A Musing about God—A Personal View
I reckon anyone’s view of God is, by any logical basis, an exercise in hopeless fantasy, a reach beyond human comprehension, filled with assumptions perceived via dimly lit and biased visions.
It took years and decades for me to even arrive at this point. Like most young people, insecure about life with so much to learn, I desperately wanted to have a personal relationship with God—someOne Who would protect me from life’s land mines and answer my prayers, as needed, to ensure I achieved success and contentment in life. Like most youngsters it never bothered me that I was simply believing in the religion I inherited.
Slowly, but surely, all of my inherited beliefs about God began to spring many perplexing leaks, while reality began to change my perceptions of God. It just seems we really need to believe something about God, based on what we can really know, not some inherited stuff written down by certain humans centuries ago. If organized religions of most any ilk are the last word about God, then God is some kind of mean-spirited, unfair idiot. And that seems an unbelievable stretch. We would hardly expect God to be sloppy about truth, and certainly not outdated.
So following is where I ended up, although where I ended up makes little difference to anything, including my own fate. Humans, through the entire existence of our species, have always tried to create a God in our own image—One with Whom we could have personal communication, One Who will forgive any of our transgressions if we follow certain rituals, and pay homage to Him in prescribed ways. In most religions God seems to be some sort of angry God Whom we better find ways to placate, or that is it for us. Once we become confident God is on ‘our side’ the heathens better watch out, for we now are part of the ‘army’ of God, ready to do God’s will, including to kill others, as the situation might demand, or as our emotional allegiance to our perceived God becomes a risk to others who are not mirror images of ourselves.
No matter which scripture, written by humans centuries ago, we inherited by birth or via marriage, there are endless phrases which are clearly nonsensical, and these nonsensical aspects are just ignored. Religious purists are at least logical in their belief that to ignore any ‘words’ from God would make all the other ‘words’ suspect. Why would God ever ‘write’ instructions to us which prove false over time? And why would God’s distribution scheme be via inheritance or marriage as the means of distribution? Many statements in the Christian Bible, or any other religion’s bible, are simply historical nonsense. While there are hundreds of examples, let’s here just mention two. Are we really to believe that if a person has sex with an animal, both the person and the animal must be killed? Huh? Or if children do not obey their parents they should be stoned? Double Huh? And so it goes. Among the good stuff buried in all ancient scriptures are some outrageous stuff too. About the only thing we can conclude from these ‘holy scriptures’ is that over time civilizations—in a general way—have really become more civilized and knowledgeable over time, requiring even the purists to ignore some of the craziest stuff in their scripture.
Around 90% of Americans agree there is a God. I am among that number. After that it gets a bit dicey. Believing in God, and attending church are not that closely allied, as once in the past. This is a bit tricky in that most of human history took place in times when it was dangerous to one’s health not to attend church and participate in the rituals. Even Americans had times when ‘witches’ were burned at the stake after trials which were simply farcical. It bothered me that ‘our Father which art in Heaven’ would really burn anyone at stake if they broke a rule. Or that animals or other humans should ever be killed to satisfy some angry God. What human father would ever do that to one of his own ‘children’? Something was out of kilter.
God can be a logically determined observation. Wherever there is a gift, there must be a gift giver. The universe, our planet, our natural resources, our varied life forms are all gifts, all of which we all are well aware. The gift giver of all these gifts is then designated as God. There is little else to go on about the nature of God at all. Humans have the ability to study the past and learn more and more about the ‘laws’ of nature. The more me learn about the evolutionary process over millions of years, the more astonishing the whole process becomes. We certainly know enough now about the evolutionary process to know a lot about the laws which govern this process.
Even though as individuals we keenly want to be able to manipulate the process to our own personal advantage, and live in ways which will personally exempt us from tragedies to our own selves, family, friends, and nation—this simply never appears to happen. 77% of Americans believe in prayers, that God can, and does, intervene sometimes on behalf of the person who prays. However, there is no evidence at all that this ever happens. If it does, it has to be very rare. For example, for diseases that can kill, or in battlefield situations, or in terms of tragedies like child rape, or difficult dying processes, or death from communicable diseases, and so on, there is no statistical basis to claim any particular religious group has a greater chance of survival from, or avoidance of, these situations. So exactly what dangers has any particular religious sect provided protection to for their followers?
