How it goes is when people started living in groups they lived in small tribes, meaning that everyone they knew was somehow related to them, thus going against someone was breaching the "selfish gene" paradigm.
But that also created the tribal mentality which frequently meant that robbing and raping members of other tribes is ok. And that's why the Bible, which was written by people with the tribal mentality, tells people it's wrong to kill and rape people of your own tribe, but it's allowed to kill, rob and rape people of other tribes.
And you can see how the tribal mentality still prevails today and people need to be "fooled" that they are of the same tribe like that they are members of one nation. And religion can play into that, so you can have the claim that the people are of one religion, but that is rather limited since people are of different religions.
The other way to vent out that animosity towards other tribes is sports. That's why you have people playing baseball or soccer against the other village or nation - to show them in a peaceful way that they are somehow better than them without going into war with them.
But that also created the tribal mentality which frequently meant that robbing and raping members of other tribes is ok. And that's why the Bible, which was written by people with the tribal mentality, tells people it's wrong to kill and rape people of your own tribe, but it's allowed to kill, rob and rape people of other tribes.
And you can see how the tribal mentality still prevails today and people need to be "fooled" that they are of the same tribe like that they are members of one nation. And religion can play into that, so you can have the claim that the people are of one religion, but that is rather limited since people are of different religions.
The other way to vent out that animosity towards other tribes is sports. That's why you have people playing baseball or soccer against the other village or nation - to show them in a peaceful way that they are somehow better than them without going into war with them.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
