Such as our mythology that all people are equal before the law.

All governments and such are based upon some mythology. Individuals hold their own mythologies.

In my opinion, the current level of mid-eastern nations is a result of their mythology + modern weapons. In medieval times, they were more advanced than the "Western" societies.

Religion is just one of the mythologies an individual carries. That is why we have "good" muslims and "bad" muslims. That is why we can have "good" kings and "bad" kings.

I can hear the angry e-mails clattering into my inbox already. Derb has sold out to multiculturalism! He thinks Islam is just as good as Christianity! I haven't, and I don't.

:)

I don't feel sure, in fact, that the teachings of a religion have any necessary consequence for the destinies of believer communities.

There is hope that this one will achieve enlightenment.

What is really important in determining the destinies and character of peoples is culture, tradition, ingrained folkways.

Yes. What I call the "mythologies" of the people. Shared and individual.

Most of the time, religion does not so much mould those things as wrap itself around them.

Rather, the individuals (which form the society and the "culture") are a synthesis of their various mythologies. It is impossible to predict the behaviour of the individual from any single mythology.

On balance, though, we are better off with religion than without it. As bad as we may sometimes be with it, without it we should be scarcely human.

So, atheists are "scarcely human"? I know very nice atheists. I know very vile "Christians".

Religion does not make you a better person.

Religion does not make your society a better society.

The reason for this is that "better" just doesn't exist. There are things you, personally, value more or like more than others. So you will view systems that provide those things as "better" than systems that do not provide those things.

A coherent and well-established religion like Islam is an asset to the human race, with the potential to soften the hearts and enlighten the minds of believers.

The same can be said of Christianity. Or Buddhism. Or any other mythology.

By the same token, a religion can be used to "justify" any action, no matter how deplorable.

A few generations later it was ending the slave trade, providing spiritual fuel for a mighty commercial civilization, and bringing education and medicine to places that never had either.

But it was also used to support the slave trade. There are numerous references to slaves in the Bible. Many of them are positive. Don't forget to follow the law when your slave girl is bearing your child.

Rather, I think that "all people are equal before the law" was more to blame for ending slavery. It just took a while to get that sufficiently ingrained in society's mythology.

If we can remember the first, and persuade them of the second, there might be some prospect of cutting off significant support to the legions of glittering-eyed Koran-waving murderers the world is currently infested with, and of averting the destructive clash that we are all, slowly but surely, coming to believe inevitable.

In other words, we should seek to alter their personal mythologies to more closely approximate our own. Or, at least to allow the various societies to live together without warfare.

Nice. But he fails to account for one thing.

Limited resources.

People will, eventually, clash over the limited resources they have available.

When that happens, the minor differences between the societies are used to "justify" the war which is based upon nothing more than greed.

In the mid-east, there isn't much in the way of resources.

But there is oil. Under the ground. That ground is controlled by various nations.

Remove the muslim from the society that is trying to justify its greed for oil and you'll find a person just as his aunt did. Nice and friendly.

Individuals and societies are a synthesis of the various mythologies they have been exposed to and the basic human drives (greed, sloth, etc).

There is hope for that one. He can attain enlightenment.

He's started down the road to enlightenment.

That's far more than most will ever even consider.

You say:

That wasn't intended as a global truth, and you know it. That one jerk was talking about himself. Some faiths are good for some people some of the time.

Now, what was actually said was:

On balance, though, we are better off with religion than without it. As bad as we may sometimes be with it, without it we should be scarcely human.

Note the use of "we" in that statement and the "on balance" phrase. That seems like a "global truth" to me.