We look around us all our life and see a lot of tragic things happen to good people and even some really good things happen to ‘bad’ people. Why we wonder, does God allow such tragic things to happen, and especially to good people? Organized religion comes up with the strange answer that “God operates in mysterious ways”. And then quickly holds out the carrot that everything will be fine in a Heaven where only the good people go. Of course the good people are going to be the those who inherited or married into the proper religious sect. But what about those not fortunate enough to have inherited or married into the right religious sect? Here the tap-dance begins and everything gets hazy, usually with some vague possibility that God will let in some who ‘don’t know better’. Really, so if you don’t know better you can get to Heaven by default. So why would anyone really want to know better?
The history of organized religions is not a very uplifting history. For centuries humans imagined an angry God whose anger had to be placated with all kinds of human and animal sacrifices. And any imagined ‘heathens’ would be killed in the most savage and drawn out painful ways. All of this illustrates more about human capability for cruelty to certain humans and other forms of life than it ever tells us about God.
While the existence of our environment dictates there has to be a Creator of all that we see before us, it tells us nothing about the Creator except this Creator has a level of intelligence far above human intelligence. All we can do is search for evidence as to how all this came about. Religious scripture is virtually useless, and often just plain ignorant on this topic. We now know the earth is not flat, that the earth has been around for millions of years, that the complexity of life has increased over these millions of years, that the different species all have unique genetic traits, and that there is considerable variation amongst the individuals which comprise any given species. If God created each species then why didn’t he just create perfect species in which all individual members of a species were perfect too? Why would it not be better if all humans were of the same physical and mental status and perfect to boot?
What is there that is constant in this evolutionary process? Not much. Time is certainly constant. Time stays, We go. Diversity is certainly a constant. Environmental diversity is certainly a constant. And change over time is certainly a constant. Nothing is static about the process, and not even during any lifetime of individual members of any species. None of us are the same during our own lifetime. Once we were just an egg and a sperm, then we became a fertilized egg, then we became an embryo, then we became a baby, then passed through a long formative stage. If we got through that then we had a productive stage of life, and we if got through that, then we had a terminational phase of life. The constant here is that we will die. Birth itself is not a good omen for any eternal life. It is totally an evidentially baseless and self serving belief that we will go to any Heaven after death. Humans don’t stop there of course, all organized religions portray humans as created after the image of God, that we have been given by God domination over all other species and our environment, and God, via our prayers to Him, will often intercede on our behalf to help us over hurdles or avoid catastrophes. These self serving beliefs no doubt do serve to give many of us the strength to carry on in difficult times.
There is a great difference between self serving beliefs and reality. If religious people go to heaven after death, then why are strongly religious people, or the organized religious sects, the most emotional at funerals? They don’t want the person to go to Heaven? Sometimes at a religious service a minister or priest of some sort will ask the congregation to rejoice, that what lies before them is just a shell, and the deceased has gone to Heaven. I wonder how that minister or priest knows this? I have never been to a church funeral in which the minister or priest says: Let us weep, for this person has gone to Hell.” It also seems strange that organized religion is the strongest force against adults being able to say they have had enough and wish to be put to sleep and end their life without any more suffering. Now that is certainly strange. I kind of feel, “if he/she has had enough, let them go to Heaven right now if that is what they want.” We may say there is a Heaven, but few people really act that way about dying. Most of us, to varying degrees, are petrified of dying.
