Interestingly the intolerance of other religions that the doctrines of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic line demands have come to dominate the world as what "religion" is. The ancient world's case seems different, and the Hebrews seems to be recognized by their ancient neighbors as weird, intolerant, strong-headed extremists. (Hence the horrible treatment they recieved throughout history and the vengeful nature of Jehovah in the Old Testament.) I wonder how the world would be different if the pagan religions thrived rather than Christianity, Islam, and Jewist faiths.

Though the monotheistic nature of these religions are clearly both their strong points and the source of their violent history. And such that history could hardly turn different as these religions would win anyway against the pagan religions. Their resolute and firm standpoints (which prevents, at least from the public mind, change "done by man") looks to the masses like a powerful God's absoluteness, and therefore more believable than the pagan traditions before them. The polytheistic pagan religions would allow for much more tolerance and adaptation (like the Roman copies of Greek gods, or how they fit in the worship of Isis, an ancient Egyptian goddess, into the Roman society) and yet they would seem much more "artificial."

Nonetheless, one could not deny that organized religions - by that I include the traditions of ancient religions as well as our modern ones - were responsible, in part, in the foundation of society. They provided reason to live other than just for the sake of surviving in the age where the ideals of humanity and human rights are virtually nothing but a lone scholar's "rant"; they provided a united reason, using human's superstitious weakness for their own good, to establish social hierarchy needed to base a society on; they provided spirituality and morality codes to prevent the downfall of society in the hands of the irresponsible humans. Though the modern religion - organized ones, that is - are dominated by "One God" doctrines that simply leads to intolerance of other religions, and an external conflict of spirituality tends to be especially violent, with the two sides fighting to the death when they were sure that they are the ones that's "right."