It is probably shocking to many people how ancient superstitions still affect big events in today's modern world. I would like to add modern superstitions to the last sentence.
The notion of Progress has almost become a Deity the last couple centuries. I mockingly call that point-of-view the "Whig Interpretation of History." You'd think that World Wars I and II would have weakened the blind faith in Progress.
Onto the World Wars, let's add the current genocide in Gaza. I wish I knew Israelis a bit better. But it seems as though they don't really worship Yahweh so much as they worship being Jewish. But what does it mean to be Jewish? To wear a cloth disk on your head's bald spot? To grow curly ringlets on the side of your head? Certain petty rules about food, unique national holidays, or speaking Hebrew?
Such things are interesting and help to put more variety into the world, but they seem too trivial to worship as a pseudo-deity. Jewish Israelis have essentially made a Moloch-like Deity out of tribalism or nationalism.
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| Moloch, from Wikipedia |
Then there are the Christian Zionists in the USA. They think they worship Yahweh and Yeshua, but in fact they worship their own quirky interpretation of the ancient scrolls. Perhaps they have never read a book about the history of Christianity and have no appreciation of how diverse the interpretations have been over the centuries.
Perhaps they are blind to that because they are Protestants. The Original Sin of Protestantism is the notion that the Bible can interpret itself. No book can.
Let's say that 1650 A.D. was the time period when European Christians stopped slaughtering each other over differing interpretations of the Bible, and decided to 'live and let live' over differing interpretations. That was almost 400 years ago. Despite 400 years of Progress, Christian Zionists are ready to excuse genocide in Gaza because of their quirky interpretation of a few verses in the ancient scrolls.
The current genocide in Gaza shows that Progress is a god with feet of clay.
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