We too often have more real empathy for our pets than humans. It is common to put our pets down rather than let them suffer anymore. I know I do, and am proud that I do. I simply do not want them to pointlessly suffer, when death is coming, sooner rather than later. Yet with some humans we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions, just to keep them medically alive for another few months or years. I will never forget when I was in a hospital and the guy in the other bed, a minister, had suffered a massive stroke which left him totally paralyzed except to move his eyes. He would reflexly choke on his own spit and I was always calling for the nurses to clear his throat to stop the violent gagging. His eyes projected sheer terror. And yet members of the congregation would come by and say things like, “You are not going to die, God is not through with you yet.” Now what kind of God are they worshipping who would have any motive to keep him suffering? I made the nurses move me, I was not going to watch this disgusting spectacle of needless human suffering.
So why then would God permit any human suffering? And sometimes the suffering is ghastly by anyone’s standards. Why would God not create a perfect world for all species and be done with it?
Viewed through our own eyes this seems such a perfect idea. We need, it seems, to step back a bit and view the world as it really is, and not judge it in terms of just how we, as individuals, fare in it.
No one, who has taken the time to remotely digest what humans have learned about the evolutionary process——a process that has been evolving for millions of years—can do other than admire such a complex and astonishing process. Everything makes more sense when we realize that we, collectively or individually, are not the focus of this process. We are simply part of it.
It is no injustice, and certainly no tragedy, to be part of something amazing. God’s created process runs itself by the laws God established for it to run itself. What this process has created over millions of years is amazing to all of us, even with our limited comprehension. We cannot envision, with even the remotest accuracy, where this process will lead or if it will ever end. Look, we can’t even envision something coming from nothing. And yet where did God come from? Something came from nothing and we are simply too limited in our comprehension abilities to understand how that can be. If we can’t understand a beginning, then it is no surprise we can’t comprehend something not ending. For all practical purposes, beginning and ending is something that relates realistically to our own lives. Yet even here it gets a bit dicey. All living cells came from previous living cells except, I reckon, the first living cell. In essence, the basic genetic units of life are constantly being reshuffled, at random, to generate new and different species and variants of the same species. In one sense our lives all can be traced back to that original living cell. When humans argue over just exactly when their life began it is an ignorant argument. With the scientific knowledge now known, thanks to the efforts of previous humans and some current humans, it becomes a real stretch to claim that God Himself directs a particular sperm to a particular egg after, of course, God has personally arranged for two persons to have sexual intercourse. For so many people, it is so important for them to believe that everything that happens relative to their lives, God was the decider. That is their pacifier——“God wills it”.
If God micromanages everyone’s life then God is really a bastard. He is constantly playing favorites. He lets so many horrible things happen to so many people and other species. Why doesn’t God intervene? And why doesn’t he let all of us live forever? This existing evolutionary process is a self directed process—it operates on the laws God established to govern the process, not addressing specific individuals in any species of the process. The truth is that all of our lives depend on luck, our environment, our genes, diversity, and change. We, are, in a scientific sense, a part of all that has come before us. We and an earthworm share a common history. We (all species) are in this process together, like it or not. If God has favorites in this evolutionary process he isn’t tipping his hand. Maybe His personal favorite is the first original living cell. Of course the truth is that we have no idea how God thinks or feels about anything. His evolutionary process is responsible for our lives and the lives of every other living thing and our environment—and all that should be enough for our gratitude. For all we know there are many Gods, or God is dead, or God spends most of His time with sex, or God views our limited intelligence so puerile as to be nothing more than a nuisance in the total evolutionary process.
There are many important aspects of God which are simply past the reach of human comprehension. Where did God come from? How can something—anything—come from nothing? At what point is mental activity in any organism properly considered thinking? When a bird migrates a thousand miles every year to the same spot, is that thinking? When a parrot repeats a human conversation word for word from the past, is that thinking? Thinking simply doesn’t have a neat clear cut definition. None of us even think alike. On what basis then are we to remotely understand how God thinks? Yet all the humans who wrote all the scriptures in the world claim not only to know how God thinks, but exactly how God wants us to behave. Some of the most basic tenets of Christianity, one of the more advanced organized religions, is based on some wild notions. Like God had to sacrifice His only Son in order save us all from our sins. Jesus died on the cross to save the rest of us from our sins. Well, not really, some of us are purported still going to Hell. Jesus of course was the product of a Virgin Birth. He just looked human, but really was the Son of God. So there is God, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. God must let His Son Jesus die on the cross in order to save humans from their sins——except Jesus doesn’t really die, but rises immediately from death and is back being a non human. Imagine if some human father announced that his son has temporarily become a dog, a perfect pet if there ever was one, and that in order to save all dogs, his now dog son must be sacrificed, after which his son’s stint as a dog will be over and he will return to human form, and forever more pet dogs will be saved and go to Heaven except for those who sin and will go to dog Hell. Huh?
