religion originally helped to seperate people into their tribal groups, to establish who is "us" and who is "them". This was neccessary for territorial and reasons and to help decide who should share the resources of your tribe. But in a modern world where any one person has multiple identities and belongs to many "tribes", how should religion come into play? Many modern religions have rules and regulations which may come directly in conflict with one's other beliefs, and religious identity may clash with one's other interests and identities. Which identity should win out, trump your other "tribes", and determine in who's pack you belong?

While I imaging that most people see this question as overly simplistic and "black and white", thinking that surely a civilized person may have more than one identity, that society can handle a degree of uncertainty, but when I look around me, I see that this is not quite true. It is a matter of enormous difficulty, for example, to identify as both a Catholic and a homosexual. They are both identities, each have a respective group and a respective set of conflicting expectations and stereotypes which are hard for the public to ignore. While an individual may grow to be comfortable with their conflicting beliefs and shape them in order to make them fit, this tailoring is not so easy of the rest of their groups. With membership in a group, their is an expectation that they will follow the same rules, share the same general beliefs. If one member is cutting and reshaping those beliefs, is he or she still part of the group? How does one decide, in this modern day where choice is possible, where loyalties lie? Religion is no longer our only way of defining beliefs, but it still holds enormous force and to alter it often surprises or angers its members. The example of extreme Catholics and homosexuals is particularly obvious, because often if a member of the catholic "tribe" finds out another member is homosexual, they attempt to "save" that person, thus removing them from the homosexual tribe, or they cast them out of the catholic group. Either way removes the conflict. In general, People no matter how modern and civilized we are, want their beliefs to be unchallenged and untwisted. One cannot be on both the red team and the blue team. You must choose. In this way our civilizations and social choices have evolved much, much faster than our capacity for understanding.