If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.
It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.
Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability of marriage weaker.
It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.
I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society because they feel that there are going to be no rewards for them, if they stay.
When we are reflecting on terrorism we can grieve for many things we do and have done.
Any great organization can go through sectarian phases.
Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.
Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.
It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.
Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?
I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes the personality too.
Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.
The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.
Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.
I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.
Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications.
Islam is in principle egalitarian, and has always had problems with power.
Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.
Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.
Enclave life becomes very tense, Even when they do elect a leader, the factions remain, with the threat of splitting off.