Organized religions are self serving in most every aspect. We are the one species whose members have a personal relationship with God. We are the one species whose members have specific behavior guidelines passed down to us from God via inheritance or marriage. Those who do not receive these behavior guidelines—well, such is the spin of the wheel, except organized religion believes God micro manages all life on earth, so God must be responsible for so many humans being burdened with the wrong scripture. What kind of Heavenly Father would do that? IF God really micro manages life on this planet then God is responsible for all the tragedies which abound today and through all of history. This would make God pretty sadistic. Did God really, and deliberately, create Hitler? I thought the Jews were the chosen tribe by God to be His chosen people? The Holocaust was a God created event? God could have intervened and prevented it and didn’t, or God had no power to prevent it?
These are not trivial questions. Exactly what kind of God are we worshipping? For that matter, what makes us think God even expects us to worship Him? We are genetically superior, or at least more complicated than warthogs. Do we expect warthogs to worship us or else we will torture them in hell?
While we cannot answer these questions with facts via the scientific method, we can at least use logic and our increasing scientific knowledge of the evolutionary process, to guard against pure self serving nonsense about God. When I was young I perceived my own inherited religion as the pathway to an ethical life, and partnership with God. I read the Bible, went to Sunday School, attended the Sunday Morning Church service, participated in youth fellowship, was baptized, attended a Billy Graham revival, prayed a lot—the whole nine yards. But as time went on, despite my efforts to ignore any disturbing notions about the whole package, I began to sense I was following an ethical pathway with braces on my brain. The whole church thing seemed to be 90% a social gathering. Nothing wrong with that except it had little to do with serious ethics. Almost all the dialogue was rote niceness to those of a similar inherited religion. I don’t recall a single meaningful conversation with the pastor, while the amateur Sunday school teachers were pleasant enough, but not genuinely prepared to interpret scripture. The sermons were endless pablum geared not to offend anyone in the congregation. Frankly, almost all clergy are boring, shallow thinkers—just like most of humanity. It was a revelation to me when, as a college instructor, students would come in sometimes with a personal problem and I might suggest they talk to their clergy. Almost without exception the response would be incredulousness that I would even think clergy would be the solution. Most clergy as are useless to society as tits on a witch. A few are really ethical and of endless help to the least fortunate in our society.
As time passed and I began to have interactions with others outside my own religious sect, ‘goodness’ seemed to be something apart from a particular religious sect. Back in my early days my religious sect was the one right religion, my country was always right, and God was going to protect me from life’s land mines. There was no sudden point I can point to where I found this whole religious sect business more a source of endless social turmoil than any road to peace and prosperity for all.
I guess my first puzzlement was why was I given by birth the ‘right’ religious scripture and so many millions of others given the ‘wrong’ religious scripture. It seems that too often too much deep belief in our own inherited religious scripture leads us to falsely assume an exalted concept of self that is really delusional. The very same people who feel the strongest that God is on their side and is helping them out in life, are the very ones who run around seriously claiming their successes in life are because they earned them. With the passage of time I began to meet all sorts of people, one way or another, who seemed to be really ‘good’ people yet had so little going for them. “Why”, I wondered, would God give them a life with so few of the many things others have, and take for granted? What kind of God would do that? Practically all the important advantages when young were given to us, not earned. It is hard to be precise here, but I can remember praying that I would win a track race or get a good grade after studying hard, and be perplexed why God would pay any attention to this kind of stuff? I was just inherently faster than many others running or had some academic skills which were better than others and in neither case did I earn these advantages.
