 

[Kishan]

Charvaka was a self-proclaimed atheist and materialist. His Lokayata philosophy denied the existence of gods or any supernatural beings. He also challenged the authority of Vedas. Lokayata was considered as one among the nine schools of thought of ancient Hinduism. Samkhya, Nyaya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Poorva Mimamsa, Uttara Mimamsa, Bouddha, Jaina and Lokayata were the nine systems. Among these the first six systems are still considered as schools of philosophy in Hinduism. The last three systems which denied the authority of Vedas went out of Hinduism. Bouddha and Jaina schools became Buddhism and Jainism. Lokayata system of Charvaka which championed materialism and atheism was opposed and suppressed by the conservatives of all the other schools of thought and all their books and literature were destroyed.
Shankaracharya who is considered as the greatest philosopher of Hinduism adopted Adwaita(Monism) in Uttara Mimamsa as his philosophy and established its supremacy in Hindu system of thoughts. It is said that Shankaracharya took the Adwaita principle from the teachings of Buddha and used it to beat Buddhist scholars in religious discussions. Shankaracharya copied the thoughts and actions of Buddha to reestablish the domination of Hinduism. Adwaita proclaims that God is one and indivisible and all the universe is only a part of that God. All the human souls are particles of the supreme soul and join the parent universal soul at death. This is almost the same as the Buddhist concept of nirvana.

 

[Malta]

Jesus was a Jew and Buddha was a Hindu.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Jesus was a Jew and Buddha was a Hindu.

yes, but what is the point here? Buddha was not an Hindu technically but an indian yeah, but a Kshatriya of the Sakka culture-region-power etc (may be in parts in modern Nepal now).. and in days where Hinduism was in it's Vedic phase, you could say.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Daoism possibly? And Buddha, but Buddhism is directly tied to Gods of Hindu origin, which almost discounts it in a way.

Both of my wifes buddhist chaplain colleagues are atheist. Buddhism can have many gods or none.

 

[Malta]

yes, but what is the point here? Buddha was not an Hindu technically but an indian yeah, but a Kshatriya of the Sakka culture-region-power etc (may be in parts in modern Nepal now).. and in days where Hinduism was in it's Vedic phase, you could say.

My point is that his world view would have been for the majority of his life and probably even as a Buddhist been steeped in the belief that there are gods and they make a part of the fabric of the world and as such he was influenced by it. He just pointed out that it was not good to dwell on questions that do not tie into one's own journey toward enlightenment and that revering of gods were not necessary for enlightenment and that everyone is in a way on the same level of spiritual development. To completely whitewash the Buddha as a Atheist to me seems inaccurate.

I also, feel that Western Definitions of a god is too hitched to the idea that a god is a Creator, Omni-Everything, Being of Goodness.