My view on religious diversity is probably a bit radical. Despite being a Christian, I believe that religious diversity is mostly good. Conflict between different religions seems to add more chaos to an already chaotic world, but a certain degree of chaos is beneficial.

Imagine life with one religion or no religion for a second. What if God had simply revealed himself to everyone thousands of years ago (also revealing himself routinely in case anyone forgets) and many generations of people had simply accepted that the Jewish religion, for example, was the only true religion?

Campus is often rife with discussion on differing religions and the implications of God as creator or the world as naturalistic. This single religion scenario would take away much of the wonder and freedom to choose in life and may eventually lead to a paradise-like world where little to no conflict occurs.

In order to illustrate why my scenario is dull, it is useful to use a movie example. One of my favorite sci-fi series is “The Matrix Trilogy.” The movie is fraught with religious allegory and allusion.

Just looking at the three main characters’ names illuminates some of the underlying meaning the writers of “The Matrix” were hoping to portray. Neo’s last name, Anderson, translates to son of man because the root “andros” means man in New Testament Greek. Jesus often refers to himself as the “Son of Man” in the New Testament gospels. Morpheus was commonly known to be the god of dreams or sleep in medieval times. Trinity is fairly obvious and probably alludes to the holy trinity of Christianity.

Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are the three main characters in The Matrix that take a firm stand against the machines.

“The Matrix” uses more than religious symbolism, the movie uses Neo as a postmodern messiah in order to generate discussion on the state of society in the postmodern and technological era, according to an article published in the Journal of Religion and Film at the University of Nebraska at Omaha by Mark D. Stucky.

The scene that illuminates the scenario I envisioned of a world unified under one religion would be strikingly similar to the paradise matrix that was the first matrix created by the architect, or matrix creator, in “The Matrix Trilogy.”

“Did you know that the first ‘Matrix’ was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy?” Agent Smith asked Morpheus. “It was a disaster. No one would accept the program.”

A world with only one religion would be very close to the “ideal” world that occurred in the paradise matrix. People would probably get fat and become lazy, similar to what happens in “Wall-E” when all of the humans leave earth and meander through space on a luxury spaceship.

The absence of religious diversity would stymy creativity because there wouldn’t be anything to think about in terms of metaphysics. What would people talk about with their friends in dorm rooms late at if not creation or origins of man and animal? Everyone would know how the world was created and by whom it was created.

 Even video games would be less fun. Templars and politics fueled by religious strife wouldn’t have existed so the likelihood of “Assassin’s Creed” ever being created is unlikely. All of the “Call of Duty” games based on World War II wouldn’t exist.

Granted, many of the extremely bloody wars would never have occurred, but with the absence of negativity and difficult problems comes the absence of positive emotion and the solving of difficult problems. People would still experience good and bad emotions, but there would be much less intense emotions to experience.

Freedom of religion and freedom of belief can only be good. The number of different religions may cause a lot of war and confusion, but the alternative to having multiple religions, that I have described here, implies that one of the largest choices in our lives that influence how we live in the world and understand it, is taken away.