I think both the stoics and Buddhism were definitely on to something.
I haven't studied other religions to much but I am dead sure there are timeless pieces of advice.
My opinion, and I stress opinion, is that much of the world's religions offered a way of life that attempted to reduce violence, illness and suffering.
Even kosher and halal, thinking about it, could have been a recognition that these foods can lead to death, especially in a time when germ theory and proper cooking and hygiene methods were not developed. Since disease was associated with evil, it makes sense that "God declares these unclean".
Plus, what would you speculate if you didn't have the knowledge of how the universe, the planets and life, including us, developed? In that case, a creator provides the fewest assumptions.
> I think the same is true for Christianity too
Disagree, concerning the Abrahamic religions, as what is good is rarely original, and what is original is rarely good:
1. What is good (golden rule, some of the 10 commandments) is not very original. The golden rule has appeared in ancient Greece (Thales), China (Confucius), etc. half a millennium before Christianity, and other places independently. By contrast, Stoa and Buddhism were, I'd venture, among the first to arrive at and codify certain substantial insights that constitute large parts of their teachings.
2. What is original is mostly fairly absurd, if looked at dispassionately. If you strip Christianity of the superstitions, its essence is basically gone.
Just as a small example: it is still current position of the Catholic Church that the eucharist is actual transformation in substance of wine and bread into actual blood and flesh of Christ. (There was a (possibly apocryphal) case in Germany of a vegetarian asking whether he could participate in the communion, and he was told that he could not as a vegetarian, because it IS flesh.) If you erroneously believe that it's purely symbolic, you'd be subject to the punishment of anathema (which is worse than excommunication), if the Church were consistent with its teachings.
> religions offered a way of life that attempted to reduce violence, illness and suffering.
Yes, at the time. But not today.
> what would you speculate if you didn't have the knowledge of how the universe, the planets and life, including us, developed? In that case, a creator provides the fewest assumptions.
Yes, at the time. But not today.
In that sense, Stoa and Buddhism have aged better than the Abrahamic religions, maybe because they were more empiric.
2. I'm not preaching. I was brought up Catholic and learned enough to reject it. Catholicism and the actions of that church and other splinters are fundamentally at odds with what Jesus actually preached - love your neighbour. Somehow, it was ok to burn your neighbour alive if they did not believe Jesus was God, which the rule did not mention. I am not a Catholic today - there is too much hypocrisy. My assertion was that these, regardless of what we know now, were misguided hypotheses that had mixtures of valuable advice along with ideas that we now know are wrong. The structure built on top of that is perhaps a hypothesis taken too seriously. My thinking is that what originally was the equivalent of Aristotle to some Newton was misunderstood and taken to the extreme. I share your sentiments exactly.
> Yes, at the time. But not today
This was exactly my point. Your English is very good, by the way. If I didn't know better, I'd mistake your German directness as rude and blunt.
I would agree. Perhaps not empiric but more practical which lends itself better to empirical study.
True, you didn't, I had said it ("... there is still a lot of original wisdom and substance left"), to which you replied, that's why I focused in on it.
> I'm not preaching.
Fair enough, I try not to... :-)
> If I didn't know better, I'd mistake your German directness as rude and blunt.
Nailed it, thanks for the benefit of the doubt. Edited to add: This (mostly) works on HN, but lamentably not many other sites...
I'm British - I will apologise if you bump into me.
This being said, I don't think conversion is sought as it is in Islam and Christianity.
[1]] I don't hold that un-self-aware people are pathological...
The golden rule is not a specialty of Christianity. Some guy - I forgot the name - studied the ethical foundations of world's major religions and found variations of it across many different cultures and religions.
But that kind of underlines your point.
[Edit: Typo]
The Golden Rule
```
Hinduism - 13th Century BC
Do not as to others what ye do not wish done to yourself...This is the whole Dharma. Heed it well.
- The Mahabharata
Judiasm - 13th Century BC
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary; go learn it.
- The Babylonian Talmud
Zoroastrianism - 12th Century BC
Human nature is good only when it does not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.
- The Dadistan-i-Dinik
Buddhism - 6th Century BC
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
- The Tibetan Bhammapada
Confucianism - 6th Century BC
Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.
- Confucious, Analects
```
(Walking into a bar is, to this very day, a good way of getting to know one another or oneself, but one has to be prepared to face certain facts about oneself.)
The second stage of trichinosis would look quite out of the blue without the foundation of understanding behind it. Almost as if by an act of god, which may have been connected to eating "unclean food prohibited by god".
That said, if it is genuinely a tribal practice, I must accept that and change my opinion.
It'd be interesting to see if those laws developed gradually over time or was by total decree. Perhaps some of the rules are merely incorrect generalisations / reasoning by induction.
Thanks for the info - I've always wondered why. It's quite hard to find the why when learning about these things.
There is the evolutionary psychology notion that food preferences are initially wide open: children initially eat everything they're given, basically trusting their parents, but then later those preferences solidify (German proverb: "Was der Bauer nicht kennt, frisst er nicht", i.e. what the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't eat).
So, that would make dietary rules particularly suited as such a tribal shibboleth (easy to create, relatively easy to abide by, hard to fake).
I seem to recall that after the Spanish reconquista, muslims faced conversion or expulsion, and if they chose conversion, they were forced to eat pork to "prove" it...
[Edit: eco-psych -> evolutionary psychology)
I am hopeful that as we become better at measuring and understanding therapeutic change we can develop a useful model of when and how to best use the components from each approach.