Happiness (18, 19)
     
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Happiness

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Happiness (18, 19)

Happiness (20)

Happiness (21)

Epilogue

Sharing Happiness

LIFE

  
18. RESPECT THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF OTHERS

     Tolerance is a good cornerstone on which to build human relationships.  When one views the slaughter of suffering caused by religious intolerance down all the history of Man and into modern times, one can see that intolerance is a very non-survival activity.

 

     Religious tolerance does not mean one cannot express his own beliefs.  It does mean that seeking to undermine or attack the religious faith and beliefs of another has always been a short road to trouble.  Philosophers since the times of ancient Greece have disputed with one another about the nature of God, Man and the Universe.  The opinions of authorities ebb and flow; just now the philosophies of “mechanism” and “materialism: -- dating as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece – are the fad: they seek to assert that all is matter and overlook that, as neat as their explanations of evolution may be, they still do not rule out additional factors that might be at work, that might be merely using such things as evolution.  They are today the “official” philosophies and are even taught in schools.  They have their own zealots who attack the beliefs and religions of others: the results can be intolerance and contention.

 

     If all the brightest minds since the fifth century B.C. or before have never been able to agree on the subject of religion or anti-religion, it is an arena of combat between people that one would do well to stay out of.  “Faith” and “belief” do not necessarily surrender to logic: they cannot even be declared to be illogical.  They can be things quite apart.  Any advice one might give another on this subject is safest when it simply asserts the right to believe as one chooses.  One is at liberty to hold up his own beliefs for acceptance.  One is at risk when he seeks to assault the beliefs of others, much more so when he attacks and seeks to harm them because of their religious convictions.

 

     Man, since the dawn of the species, has taken great consolation and joy in his religions.  Even the “mechanist” and “materialist” of today sound much like the priests of old as they spread their dogma.  Men without faith are a pretty sorry lot.  They can even be given something to have faith in, but when they have religious beliefs, respect them.

 

~~~ The way to happiness can become contentious when one fails to respect the religious beliefs of others. ~~~

 

((I would like to add that I am a non-religious person and do not belief in religion at all.  I believe in the “basis” for religion, such as being moral and decent and loving others, but I do not believe in a “supreme being”, nor do I believe in “devils” or “heaven and hell”.  I do, however, believe that there are some things that we can not yet fully or completely explain; yet I am just not so quick to believe in religion, just because I have no other answer.))

 

 

     -mechanism: the view that all life is only matter in motion and can be totally explained by physical laws.  Advanced by Leucippus and Democritus (460 B.C. to 370 B.C.), who may have gotten it from Egyptian mythology.  Upholders of this philosophy felt they had to neglect religion because they could not reduce it to mathematics.  They were attacked by religious interests and in their turn attacked religions.  Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who developed Boyle's Laws in physics, refuted it by raising the question as to whether or not nature might have designs such as matter in motion.

 

     -materialism: any one of the family of metaphysical theories which view the universe as consisting of hard objects such as stones, big or very small.  The theories seek to explain away such things as minds by saying that they can be reduced to physical things or their motions.  Materialism is a very ancient idea.  There are other ideas.

19. TRY NOT TO DO THINGS TO OTHERS THAT YOU WOULD NOT LIKE THEM TO DO TO YOU

     Among many peoples in many lands for many ages, there have been versions of what is called “The Golden Rule”.  The above is a wording of it that relates to harmful acts.  Only a saint could go through life without ever harming another; but only a criminal hurts those around him without a second thought.

 

     Completely aside from feelings of “guilt” or “shame” or “conscience”, all of which can be real enough and bad enough, it also happens to be true that the harm one does to others can recoil on oneself.  Not all harmful acts are reversible: one can commit an act against another which cannot be waived aside or forgotten.  Murder is such an act.  One can work out how severe violation of almost any precept in this book could become an irreversible harmful act against another.

 

     The ruin of another’s life can wreck one’s own.  Society reacts – the prisons and the insane asylums are stuffed with people who harmed their fellows.  But there are other penalties: whether or not one is caught or not, committing harmful acts against others, particularly when hidden, can cause one to suffer severe changes in his attitudes toward others and himself, all of them unhappy ones.  The happiness and joy of life depart.

 

     This version of “The Golden Rule” is also useful as a test.  When one persuades someone to apply it, the person can attain a reality on what a harmful act is.  It answers for one, what harm is.  The philosophic question concerning wrongdoing; the argument of what is wrong is answered at once on a personal basis: Would you not like that to happen to you?  No?  Then it must be a harmful action, and from society’s viewpoint, a wrong action.  It can awaken social consciousness.  It can then let one work out what one should do and what one should NOT do.

 

     In a time when some feel no restraint from doing harmful acts, the survival potential of the individual sinks to a very low ebb.  If you can persuade people to apply this, you will have given them a precept by which they can evaluate their own lives, and for some, opened the door to let them rejoin the human race.

 

~~~ The way to happiness is closed to those who do not restrain themselves from committing harmful acts. ~~~

 

     -"The Golden Rule": although this is looked upon by Christians as Christian and is found in the New and Old Testaments, many other races and peoples spoke of it.  It also appears in the Analects of Confucius (fifth and sixth centuries B.C.), who himself quoted from more ancient works.  It is also found in "primitive" tribes.  In one form or another, it appears in the ancient works of Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates and Seneca.  For thousands of years it has been held by Man as a standard of ethical conduct.  The versions given in this book are newly worded however, as in earlier wordings it was thought to be too idealistic to be kept.  It is possible to keep this version.