Unity Through Faith?

[Thumpalumpacus]

It breaks my heart, what has happened to Iran in the last forty-five years.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's no problem with faith or unity through faith just because the abrahamics are dogshit at it. Pagan societies managed to bring together people of wildly disparate god beliefs for ten thousand years before the current crop of theists came along, a blink of the eye ago in the history of religion, and failed to unite people who believe in just one.

It's not even difficult to understand how this happened. Monotheism, as an institution, is about the standardization of the sacred, and the centralization of authority. The dumbing down of our experience of the numinous so that it can be handled and manipulated in discrete units towards the whims of whatever ruler invokes it's name - because..you see...in monotheism..there can be no dissenting opinion. There is no one else to appeal to when the king on the throne of earth or heaven is mad. The monotheistic tradition is in a battle with itself, in this, bursting at the seems of the bag it's attempted to sew us all into - forever locked into scourging it's own of the various things it deems superstition, heresy, and idolatry that arise from within it, insanely premised as an external existential threat. All of that, to facilitate the exportation of violence, in order to gain exclusive control over resources. A deed and title to the land and it's people as possessions. People who truly cannot be governed except by their consent - and all of this.... weirdness....just a byproduct of manufacturing that consent.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I am surprised this has to be written out, since I consider it rather obvious, but science has united humanity with better methods for:
farming,
medicine, 
mental health,
construction,
transportation,
communication, 
education,
national security,
and tackling emerging problems, like climate change.

Through all of these developments, science has also demonstrated how inadequate cultural traditions have been in developing the same advances.

Further, science has developed a unified and detailed picture of reality based on evidence, which includes:
stellar evolution,
biological evolution,
the standard model,
chemistry,
general relativity,
quantum mechanics,
sociology and psychology,
and even history, especially big history.

In contrast, religious differences remain one of the root causes of disunity in combination with the tribalism of evolutionary psychology.

With all due respect, I don't really understand how any of that stuff has united people.

Seriously? You’re going to use a communications medium to say you don’t understand how communication unites people?

Boru

[Alan V]

With all due respect, I don't really understand how any of that stuff has united people.

Seriously? You’re going to use a communications medium to say you don’t understand how communication unites people?

Boru

Perhaps Ahriman thinks that humanity is too fractious to be united by anything.

That may be true to whatever extent, but I personally think that we are much more united by factual information than by lies based on imagination and the desire to feel superior to others.  For instance, that's why Trump is so divisive.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Seriously? You’re going to use a communications medium to say you don’t understand how communication unites people?

Boru

Perhaps Ahriman thinks that humanity is too fractious to be united by anything.

That may be true to whatever extent, but I personally think that we are much more united by factual information than by lies based on imagination and the desire to feel superior to others.  For instance, that's why Trump is so divisive.

Uniting people doesn’t necessarily mean uniting humanity.

Boru

[Ahriman]

Seriously? You’re going to use a communications medium to say you don’t understand how communication unites people?

Boru

Perhaps Ahriman thinks that humanity is too fractious to be united by anything.

That may be true to whatever extent, but I personally think that we are much more united by factual information than by lies based on imagination and the desire to feel superior to others.  For instance, that's why Trump is so divisive.

Why would people be unified by factual information? Humans thrive on imagination and the desire to feel superior to others.

[The Grand Nudger]

Imagination and fact are not mutually exclusive, and it's not hard to find any number of ways large and small that the application of human imagination to problems supported by factual information about those problems has a strong correlation with thriving in a non novel sense. If, by thrive, you simply mean we enjoy a thing..and we treat imagination as antithetical to fact or utility-in-fact, then yeah..sure, but you aren't saying much and it certainly isn't the case example of human flourishing - we have a far more accurate term for that. Folly. To wit, shit we do when we're already doing so well...presumably by skillfully acting on factual information in other areas of our life... that we don't need our actions in a particular case or time to be fact based or have any specific purpose in fact.

Don't get me wrong. Been there, done that, had a great time, too....for sure.

[arewethereyet]

Unity through faith - many people need to be a part of a group. Religions offer that. The people don't even need to believe in or follow the tenets of the particular flavor of faith. The important thing is to be able to say they are XYZ. It's a label most people can understand. Saying something like "I'm a Christian" is too open-ended. Saying that you are a member of a particular sect is more descriptive.

[Alan V]

Why would people be unified by factual information? Humans thrive on imagination and the desire to feel superior to others.

And I thought I was misanthropic.

[Ahriman]

Why would people be unified by factual information? Humans thrive on imagination and the desire to feel superior to others.

And I thought I was misanthropic.

Nothing you've posted gives me the impression that you would be misanthropic.