More and more it seemed any serious ethical discussions took place outside of any church setting.
What did all the rituals, the singing hymns, the church social activities, the shallow and rigid bible studies have to do with ethics? When young, while other groups were fighting for rights that others already had, I was feeling that if the disadvantaged didn’t like it here, they could leave. There was no war my country engaged in that I didn’t reflexly support. It took me and Barry Goldwater years before we, along with so many others, realized the Vietnam War was a disgraceful slaughter of peaceful innocent victims. Back then I was with those who felt we should simply bomb these people into oblivion until they let us decide what form of government they could have. We killed a good 2 million Vietnamese, comparable in numbers to the number of Jews killed by Hitler. Why is one so horrible and one so justifiable? No other event did more to make me pause and question exactly in what kind of ethics was I becoming cocooned.
The Vietnam War, my limited social life, and my sudden professional responsibilities to so many young people, entrapped by disadvantages in life that I never had when young—all of this forced me to rethink the very nature of real ethics. Organized religion gradually became part of the problem, not part of a solution. My views of organized religion as a pathway to peace and prosperity for all mankind, nature, and all other species were sadly, and irreparably shattered. All these years I had been like the blind man who picked up his hammer and saw. I saw and felt what I wanted to see with blinders well placed to protect me from reality. In my lifetime, religious conflicts, ethnic conflicts and political conflicts have raged across the globe, each succeeding conflict as bad or worse than the one before. Any real ethics was disintegrating right before my eyes. Minus a few serious personal blows, my own life seemed immune to the kind of crippling blows so many less fortunate were taking on the chin right and left—incessantly, until they lost hope and the energy to fight on, settling for a life situation well below their potential. As Wordsworth wrote:
“For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity”
"Blowin' In The Wind"
(originally by Bob Dylan)
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
And how many seas must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
And how many years must the cannonballs fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
And how many times can a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
And how many deaths will it take 'til he knows that
Too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
And how many years can a mountain exist
Before it falls to the sea?
And how many years must some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
And how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
The above song was probably the one which essentially forced me to abandon organized religion as a means to ethical solutions. What could be more pitiful or astounding than to see major organized religions assault each other, not simply to just kill them, but to do so in the cruelest of possible ways. I reckon watching vicariously Muslims kill Christians, Christians kill Muslims, Jews kill Arabs, Arabs kill Jews, Muslims kill Hindus, Hindus kill Muslims, and so on is depressing enough——but it doesn’t even stop there. We have, or had, Protestants killing Catholics in Ireland, Sunnis killing Shiites, Northern Baptists feuding with Southern Baptists, Fundamentalist Christians vs liberal Christians, right wing Catholics killing left wing Catholics in South America, and of course Rwanda where Hutus kill Tutsi based only on what identification card, issued originally by a European country, the person is carrying. Then add all the ethnic conflicts and we get a rather clear picture of just what organized religion really accomplishes. All in all, anyone sane would opt out.
But opt out to what? It isn’t enough to declare ourself a member of no group, we need declare ourself for some form of ethics to be part of the human race. Humans are the only species with a well developed ethical trait. It turns out that people are opting out of organized religion in vast numbers. In the U.S. 22.8% of adults do not have a religious affiliation. It was 16% in 2007. If this number is less in some countries in which religion is part of government, the number opting out is less simply because the personal consequences of opting out can be severe. 43% of Americans seldom or never go to church.
Ethics is not a human trait which originates via organized religious scripture. Going to church does not make one ethical anymore than going to the garage makes one a car. Often enough going to Church is used as a cover or some perceived protection from all of the unethical behavior done outside of church. The most extreme example here is the mafia hit man who goes to mass three times a week.
