Yes, thank you for describing religion.
I think all beliefs and world views are better if not held as absolutes that cannot be questioned.
Let's question the tenets of Christianity, Islam, and the rest, shall we? Let's talk about what's lip service to compassion while worshiping identity. Let's talk about what happens to dissidents within religious groups. If you want to talk about non-religious absolutist authoritarian ideologies, fine, yes, let's do that, too.
Let's identify the beliefs and ideas that give rise to war and hatred, and why religions are so determined to not only maintain those tenets but to enshrine them and call them "morality." Let's talk about why group identity means so much more to millions of people than actual human beings.
Let's also talk about what groups and ideologies, religious or not, actually have the potential to serve a peaceful tribe of seven billion. Which ones are inclusive of seven billion and which ones doggedly separate the world in us vs them divisions. Which ones are open to change? Which ones hold cultural myopia as a holy sacrament and expect seven billion people to bow to it? Which ones value questioning and which ones operate under fear of anything different or new?
Christianity on the whole could learn something from a small sect the most of them don't know a thing about: Quakers. What's different about them that makes them so peaceful? What are their most valued tenets? Do those tenets have anything to do with why mainstream Christianity acts like a bloodthirsty baboon and Quakers consistently do not?
What tenets of Christianity, once you honestly question them, give rise to the selfish, fearful, ignorant, hypocritical horde that poses as the "moral majority" in the US these days? Why do such people have so much political and social power in the West? Why would a person of conscience and humane values object to the lazy right wing authoritarianism that passes for thought among Christians?
Gods and religions are man-made, and so all pretty well reflect human nature, with all the characteristics you mention above. Some religions (?all) seek to control the worst of human nature as they see it but their methods of control also reflect human nature and are abhorrent, just as human nature is. The Quakers are exceptional, but the fact than they are
fewer than 500,000 world-wide out of a world population of seven and a half billion should have given you a clue to just how eceptional they are. True, you could count some non-Abrahamic religions as being similar and pad the numbers in your favour, but we have recently seen how even "peaceful" Buddhists act when they disapprove of another group living among them, so leave them out of your calculations.
I use Quakers as an example because of the specific differences between them and mainstream Christianity. I'm asking the apologists here if they are aware of those differences and what those differences tell us about mainstream Christianity as a whole.
I think most religious and apologists don't actually know what they are defending.
I think you arte living in a world of wishful thinking and are unable to see , or admit, that things would not be as portrayed in John Lennon's "Imagine", had it not been for the evils of religion. The basic problem is not the multiplicity of gods and religions, but the nature of the human animals that have created them.
Not a big John Lennon fan, but waving me off as wishful thinking is quite a handy convenience for people who don't like my criticisms of religion.
Why are you telling me of all people that gods and religions are human creations?
Maybe you're confusing me with someone else? I think religious people and their apologists are the ones who need to hear that. Also, I never mentioned multiplicity of gods... not sure what that has to do with anything I've said here. (Since you mention it, pantheistic religions are less poisonous than monotheisms in my opinion, but that's a different conversation.)
My point is, as it usually is, that religion is largely group identity and social conformity, and not at all spirituality or actual human experiences of transcendence, or enlightenment, or transformation, or whatever you want to call the stuff that religion hijacks and pretends to represent. Those human experiences might give rise to the flavors and concepts of each religion, but religion is nothing more than group ideology and identity, mixed with culture and god concepts and other wild, human things.
When the ideology is absolutist, authoritarian, literal, black and white, and self-righteous, it has the power to hijack large swaths of humanity's animal brain. When an ideology values itself over human beings, as Christianity does (please, let's have that conversation!
) and as Islam and other us vs them ideologies do, war and conflict are inevitable. Inevitable, not just likely, but in-fucking-evitable.
We have the tools to examine these things. We have the capacity for self reflection. We have the capacity to change our minds, to challenge our preconceived beliefs, to question our subjective, intuitive experiences and responses.
This is not wishful thinking, it's not outlandish, it's not even rare. People do this all the time. Even the most absolutist religionist is constantly changing their world view whether they are aware of it or not. Even the most absolutist religions themselves are constantly changing and morphing.
It's not even wishful thinking or outlandish to see that technology and the information age, with all the dangers that come with it, serve to speed up change and to spread ideas. Few people are closed off and protected from other points of view, and dwindling in number all the time.
Really the only question now is, in response to this new, chaotic, alien environment we've created, whether culture clash fear and ego will win out over curiosity and ordinary human empathy. Humanity is adapting, and religions like Christianity are maladaptive to a technological tribe of seven billion. There are just some things that in previous times, small fear-based ideologies didn't have to worry too much about. Now it's clear that some mechanisms that our brains have developed in small tribes in long periods of peace that do not and cannot serve humanity in the current environment. Killing or enslaving billions is not a sane, humane option, but that's essentially what backward religion offers in lieu of the critical thinking and plasticity required to adapt with the least amount of suffering. Things will continue as they are as long as individuals revere group identity and hold it as more valuable than the whole tribe.
And this is not a diatribe in favor of collectivism. We already are collectivist in nature. It's just that individual egos tend to tell us a different story. We have the capacity to value our humanness more than our incidental group identities. Much of religion and other ideologies no only do not acknowledge this but serve to discourage understanding of this ordinary, obvious fact.
