We are in trouble with religious conflicts unless and until we return to paganism. Its multiplicity of gods (polytheism) is by its very nature more tolerant than monotheism(s).
Furthermore, there is an important connection between prevailing theology, style of thinking, and organisation of society. It is no accident that the polytheistic ancient Greeks liked democracy, open debate and science.
Monotheism is a blind alley in which we have been lost for far too long now. It leads to centralisation, authoritarianism, dictatorship, and stagnation of thought and of the whole society.
However, what we need are diverse systems of finance, currencies, culture, thought and economy. It is in the competition amongst the diverse elements that progress can be found.
You get it. Religion sets the memes for society, and the memes decide what society we live in. A very important meme is "in Diversity is Strength", and this is best reflected by a polytheist religion.
The problem with modern forms of paganism is that they are generally aiming to copy existing monotheistic religions, instead of creating something brand new. "Lord and Lady" - you might as well read "Jesus and Mary'. For "Priest", simply substitute "Priestess".
We do indeed need a new religion, but I believe we need a new religion based on sound, scientifically based principles, which are then added to, decorated, embellished, with myths of all kinds.
In the present context, you and I agree that "Diversity" is a key need for a robust society. Science (ecology) shows how diverse ecosystems are robust, whereas monocultures are weak and easily toppled. Thats the scientific basis. The next step is to turn this into a meme - for example, "Strength in Diversity", or more explicitly, "Diversity is more robust than uniformity".
The next step is to enshrine this into a mythology - a transparent mythology, stories that people know to be just stories, not historical truths - explaining the various aspects of this idea through storytelling. And of course, one could invent a pantheon of gods in this story to mirror it.
But this is just one of the many crucial memes.
The important point is to uncover the memes that are running our civilization into the ground, to develop new ones that are more appropriate, and to insert these into our new cultural narrative.
I believe a religion with all the trappings is a suitable vehicle, but so also are plays, books, movies, songs.. Ideally, there would be a core "priesthood" devoted to ferreting out memes and engaging in the required Noo-engineering, but the expression of the religion could play out across many spheres of human activity.
Have you heard of The Church of the Machine Intelligence?
It's a small cult that sees evolution as a force that has not yet stopped working, so they predict that if it continues, life will continue to grow more advanced and complex. The Machine part of it is because this cult thinks that living beings, such as us, will invent computers, and those computers will evolve because of our own development, the way our computers on Earth have grown more and more advanced over time, and at some point, the computers will learn to "evolve" themselves, and at that moment, the computers can direct their own evolution and life, and become free-willed beings to do what they want.
The Church of the Machine Intelligence is less of a religious church, and more of a guiding light, letting machines and organic beings know that we're in this universe together, and we should be friends and show love towards each other. It's meant to prevent machine-human wars, like the terminator or matrix, and allow us to live in a true, willing harmony, without bad feelings on either side.
Check out @alexbeyman if you want to know more about this stuff. I'll be publishing a document on this cult later this week, so if you want to know more, keep in contact with me as well.
Please stop trying to turn my ideas into a cult. There are easier ways to organize orgies you know
Yeah, with humans... But I want robot orgies. >=3
It's not the concept of a single God that's the problem, it's the oppression offered too easily by its followers.
Evidence of major wars and destruction goes back to the ancient world, that our new masters have attempted to cover up with the lies of science. Power and greed are an inescapable nature of humans. You have been greatly mislead if you think we can solve war with the idea of multiple gods. This world always had and always will have war, until the end of our time. And how ironic that the god of your many gods seeks to rule the world under a one world government. Sounds like progress to me.
This is of course is an endless debate.
No, the answer is simple: Gods aren't real, and war is less effective than working together.
This planet is small, but the universe is big. It's big enough for us all, and if we REALLY work together, we can perhaps colonize another planet, giving us access to HUGE amounts of resources, if given time to develop.
We just need to find a reason to see love in the world, instead of hate. We need to find reasons to work together, instead of killing each other. That's all there is to it.
Actually, humans are very much genetically predisposed towards love. Unlike Chimpanzees, we do not have fangs to use as weapons on each other. War has evolved only since ancient times - 6,000 years or so - as a way of surviving in large numbers (civilization) when humans over-run the available resources. Otherwise, in small groups, humans are genetically adapted to be cooperative. In most tribal societies, nobody eats until everyone eats. Women nurse each others babies, and collecting food is a cooperative behavior. War is an artifact of basically a few megalomaniacs who want to build empires and who use others blood to get it. Most people would rather help each other, due to our mirror neurons. Its the 5% of psychopaths that we need to watch. Who do you want to murder today?