Well, Bugs, if faith itself had collapsed while the church was torturing and murdering people, no little faiths would have replaced the Christian horror. My point was that without faith, there can be no religion; I should have put it that way.
Now I do recognize that the resort to faith is a cultural universal (or so nearly so that it might as well be). So simply getting rid of Christianity would indeed allow other faiths — paganism, etc. — to flourish, as you point out.
As to the absence of science and reason some seven centuries ago, mankind had simple, everyday common sense for thousands of years before the relatively harmless folklore of the supernatural changed into a monster. The craftsmen who first flaked flint into blades were very rational, practical people who depended on logic, education, experience and straight thinking. They were probably just as intelligent as we are. Their craft was not true science, but it was knowledge, as Socrates pointed out: the artisans were the only folks he felt knew anything. He had a point.
Literacy and science were not necessary for the evolution of our species, and are very probably not necessary for its continued survival. Not that doing without dentistry appeals to me….
Dealing with life does not require faith, though spirituality is of benefit. One need not believe in manifest absurdities in order to be spiritual, a point that is not widely understood. Recognizing that ethics does not spring from religious doctrine is the first step in shedding faith and dealing with life as it is, rather than wrestling with absurd legalistic requirements and fantasies. Most of the world’s faiths have co-opted and subsumed ethics, however, claiming that we must be good because some imagined deity requires it of us (or else). That claim cannot be validated.
The problem we have with Muslim terrorists today is simply that they really, really do believe the Koran (which point Bay does not note). It’s a problem with faith; faith causes gullibility that pushes reason aside.
If you can honestly believe that an angel provided Mohammed with some instructions from the divine creator, you can believe that dying a martyr will get you and your family into heaven. The truth and the implications of that horrifying fact are impossible for many non-Muslims to grasp.
