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Comment by jwdunne | Hacker News Reader

I think the same is true for Christianity too. The golden rule is an excellent way to be an awesome human being. I think that's a better motive than a good afterlife.

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.

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Thanks for the thoughtful and respectful comments, I hope my answer manages to stay in that spirit, too.

> 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.

With regards to one, just because it was not original does not discount its value. That only supports my point that it was an attempt to present a way to live - a failed attempt given hindsight. I never said it was original nor entirely good. That's why we can both recognise the good parts as generally good advice.

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.

> I never said it was original nor entirely good.

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...

Wow, you're right. Sorry about that. Yeah, clearly not original. I do agree.

I'm British - I will apologise if you bump into me.

One of the big new concepts of Christianity (when compared to Judaism, from which it originated) was that it was universal, whereas Judaism is a religion for Jews only.

I don't think Judaism has ever been a closed faith. I may have missed some interval of time where it was only by birthright or something.

This being said, I don't think conversion is sought as it is in Islam and Christianity.

The cannibalistic reenactment that the catholic church is pushing so hard has very little to do with Christianity; it's anti-Christian if anything; it's sole purpose is to paralyze the subconscious with shame, guilt and despair; conditioning by trauma is a very effective way to turn people into helpless victims.

I just want to throw out there that dietary restrictions are ultimately tribal. Kosher and halal laws are full of obscure and pointless restrictions (such as ritual slaughter and prohibition on eating foods prepared under an idol) that have nothing to do with health, but everything to do with establishing who is "us" and who is "them".

Interesting. I didn't know that. I connected trichinosis, where symptoms are flu-like for the first few days before a fortnight to 8 weeks of symptom-free incubation as it works into the muscle stage, with the fact that germ theory wasn't understood back then.

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.

You're not wrong, but the pork is only a small part of dietary laws. Additionally, you can eat other animals that might be dangerous (birds, for instance, but not birds of prey). And restrictions like "only cloven hoofed animals that chew their cud" are just "let's make this obscure enough to prove you really care."

I guess you're right.

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.

Good point, to enforce in-group, out-group.

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)

> The golden rule is an excellent way to be an awesome human being.

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]

That's really interesting. If you do ever remember the name any time soon, let me know. I find anything like that fascinating.

Not the same as parent, but a good comparison of the Golden Rule from "Plato and Platypus Walk Into A Bar" (any mistakes are likely mine):

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

```

Thank you!

(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.)

Jesus (or whoever came up with the stuff attributed to him) was indeed a profoundly wise human being. His philosophy of love is probably one of the most important developments of ancient religion.

Well if everybody loved the human race such that they could bring no deliberate harm to it, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, psychopathy, or rather Anti-Social Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, are real things.

Those are slowly being identified as artifacts of trauma[1], at least the pathological cases are. SO imagine how prevalent they were in the Classical world.

[1]] I don't hold that un-self-aware people are pathological...

I'm sure it is possible to be born one and not made. I read one position that psychopathy was by nature and sociopathy by nurture, describing the same ends by differing means.

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