Religions. Tribal units and a good way to appease our love of drama and war.

[Mopsus]

Your #analysis may be true of the earliest religions, but the ones that most people practice today (the ones that proselytize, that is) are more universal than tribal: their purpose isn't to protect one nation from another, but to bring all nations under the same umbrella.

[Mopsus]

Your #analysis may be true of the earliest religions, but the ones that most people practice today (the ones that proselytize, that is) are more universal than tribal: their purpose isn't to protect one nation from another, but to bring all nations under the same umbrella.

I do not see them as universal at all as they reject all Gods save their own.

Christianity's violence and ideology has been curbed and brought to heel by secular Western forces but Islam is still trying to grow with violence instead of good deeds.

Gnostic Christianity is about the only religion that promotes that we all be esoteric ecumenists and is the only true Universalist religion that I know of. That reason is partly why I have taken on the label of Gnostic Christian.

Regards
DL
 

Christianity and Islam aren't tied to a particular people or place in the way that Temple Judaism and the cults of the Greek city-states were. Thus, they can't really be called "tribal" without stretching that term into meaninglessness.

[Mopsus]

Your #analysis may be true of the earliest religions, but the ones that most people practice today (the ones that proselytize, that is) are more universal than tribal: their purpose isn't to protect one nation from another, but to bring all nations under the same umbrella.

I do not see them as universal at all as they reject all Gods save their own.

Christianity's violence and ideology has been curbed and brought to heel by secular Western forces but Islam is still trying to grow with violence instead of good deeds.

Gnostic Christianity is about the only religion that promotes that we all be esoteric ecumenists and is the only true Universalist religion that I know of. That reason is partly why I have taken on the label of Gnostic Christian.

Regards
DL
 

Christianity and Islam aren't tied to a particular people or place in the way that Temple Judaism and the cults of the Greek city-states were. Thus, they can't really be called "tribal" without stretching that term into meaninglessness.

The fact that those religions have splintered in to all kinds of denominations and factions who fight each other shows that all religions are indeed tribal units.

The term is well suited for what we are talking about here which is our love of war.

Some even say that God equals war.

Please Google --- Blood Meridian - The Judge on War ("War is God") - Cormac McCarthy

--- and see what you think of that presentation.

Regards
DL

Of course religion can serve a tribal purpose, but that doesn't mean that tribalism (or the love of drama and war) is necessarily the driving force behind the founding of one. I find it very hard to believe that any of those things were in the minds of Calvin and Luther, for example.

[Mopsus]

There are two basic ways to capture a nation. Force of arms or control of the economy.

I do not know about Calvin by one of Martin Luther's main goal was to stop the flow of wealth from Germany to Rome. Indulgences was what he was attacking and trying to stop. He did not want Rome to control Germany's economy.

Do you have evidence that Luther's objection to indulgences was secular rather than spiritual?

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Sure, but it's hard to call Christendom and the Ummah "tribes" without (as I said earlier) stretching that term into meaninglessness.