Case for God

I was listening to the radio on the way home from work today and they were talking to this woman who wrote a book called "The Case for God."

Now I only listened to a small part of the 30-minute interview, but I thought it was interesting because she said that the root of all religion is compassion and the universal "do unto others" rule.

Problems happen, she said (near the end of the interview), when religions enforce rigid beliefs. This is what you could say is the absolutist part of religion that creates much of the conflict in religion.

She notes that a lot of this conflict, despite being based on religious absolutism, really serves an underlying political goal. I agree with this. This is one important reason why religion should never be mixed with government.

So instead of enforcing beliefs, religion should be more about teaching and practicing compassion. Every major religion in the world has some version of the golden rule, the "do unto others" rule as it's called in Christianity.

Wouldn't it be a much better world then if we could all live by this rule and treat others like we would treat ourselves?

Being the cynic, I would argue that despite how wonderful this all sounds, it is against human nature to practice the golden rule all the time. Humans can't practice this all the time because it goes against our animal instincts of greed, lust, envy, pride.

All of these instincts feed our ego, our own image of our self, and make us who we are.

At the very end of the interview, the author says that we need to let go of this ego to reach "enlightenment." That is a very Buddhist thing to say and it actually ties it all in very neatly.

In Buddhism, you have to let go of your ego, your self, before you can reach enlightenment, or the Buddhist "heaven," for lack of a better word.

This is the same thing as Christianity. I'll reference Catholicism here, but one thing important in Christianity is avoiding the seven deadly sins; gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. These are all things that feed your ego. By letting go of these, you let go of your ego, just like in Buddhism.

I don't know where this is going, but I always find it interesting to note similarities across religions and such. It is worth thinking about.

One other thing that she mentions in the interview is the TED group. I've looked at their website and have listened to some of the speeches. It is very interesting and worth a look if you like listening to new ideas and hearing interesting people speak.