I suppose anyone who was anti-Zealot, back in the day, would have been antisemite?

If you really want history, it would seem that Bronze Age tribalism was getting past its sell-by date, when the Romans came through with the whole Empire thing.

Now the Zionists seem determined to relearn the same lesson, that it is a big world out there.

The problem with monotheism is that ideals are not absolutes. It is a category error.

Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The core codes, creeds, heroes, narratives at the gravitational center of every culture are ideals.

The universal, on the other hand, is the elemental.

So a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell.

The light shining through the film, than the stories playing out on it.

Morality is not absolute, as it couldn't be transgressed, if it was. Like a temperature below absolute zero.

Morals are the ideals, beliefs, behaviors, codes, habits that enable a healthy society. A big part of which is accommodating the neighbors.

Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. Because karma. What goes round, comes round.

Turn the other cheek. Because two wrongs don't make a right and if there are no circuit breakers on the feedback loops, it all spirals down the drain.

Good and bad are not some cosmic conflict, between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience.

So while culture is the stories told around the campfire, nature is some enormous computer process, that doesn't always come up with the answers we want to hear, but which we probably need to learn.

If your whole shtick is how special you are and everyone else are animals, it is the sort of thing that gets you beat up on the playground. It's called narcissism.

Given we are no longer fighting this out with bronze tipped spears and chariots, maybe our cultural beliefs need to evolve along with the technology.

Or maybe sacrifice a few more red heifers.