Love Jesus to beat tribalism.

Christianity

Personal opinion I'm tempted to fall into. Consider this absolutely not holistic or even necessarily truthful retelling of history that I've come to think of as reality:

Nrolithic times- disparate groups living in small tribes.

Modern times- The nation state and monotheism make us not tribal. This breeds greater acceptance and (at least) a propelling of the doctrine that tribalistic (us and them) thinking is wrong and some sort of virtue exists for all humans, whether they're in your immediate social group or not.

Modern liberalism- we're actually still just disparate tribes and the doctrine isn't true so find your tribe or die alone since all lone monkeys die.

Like even if biological predispositions exist for this kind of thinking, having a sort of doctrine on the scene to say "That's how you naturally think and how you naturally think isn't actually what is morally good every time." Still seems honestly worthwhile. I fail to see how being more neolithic is "progressive" and not regressive. Zizek says to remember how the incorrect father is still right. It's like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Even if some things about Christian religion and community were hypocritical or just wrong-- it still seems like a lot of people want to just revert to "the natural order." As if the best things about humans isn't when we escape a natural order.

How would true atheists propose that we curb tribalism without a kind of doctrine on the scene that says it's wrong and everyone has a kind of worth to them even if they aren't in your tribe? Or do you guys think it's just fine and natural to think that way and there is no escape from nature there?

Posted Feb 22, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

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