Religious pluralism was a basic stimulant of the rise of modern western democracy. I would like to say that it was essential for the rise of ancient Athenian democracy too, yet on that subject I am not well enough informed to make an opinion as I might about something like Socrates supporting oligarchy instead of democracy. It isn’t just a coincidence that societies in history with religious pluralism developed democracies before other nations with a more Catholic view of politics that remained true to feudalism, imperial monarchies and aristocratic social structures. Uniting individuals or princes to oppose monarchy or authoritarianism creates a natural draft of democracy to oppose tyranny.
Human social structures have their own dialectical dynamics that exist and operate rather independently of any rational or philosophical idea that is the purpose of the organization. It has the case that in modern history organizations may conflict with other organizations with the belief they are in opposition to ideas or philosophy when in fact it is nothing more than social organizations in conflict. Ideas and philosophies maybe examined in reasoned dialectic rather than conflict. People exist in organizations to secure their own personal living interests sometimes without more than ostensible, nominal belief in organizational philosophy. Organizations may adapt their operating philosophies to secular paradigms to increase their power or prosperity. Organizations have a life of their own that in the modern world are a basic cause of war.
Yet conflicting organizations centered around beliefs have been a driver in the historical development of democracy from societies that were previously monarchical or uniform. Religions may be associated with the organizational or ecclesiastic side and beliefs, philosophy and thought with the spiritual side. As ecclesiastical organizations differed interpreting scripture they organized and reformed in accordance to their ideas. Philosophical or theological pluralism stimulated organizational and ecclesiastical pluralism that grew in secular society too. In some cases as in Lutheran Germany, secession from the Catholic Hapsburg Imperial Empire grew with German princes sponsoring Protestant churches with the principalities eventually going to war with the Hapsburg Imperial, Catholic Empire and losing. Even so Protestant theological independence grew taking secular political separatism along with it. For a large part of human history free thinking individualism wasn’t allowed and religions need be in accord with the will of state political leadership. Religious tolerance only followed the growth of more democratic political systems, yet even today may not exist at all in some Muslim societies.
In the United States in social media modern atheists often write acerbically, hatefully of believers in spirit and have a nihilist attitude toward discussion about God. Atheists are an ad hoc anti-spiritual sect in conflict, fundamentally with the freedom of philosophical thought inclusive of contemplation of spiritual affairs or contingent modal logic extrapolation of the relationship of God to Multiverse parameters in regard to eternal being, quantum cosmology and so forth. Free thought differs from organizational dogma, and many atheist with evolution ideology are absolutely intolerant of free thought as it may bring more than purely materialist concepts into consideration.
An example is a digital universe. If the Universe is a digital simulation one has numerous questions concerning its relationship to God or Spirit in-itself (not just on a technical examination to discern if or where scripture supports the idea of the Word creating the Universe digitally) and to natural history; does a simulated universe trump a naturally evolved Universe because it might have been written in seven days by an advanced programmer in a form that appears within the simulation to have taken 13.2 billion years to evolve?
Philosophical contemplation is not restricted to particular lines of inquiry as popular organizational dogmatics might wish. Philosophy always reserves the right to reason and for individuals to think for themselves. Philosophy is a pluralistic procedure rather than one of simple, dogmatic monism, and one finds many philosophers ion societies that developed religious pluralism even within one sect.
Eastern societies brought numerous forms of Buddhism into existence. One wonders if the nihilist, absurdist core of Buddhism rather than belief in God reinforced monarchy necessarily rather than secular pluralism to match organizational, sectarian pluralism. Shi’a Islam developed from a dissent branch of Muhammadanism via Ali that also led to the Persian society that evolved the first modern Muslim democratic society or parliament until the U.S sponsored coup of 1954 ended it and restored an imperial government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwsVJb-ckqM
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