"We are a disease"

So far I've received exactly one comment on one post. I was delighted to get a comment... but I don't understand it. It did, however, include the observation that "we are a disease." I'm going to riff on that - it happens to coincide with a thought I've long harbored and never expressed publicly... well, my thought and the thought of the person who posted the comment are probably not the same, but at least I can riff on the words: "We are a disease."

Here goes: "Ethical monotheism is a disease from which the human race will be lucky to recover." I use the phrase "ethical monotheism" to identify the three great Religions of the the Book - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam... and to distinguish these from the monotheism of, say, Akhenaten, who promoted sun-worship.

Each of the three great Religions of the Book claims to have THE EXCLUSIVE TRUTH. As a result, each is, well... exclusive. This exclusivity implies intolerance... and, though I don't think it's a necessary concomittant of this exclusivity, each is to some extent anti-rational. You can't argue with someone who has the revealed truth. Maybe you can in theory, but not in practice. They have the TRUTH.

It doesn't seem to bother any of the adherents that the particular brand of Revealed Truth they accept is largely dependent on where they were born. There's a really good chance that if you were born in Saudi Arabia, your Book is the Qur'an and you're of the Sunni persuasion; Tehran? - again, likely Qur'an, but this time Shi'ite. If you're from Winfield, Kansas, USA, it's a good bet you're some flavor of Christian... probably Protestant. Born in Tel Aviv? I bet you're an Orthodox Jew - maybe not practicing. How come G-d reveals Himself so differently based on locality? The accident of birth seems to be the primary determining factor. If you happen to have been born in Shanghai, you probably don't understand ANY of this!

Yeah, there are cases of conversion from one Book to another, but it's not the rule.

Full disclosure: I sing in a Lutheran church choir.

The three Books - and their interpretations by believers - are mutually exclusive. They cannot honestly be reconciled. They can't all be THE TRUTH.

Me? I'm agnostic. There may be a G-d, who knows? He may have revealed himself through history. He may care about us. BUT - He cannot have given us three mutually exclusive TRUTHS.

Believers cannot agree with me. They have THE TRUTH.

As stated above: ethical monotheism is a disease from which the human race will be lucky to recover.