There is ample evidence that the human species has a genetically inherited sense of ethics. Like many genetic traits there is potential which needs to be developed. We are genetically capable of hitting a pitched ball but we need to practice to become good at it, and how good we can ever become is genetically limited. Our potential varies here like it does in so many inherited traits. Why is there so much individual variation in human potentials? The answer here is well documented. Diversity is needed for evolutionary progress. The silliest assumption some make is to claim God can do anything, there is no limit to what God can do, or how he can achieve something. The reality is simply this: there is very little we can really “know” about God. As far as we can calculate there are over 8 million different species in this world. The human genome contains some 19,000 known genes.
While most, if not all, other species contain fewer known genes, we need consider what micromanaging the evolutionary process would entail. There are around 7 billion people on our earth and almost all of them are genetically distinct. Just the math involved in God sitting at some sort of work bench creating each member of every species to a particular genetic code would be simply astounding. Now add to this the question of just what would a perfect human be? Or the perfect dog be? And what would be the point of having each member of each species be a perfect species specimen? The absurdity of living in such a world is evident. Everything would be pointless in this best of all possible worlds. Of course the math here is pointless too. We have no way to remotely understand how God thinks, whether God has any limitations, how God came to exist, what God looks like or even looks like anything, whether God has assistant Gods or has any sexual feelings, and the unanswerable questions go on and on.
Why is it even sane to pretend to have answers to unanswerable questions and come up with answers that are endlessly self serving? This is essentially what organized religion does. That over time people are now abandoning this sort of useless and harmful practice is a good thing.
Our job is to understand, as best we can, the nature of our own ethical genetic component. If ethics is an inherited human genetic trait then there is an identifiable commonality—a basis for developing this inherited trait. Lincoln, whose understanding of human nature has always, to me, seemed the standard to seek, said this: “That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true…….When any church will inscribe over its alter, as it’s sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and they neighbor as thyself’, that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.” Several of the founding fathers of our country were not church goers and Jefferson had little use for clergy of any sort. But that was a long time ago, when the separation between church and state was firm and non negotiable.
To me, the commonality behind our human genetic ethical trait is the Golden Rule. No one ever claims the Golden Rule is not an ethical principle. It is a reasoned out ethical principle which hardly requires a college degree to understand or to apply in daily practice. There are no rituals involved in this ethical principle, no praying, no baptism, no clergy, no ornate temples of worship, no clergy wrapped in caste-like costumes, no human scriptures designated as bibles, no tithing, no ceremonies, no endless social events. At most there would be discussion centers where anyone could, and would, be expected to lead a discussion on how the Golden Rule relates to current problems of any sort. When it comes to the Golden Rule just about everyone is qualified to express and judge how the Golden Rule relates to situations. Few, if any situations can’t be dealt with via the Golden Rule. Gay marriage? Well, if we expect the right to choose who we marry, then I guess everyone else then has the right to choose who they marry, if they are of age. It’s a no-brainer. If we expect, when old, to receive cost of living increases in our social security income, then I guess those in minimum wage jobs should see the minimum wage rise with the cost of living. They too, need to be able to afford to live in a modest way. Should prayers be allowed in public meetings or schools? If we don’t want to be trapped into listening about religious practices we are not interested in, and have no bearing on the purpose of the meeting or work/school place, then we have no business trying to force our own religious beliefs down anyone’s throat just because we are in the majority.
The Golden Rule doesn’t care about majorities. Being a member of a majority in no way exempts anyone from the Golden Rule. If we want our own children to have good schools, then we are obligated to make good schools available to every child via collective financial avenues. Never mind the selfish notion that the rich pay for their schools and the poor pay for theirs. That hardly fits the Golden Rule unless we can come up with a valid reason why, if we were a child in a poor environment, we would not wish to have a good school. Same with health care, if good health care is important to us, then good health care is important to others. If we do not wish ourselves and our offspring to suffer the dire consequences of species overpopulation, then everyone collectively needs to be required by society to engage in responsible reproduction. The good of the whole invariably trumps the good of any one of us. And so it goes, on and on, with each situation being based on the Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule does not exempt anyone from their obligations to participate. No one can say, “well, I don’t feel like working for a living, but I want good schools, good health care, etc. They are obligated to work, of course on a job for which they are suited, and society is obligated to provide an opportunity for them to work at job level for which they are qualified. The role of government, a very important role, is to level the playing field as much as possible so the maximum number of citizens can achieve some contentment in life—be productive members of society.
