(April 26, 2018 at 1:34 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:You can find religious brutality in our entire history as a species globally aimed in all directions.
Actually, it is a monotheistic perversion. Generally speaking the ancients did not do it. The Romans were famous for incorporating the gods of a conquered area into their own pantheon. When the Greeks moved East they ran into the Zoroastrians in Persia and seem to have spread their ideas via Hellenism in a number of cases. They might conquer territory and kill people but it was usually simple greed or expansionist tendencies. Its roughly akin to when the religitards say "Stalin killed millions to advance atheism." No, he didn't. He killed millions who resisted communism/collectivization. That is somewhat different than Charlesmagne who executed 4,500 pagans because they refused to become xtians.
When the Egyptians overran Canaan they did not obliterate the Canaanite pantheon. They built temples to their own gods in their primary garrison town of Bet Shean but they didn't give a rat's ass what the Canaanites worshiped. Egyptian religion was for Egyptians. It wasn't for export. In the Amarna library of the 14th century BC the ruler of "Jerusalem" was called Abdi-Heba which means "Servant of Heba." Heba was a Hurrian (Syrian) goddess but the Egyptians didn't care. They put him in charge.
Name me one point in history worldwide, where polytheism or monotheism didn't have conflict, even within the same umbrella label.
Even the Egyptians depicted their conquests in war and praised their gods in those mythologies, just as the Greeks and Romans did.
The only thing one can argue in all of human history, one could find one more tolerant leader at a certain period than another.
If you are arguing that monotheism made things worse, that might be a better argument, but even prior to that polytheism worldwide had it's conflicts.
Point is, if Christians and Jews and Muslims were all wiped off the planet right now, you would still be dealing with a social species grouping and fighting each other.
If our planet were a majority atheist, same thing, we'd still be fighting over resources.
