what,me worry? wrote:So, here's an interesting idea
I'm a Christian. I love Jesus, I love the Bible, etc etc
Most of the world practices Islam
What if, we all become Muslim on our own terms? We recognize there's one God and that Jesus and Muhammad exist as prophets
Could we accept on some scale, even the slightest modicum that we could live under one premise?
The trouble is, it's not "most of the world."
31% of the world are (at least nominally) Christian
24% of the world are (at least nominally) Muslim
16% are atheist or agnostic
15% are Hindu
7% are Buddhist
Beyond that, tons of communities are Jewish, Sikh, Jain, or practice their traditional religions
Even if you could close the gap between Christians and Muslims, what would that do for the 45% of the world who are neither of those?
But the news gets worse, because even these religions are not monolithic wholes. Among Christians, 50% are Catholic, 35% are Protestant, 15% are Orthodox or some other sect. Among Muslims, about 87% are Sunni, 11% are Shia, and there are also smaller sects. The rifts between Protestant and Catholic, and the rifts between Sunni and Shia, are in some ways just as wide as the rifts between Christianity and Islam. Christians fought brutal and bloody wars for hundreds of years over relatively minor points of disagreement. Today, Sunni and Shia are having their wars. I don't see much hope for closing the gap between any of these.
Really, the only hope for world peace is secular humanism. Once we can accept that religion is just entertaining nonsense, we can stop killing each other over it.