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Imagine you are suddenly thrust into a world where you and everyone else in this world has a unique religion. Everyone has their own moral code, and everyone has a unique way of demonstrating that moral code. There is a finite number of moral principles, so there can be a lot of overlap in this area. On the other hand, there is an unlimited number of ways to exercise your beliefs, so everyone can easily see the differences between themselves and the rest.

This would be a rather strange world, but it would also be an extremely dangerous world as soon as everyone figured out that some of the people had within their religion an extreme intolerance of other religions. Some people may have as a part of their religious practice the forced conversion of non-believers. Others may look at everyone as fair game as far as murder. Some could be cannibals. Quickly everyone would realize they are in an extremely dangerous world.

At the same time, some people would figure out that their moral code is pretty close to the code of some other people. They may have different practices, like feast days and which animals they sacrifice on those days, but when it comes to the important things they are on the same page. While these people may not want to change their practices, they will quickly see the benefit in cooperation and compromise. They can team up to defend themselves against the cannibals and killers.

While mutual defense is one reason to cooperate, another reason is to create a mechanism to identify those with whom they can cooperate and those who must either be avoided or defeated. You cannot get anything done if you are never sure if the guy coming down the road is harmless or dangerous. Quickly this new world would sort itself into tribes of people with similar moral codes cooperating with one another in order to avoid being prey to other people.

At this point, these loose associations for mutual defense will undergo a transformation in order to work. Some will fall into disarray and the members will be picked off by other groups through conversation or predation. Some groups will reorient themselves into a unified organization in order to convert the rest. Others will do the same in order to resist being converted by others. In other words, the world of individual religions will quickly give way to a world of group religion.

It is not an accident that this religious model follows the same pattern as urban street gangs in the last century. Organized crime was not just based on ethnicity. They relied on a moral code to hold them together. It was not enough to be Italian, Jewish, or Irish to be a gangster. You had to adhere to a way of life. The reason these people thought of their fellow gangsters as family is they shared the same moral code. It is also why they would kill one another. The code was bigger than men.

Morality in any human society tends toward monopoly. In our fictional world of individual religions, the first thing to happen is compromise for mutual benefit resulting in a consolidation of moral codes into moral tribes. Those tribes, if they could not physically separate to prevent conflict, would inevitably come into conflict until one tribe was able to dominate the other. Barring geographical barriers, in time this imaginary would have one moral code and one way to express it.

There is another thing going on here other than mutual protection. A moral code only works if you believe it is correct. This means you must think other moral codes are incorrect or you are leaving open the chance that your code is wrong. Intolerance of competing morale codes and religious expression is a requirement of faith, for no other reason than to reinforce your own faith. By definition, a moral code must be intolerant of other moral codes in order to remain a moral code.

At this point it is tempting to think this is wrong because in the real world you get along well with the Hindu guy across the street. You are not a Hindu, but you are fine with him being a Hindu and he seems to be fine with you being Jewish. In reality, the reason you two get along is you are both sublimating your religion to the moral code of American society which says you must accept different secondary religions. One part of your primary religion is pluralism, whether you know it or not.

It is also why the people in charge aggressively hunt down people who hold beliefs that they see as dangerous to their beliefs. They automatically view white nationalists, for example, as violent, because from their perspective, people with such contrary beliefs must be violent. The beliefs of the white nationalist are incompatible with the moral code of the new religion. As we saw in the example above, the inevitable consequence must be confrontation between the two camps.

This is what makes the present situation so dangerous. The moral code of people putting child molesters and crossdressers into the schools is incompatible with the moral code of parents. As we saw in our simple example, they must always see one another as hostile because there can be no compromise. There is no middle ground between those who think men should be allowed to mutilate children and those who think children must be protected from those men.

It is also what makes the new religion so aggressive. Much of what defines it is the belief that it must conquer the moral codes of other groups. To tolerate dissent is to question the one true faith. To aggressively stamp out dissent is a public act of piety that reinforces belief. Not only is peaceful coexistence not possible, but peaceful separation is also not acceptable to the new religion. In this clash between moral codes, the only question that matters is who will overcome whom?

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