I was goofing around on Reddit today and found a post on the Golden Rule, which consisted of this image. (Click LINK for larger image.)
When I'm drinking, I tend toward hyperbole. So when I say that there have been, presently are and will be zillions of religions, you can reasonably take that number down to 'thousands'. (Or perhaps, tens of thousands.)
They can't all be right. And being willing to take your own life, and the lives of other people to prove the validity of your faith only proves that you are obsessed, single-minded and deluded; willing to waste the experience of life just to make an false and tragic point.
But then I look at this image. They're all saying the same thing! (Although the Unitarians, for whom I ordinarily have great respect, managed to make it sound like a corporate mission statement.) This declaration seems to be nearly universal. And I don't limit this to people of religious faith. Rational and moral non-believers would not argue against this being a good rule for living; a valid and true path to a fully civilized world.
I leave you to draw your own conclusions about why all these diverse religions have come up with very same idea. (My own opinion is that we are born with an innate sense of altruism, which is all too often overcome by fear, greed, insecurity and the desire for power.)
I shall now submit this to Reddit / Digg and be "down-modded into the perma-frost", as one Redditor so elegantly put it. There goes my 'Karma'.
- Maggie
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