Religion offers an opportunity to accentuate commonality. There is tremendous overlap between the major world faiths. If you’re arguing about religion, it probably means you WANT to argue. You have adopted a “My religion is right” position, which is childish.
The point here is to highlight how much we write onto our religions. There seems to be a common assumption that the major religions are monolithic and uniform. And that we derive our sense of morality from them. Both points of view are questionable.
There are two billion Christians in the world, and as a result there are two billion versions of Christianity in the world. All Christians are on the same page? Hardly. All Jews are in agreement? One need only spend about five minutes in Israel to disabuse you of that notion—I think five minutes would do it. Muslims are not supposed to drink alcohol; I know Muslims who drink like fish. They’re fine with it. Some of the most inveterate bigots I know are in church every Sunday, holding the door open for little old ladies, smiling nicely. Because the assumption is God is too stupid to discern their hypocrisy.
We likely write our morality onto our religions. We custom tailor them to suit (oof, unintended pun) our needs. We likely do not derive our morality from our religions. Humans showed signs of moral judgment about 45,000 years ago. The oldest religions we have right now are maybe at most 3,000 years old. Now, you don’t have to be really good at math to see there is a problem. Our morality is quite probably biological; it’s inherited and part of your genetic endowment.
Yes, we learn “values” from our parents and maybe our religions. But that’s fine-tuning what is already there. You learned manners and to not cut in line. You did not learn that you shouldn’t strangle an infant.
Morality is not learned. Values are. This is why there is very little moral disagreement in the world. I know that sounds deranged, but it’s true. People tend to disagree about values and value systems, not morality.
Values are cultural. Culture is transmitted among humans. It’s humans imitating other humans. The reason you quite likely are disinclined to rip a loud belch in a restaurant is cultural. Manners are cultural and vary society to society.
Our religions bear great resemblance to us: richly diverse on the outside, more or less identical on the inside. Yes, people dress differently, eat different food, and listen to different music across the world, but if one does a bit of traveling, one quickly sees how very similar people are region to region.
So, religions offer opportunities to spotlight commonality—think the Golden Rule. I would in turn argue that we commonly view them incorrectly.