The Golden Rule doesn’t imply people are not punished for misbehavior. Of course if we steal from someone we have broken the Golden Rule and need to be punished. And so on. The Golden Rule comes in only to determine appropriate behavior. Inappropriate behavior brings punishment. Wars between nations would be less likely, in part because religious conflict by different religious sects would be nonexistent. If one nation invades another nation, then it is of course the right of the invaded country to defend itself. But if a nation declares war on another country the Golden Rule would dictate that everyone share in the sacrifices required. No more mercenary armies, the draft would return, and be across the board. The expense of the war would be shared by everyone and the war would not be fought on borrowed money, except for such short term loans which would be obligated to be paid back quickly by the very ones who supported the war to begin.
To shorten this treatise requires me to somehow cut all this short without more extensive examples.
But we need remember that any ethical system requires reward and punishment. Organized religion tends to hold out some sort of Heaven or Hell as the reward/punishment system. The Golden Rule makes no mention of any Heaven or Hell. If such places exist they are beyond human comprehension. There simply is no creditable evidence for Heaven or Hell, so any belief in this area is simply faith based. The Golden Rule comes with a reward/punishment component that takes place right now, here on earth, in our own lifetimes. The Golden Rule has two balanced components—our own needs and the needs of the less fortunate. For us to achieve personal contentment, both sides of the equation need be met—our own needs and the needs of the less fortunate. Our own needs includes the needs of ourselves, our family, community, and our country. The other side of the equation includes the needs of the least fortunate, minorities, those different from ourselves, the handicapped, and so on. When the Golden Rule is the driving force for any human civilization there is no one starving to death, no one with poor health care, no child in a poor school system, no one working at less than a living wage, no one dying from curable diseases and conditions, and so on. Everyone gets some contentment, not to the same degree, but contentment throughout society is maximized for the greatest number of citizens. In every ‘happiness poll, the countries at the top are the ones whose political policies are generated by the Golden Rule.
If the above reasoned out nature of God and ethics is so reasonable, why do religious sects exist?
Inherited religious sects personalize our relationship with God, elevates our personal status in life, includes forgiveness so we don’t really have to be so serious about ethics, and promises life after death.
It is hard to accept our own insignificance in the big picture, to develop tolerance for diversity, to share our own excess wealth with the least fortunate (we prefer to spend it all on ourselves or our offspring), and to accept our own mortality. My profession brought me in constant contact with the least fortunate and the most fortunate (those with money, power, titles, control over others, personal attractiveness, most skilled at athletics or academic ability, social acceptability, etc) but none of these accomplished
goals generated contentment with few exceptions. Most of the time these people are driven, addicted, intolerant, harried, angry, disingenuous, tense, extremely self-serving neurotic tensed-up front runners in the ‘rat-race”. Enough is never enough for them. Contentment is elusive. We all need a lot of things to obtain reasonable contentment in our lives but if we cannot understand when enough is enough, contentment will be absent and replaced by compulsive behaviors. Addictions (compulsive behaviors) never lead to contentment. The Golden Rule does, and this rule is available to maximize contentment for the greatest number of citizens.
I always end any musing on this kind of subject matter by quoting my favorite passage whose author I cannot seem to locate. It kind of serves as the mantra for any life being lived via the Golden Rule.
“There is a way of life, a way of thinking, of behaving towards other men and your fellow creatures, towards all living things, towards the whole earth and the sky and the sun that is based on love, on compassion, on respect, on cherishing everything there is around you because it is wonderful, unique, it’s natural and good and it evolved that way by itself, it’s got to be cherished and if we think like that, and live that kind of life, we can all have our freedom, we can all have our happiness, we can all feel the sun and smell the grass and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation.” (Unknown)
