The ancient world is gone, and the views on life our ancestors had have almost disappeared from our collective conscious. Our ancestors, who hypothesized more than they experimented, did not know the advanced science known to mankind now. The current day is as reliant on mass media and on assorted gadgets in the same way that Ancient Civilization relied on an agricultural center to thrive.

It is in no way surprising that the way they thought and the way we think are fundamentally different from the foundation upwards, and the growth of science and of knowledge is the primary contributor to this state.

But while religion has also been impacted by the development of the sciences, the most important shift of religion occurred independently of science.

Once upon a time, there were great nations throughout the world. Each nation had its own chief god or set thereof, and none were identical to those of another nation. The god often became an embodiment of what a conclave stood for, a symbol of the nation that merged with the conscious of the nation itself. The polis of Athens took Athena for its symbol, Babylonia had Marduk as her champion, Moab held close to Chemosh, and such happened for every nation under the sun.The idea of a “chosen nation” is hardly a Jewish one, it is one enabled by the existence of tying god and country together. The settled nation is the strongest human institution in the early ancient world, and that institution will not be the “collective of nations” for a long time yet, neither does the concept of a Diaspora exist. As a result of that, any successful god latches onto something successful (such as the powerful nation) to be successful. It is a mutual relationship between the two.

Unfortunately, even if the gods themselves love peace, in being the banner of a nation, they will have to thirst for blood as part of their quasi-abusive relationship known as god and country. Not only does the god gain renown in this manner, but also one god declares war on other gods in the same way nations make war with each other. In the Biblical Book of Judges, for example, which tells times in which fairly disorganized nationhood flourished, the gods of the invaders declare war on the One G-d of the Hebrews.

From situations such as these the first religious wars were born as wars between gods—although there would have been wars just the same with or without the gods present.

A turnabout happens with the advent of multiple nations taking on the same religion. Though it is vague exactly when in human history it happens, and to what degree, the modern religious war—once a vestige—has evolved into something abominable in its own right.

But it is the symbiosis with nations, and not the religions themselves, that spurred the idea of violent religious traditions, which sadly something remained violent in those still stuck in antiquated days in which god and country were inseparable. We in the modern world, upon which religion has passed beyond the stages of national gods and their wars, should realize that this phase is no longer

G-d and Country may be an unbeatable team, as Luis Bunuel put it, but it is not G-d that facilitates the need to break all records for oppression and bloodshed. It is the need of mankind to break itself into nations, who in turn demand their sacrifice in blood—even if there were no god to serve as the nation’s herald.