JRM assumes that:
theologians are stirring up armies.
And you claim you have NOTHING against religion?
As to sacrifice being a form of liberation when viewed as a good, that's a semantic difference that may be important to YOU because you eschew the idea of suffering to help someone else (instead of yourself) survive for a greater good.
You completely avoided the massive ME FIRST, "hedonisim is IT" 20th CENTURY PROPAGANDA EFFORT TO destroy RELIGION. Why? THAT IS the direct cause of our current woes, NOT the "theologians" you have an "anti-universalist" bone to pick with.
Sorry pal, ALL the wars have ALWAYS been about power and greed. The USE of religion by the leaders that don't believe in ANYTHING but themselves is the CAUSE of the "so-called" wars caused by theologians.
The new agers thought WRONGLY that, once people got off the "we must serve God to defeat and kill the infidels" our "great leaders" claim threaten our "religion", everything would be love and peace.
It hasn't worked out BECAUSE new age is about PLEASURE 24/7. Anybody into that is easily manipulated into avoiding pain no matter how many OTHER people get shafted with that pain, just as long as someone ESLSE is getting the PAIN.
Claiming that "we are all one" is all well and good IF, as the ant colony social insects do, you are willing to DIE for the greater good of the colony. It just will not work out for an ant to say, "we are all one" but refuse to function as a subset of the colony, now will it?
Almost all the ants are female. Sometimes the "wrong" ant gets pregnant. The other ants don't kill the pregnant (non-queen) ant. They hold it down for DAYS until it is WEANED of the hormones that will allow the development of offspring. Yeah, it's a sort of abortion practiced by ants.
No amount of rationalization can avoid the FACT that, IF THERE IS NO GOD, you need to accept the "fact" that dying without offspring is STUPID BEHAVIOR from a Social Darwinist perspective and ME FIRST, kill anybody in the way of my goodies, is SMART behavior. It's ALSO "smart" to PRETEND religiosity in order to fool people into dying for a cause that counters self preservation "wisdom". THAT is the real reason for wars dressed up historically as "religious" wars.
Religions certainly have been USED to divide and conquer through GUILE, not based on the tenets of monotheism about the brotherhood of man and our responsibility to care for ALL of God's creation. People who don't believe in anything but ME FIRST have ALWAYS been the ones that fomented "religious" wars for the purpose of satisfying THEIR greed while cleverly claiming a "devotion" to doing "God's will".
So now we have a "let's have fun forever"
propagandized population the is, granted
, HARD to convince to go die for a greater cause.
That's the upside of hedonism and ME FIRST FOREVER.
The downside is that the population won't move a finger to stop tyranny until it hits them personally.
It's the perfect
'divide and conquer until it's too forking late to do anything about it' strategy.
In the sixteenth century a population dominated by ME FIRSTERS would have certainly prevented a lot of "religious wars". But now that MACHINES do MOST of the killing and a handful of ME FIRSTER people in deep underground bunkers can unleash nuclear holocaust while being assured of living out their lives in comfort with plenty of food, we are in DEEP S H I T.
When someone says to me, "Peace and love, brother. We are all one so your death is, in the overall scheme of this grand and glorious simulacrum multiverse, not that big a deal",
I trfanslate that as: SORRY PAL, I HAVE NO VALID REASON TO SACRIFICE OR DIE FOR YOU.
ME FIRST is the problem that will destroy Homo Sap if the willingness to sacrifice oneself for a greater good does not prevail. If everyone believes that there IS NO GREATER GOOD than "survival of the apex predator" , we have had it.
theologians are stirring up armies.
Ka said
I think the problem is more that the laity doesn't listen to their theologians.