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Human groups are defined more by the changes they undergo than by any continuity, but they nevertheless manage to create for themselves ancient identities thanks to their storytelling skills.
To be a European in 1618 meant to obsess about tiny doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants or between Calvinists and Lutherans, and to be willing to kill and be killed because of these differences. If a human being in 1618 did not care about these conflicts, that person was perhaps a Turk or a Hindu, but definitely not a European.
We need to enter rehab today. Not next year or next month, but today. ‘Hello, I am Homo sapiens, and I am a fossil-fuel addict.’
True, when you have multiple loyalties, conflicts are sometimes inevitable. But then who said life was simple? Deal with it.
Yet secular people are a minority. Billions of humans still profess greater faith in the Quran and the Bible than in the theory of evolution; religious movements mould the politics of countries as diverse as India, Turkey and the United States; and religious animosities fuel conflicts from Nigeria to the Philippines.
For example, some argue that the Troubles in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants were fuelled largely by class conflicts. Due to various historical accidents, in Northern Ireland the upper classes were mostly Protestant and the lower classes were mostly Catholic. Hence what seems at first sight to have been a theological conflict about the nature of Christ, was in fact a typical struggle between haves and have-nots.
religion doesn’t really have much to contribute to the great policy debates of our time. As Karl Marx argued, it is just a veneer.
