In their “what-if” thought games, historians imagine the possible alternative paths history might have taken if at key turning points, often battles, the “other side” had won or things had happened a little differently.
For example, what if the Christians had lost the skirmish at Tours in France in 732 CE that stemmed the Muslim advance into Western Europe? A big piece of Europe might have become, and might still be, thoroughly Muslim. Or what if, as historian Arnold Toynbee speculated, Alexander the Great had not caught pneumonia at age thirty-two but had lived to go on to conquer deeply into China? Toynbee imagined Buddhism spreading to Europe to become the world’s dominant religion instead of Christianity. Or what if the Persians had defeated the Greeks in the battle of Salamis in 480 BCE? Zoroastrianism could have become the religion of Europe. What would have been the fate of monotheism if the conquering Assyrian King Sennacherib had not been forced to abandon his siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE, thanks to a plague that decimated his army? If he had won, the Hebrews would have been taken into exile in Babylonia and would probably have been lost to history.
But suppose we extend the counterfactual beyond the contingencies of military history and instead consider some battles of ideas. What if the pre-Socratic materialists had not been swamped by mysticism and other-worldliness? What if the Roman emperor Constantine had decided in 312 CE to adopt the ideas of Stoicism as championed by famed Romans such as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius instead of choosing Christianity as he actually did? In Stoicism, the concept of God is akin to pantheism, bearing little relation to the personal god envisaged by the ethical monotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The history of Western civilization might then have evolved without God, Jesus, and the church fathers and without Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Protestantism. The Prophet would have come into a world shaped by very different, non-Abrahamic beliefs and ideas. Religion in the Middle East would likely have evolved differently. In short, what if Greek humanism had prevailed?
The main idea that did prevail, leading Western civilization and much of the rest of human history in entirely different directions, was the idea that the world, the universe, and the minutiae of the experiences of all species, including humans, derived from the will of one or more unseen divine forces. One amazing quality of this idea (in all its variations among different cultures) was its total lack of any evidentiary basis.
The realization that humanity lacked any evidence for these ideas, that the notions were the imaginative products of cognitive speculation, did occur to some early thinkers who ventured beyond the accepted, even institutionalized, conventional magical beliefs. Early Greek thinkers such as Anaximander and Democritus, among the so-called Pre-Socratics, thought that the world should be understood as material in origin and through rational inquiry and natural explanation. Their proto-scientific teaching and influence was subsequently displaced by religious thinkers insisting that truth must be based on divine revelation. While proponents of non-divine explanations of how the world worked reappeared now and then, the immaterial, revealed scriptural beliefs held sway for nearly two millennia and still dominate the thinking of many people in the twenty-first century.
Many of our North European ancestors would not have been slaughtered in the campaigns to force pagans to convert to Christianity. Our French ancestors would not have endured and fought the Catholic-Protestant Wars of Religion (1562–1598). There would have been no Crusades, no expulsion of Jews, no pogroms. No historic enmity between Shia and Sunni. European history for over a millennium would not have revolved around struggles between church and state.
Many problems roiling our own times might have been avoided altogether. Apostasy would have no meaning and would not be criminalized as it is in some countries still. Similarly, heresy might have no meaning without religious orthodoxy or ancient writings requiring contemporary belief and rules of conduct. We would be free of faith-based discrimination and indoctrinated religious prejudice. We might have avoided panic over delusions about end-times or conspiracy theories about religious rivals. Many people impassioned by divine-sanction rules about birth control, abortion, and sexual preferences might have a more tolerant, reason-based viewpoint. As inheritors of such a history, we would now be bereft of much literature, art, and architecture that we now treasure. On the other hand, our ancestors would have created alternative cultures and artistic traditions.
The what-if game has always looked back, laying out alternative histories that could have happened instead of what actually took place. Whether or not the alternative looks better than what actually happened depends on the alternative-history spinner. But suppose we cast a what-if forward. How might our story unfold if we assume that most of humanity sheds divine beliefs in the near future?
The hypothetical collapse of faith or a transition to widespread atheism or to a relegation of divinity to a peripheral phenomenon of uncertain nature of little or no relevance to earthly events is not so radical a what-if as many might think—at least for people who give the matter any serious thought. Religious practice—church attendance, adherence to major rituals, entry into priesthoods, and belief in the reality of divinity—are already collapsing in many countries. The evidence on this is widespread and involves many religions, both eastern and western. Protestant, Catholic, and Buddhist clergies have been losing their moral credibility due to secularism and the sexual misconduct of clergy.
God has been shown to be conspicuously silent in the face of the atrocities of our time. The belief that there is a god who cares about humanity, intervenes, and is benevolent is no longer credible. As the French Jewish scholar Emmanuel Levinas put it, “The benevolent protector God committed suicide at Auschwitz.” One reads of people who went to their deaths at Auschwitz with prayers to God on their lips. Some Jewish thinkers have salvaged their faith by giving God reasons for allowing the punishments of the concentration camps. For many people, this is a cognitive twist too far. If God exists but is absent, then divinity is irrelevant.
So what if the collapse of religion, so advanced in the West, continues apace for one or two more generations? What if a general skepticism, if not atheism, permeates the mass of humanity, cutting the ground from underneath the fundamentalists, the zealots, and the fanatics? We could see the fading of the salience of some of our current faith-driven divisions—between Sunni and Shia, Buddhist and Muslim, Muslim and Christian, and Muslim and Jew. Violent faith-based or religion-intensified conflicts could be seen as pointless by the parties involved. Religious prejudice would become ridiculous and embarrassing to exhibit. Social conflicts fueled by faith and by quotes from scripture that have lost historical authenticity and moral authority would ease up and be more open to resolution through reasoned dialogue and compromise. Pulpit-thumping would lose its hold. End-of-world fears and conspiracy theories might be seen as follies of the past. Laws criminalizing blasphemy would become dead letters. Persecution for heresy or apostasy would become pointless.
In short, if secular humanism captured the minds of our species, we would avoid one source of pointless tragedies.
In their “what-if” thought games, historians imagine the possible alternative paths history might have taken if at key turning points, often battles, the “other side” had won or things had happened a little differently. For example, what if the Christians had lost the skirmish at Tours in France in 732 CE that stemmed the Muslim …