Has anyone really considered some of the conceptual issues? Our systems of belief tend to be the cause of our actions.
For example, would a spiritual absolute be an ideal, of wisdom and judgement, tribal affinity, whatever, from which we fell, or the essence of sentience, from which we rise? The fact we are aware, than what group we belong to.
Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic societies, because that's how the Ancients explained multiculturalism.
They were not ignorant of monotheism, but as there was no distinction between culture and civics, it equated with a monoculture. One people, one rule, one god.
The Romans adopted Christianity as the Empire was becoming firmly established and any reminders of the Republic were being shed, so it was a bit of a political branding exercise, picking the cool and edgy crowd as cover, with a bit of pantheism stuck in as the Trinity.
When the West went back to more populist forms of government, it required the separation of church and state, essentially culture and civics.
Monotheism is a very powerful concept, that as individuals, we are but cells in the larger organism. The hive mind and we all know the power of the crowd.
Yet organisms exist in ecosystems. Node in networks.
Nodes center around a core, like a pearl around a grain of sand. While networks can stretch to infinity.
They have to balance, otherwise the node will just fall into the eye of the storm, the black hole at the center, while the network will fade. It really is more yin and yang, than God Almighty.
Much of what makes modern Jewry was the diaspora, where that kindred spirit allowed them to become much of the network holding and connecting the nodes of European feudalism. The doctors, traders, bankers, intellectuals, the ones on the outside seeing the larger world, not just cocooned in particular tribal fiefdoms.
Now they have the Holy Land back, but with a religion that didn't also have to serve as a political system for the last couple thousand years, with all the cycles of convention and regeneration that social evolution requires.
Yes, Israel is strong now, but it is dependent on a United States that is rapidly inflating away the monetary social contract which enables it, as a melting pot of many cultures and not really a lot of deep seated beliefs, other than perpetual growth, even if it's based on compounding debt.
Sooner or later, the western hemisphere is going to retreat back from the Old World, to sort out its many contradictions and tensions. When the dollar does turn to confetti and the states start issuing their own currencies, the United States will not be so united.
Leaving Israel to deal with neighbors it hasn't exactly been neighborly toward.
