[Vision2020] Seeking some definitions -- just what do you mean?

[Nicholas Gier]

Greetings:

Witmer is wrong on at least two counts.  First, using the exmaple of the Ik people, who lived under extreme circumstances, is a tad misleading.  

Second, only very few schools of Hinduism or Buddhism following the theory of absolute monism, so that generalization is false as well.  The law of karma is taken very seriously by most Hindus and Buddhists; its effect are definitely not illusory.  Indeed, it is the best example of ethical objectivism: one reaps what one sows and there are no exceptions.

Hindu and Buddhist societies are generally more moral if one takes crime statistics as a basis. For example, a census taken in the 1880s in British India founded that one in 3,000 odd Buddhists, one in 1,700 odd Hindus, but one in 700 odd Indian Christians had committed a crime.  I quoting these figures from memory, but I can provide the exact figures for those who are interested. 

How does Witmer account for the fact that the most evangelical Christian society in the world (the US) has the highest crime rates, and a post-Christian Europe has very low crime rates and a general incarceration rate that is is generally ten times lower than the U.S.?

Jesus was very late in declaring the Golden Rule. It is found in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Socrates, all pre-Christian sources.

I also object to Witmer's very objectionable thesis that a small number of Jews in Babylonian captivity had that much effect on the general morality of the region.  He leaves out the profound influence of Zoroastrianism, which was the first monotheism religion based on personal responsibility.

Nick Gier


-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com on behalf of Christopher Witmer
Sent: Sun 11/18/2007 10:11 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Seeking some definitions -- just what do you mean?
 
Ralph Nielsen writes:
[[ Morality is as old as the hills, Paul. It's all about the Golden  
Rule: Don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you. Or  
as some prefer: Do to others as you would have others do to you. This  
rule is found all around the world, regardless of religion or  
superstition. ]]

Izzat so?

Example 1
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law . . . There is no Law
beyond Do what thou wilt" -- Aleister Crowley

Example 2
Africa's Ik tribe as described by Colin Turnbull in "The Mountain People":
"Both morality and personality among the Ik were dedicated to the single
all-consuming passion for self-preservation. There was simply not room in
the life of these people for such luxuries as family and sentiment and love.
Nor for any morality beyond 'marangik,' the new lk concept of goodness,
which means filling one's own stomach."

Example 3
Influence of Hindic-Buddhistic thinking that all distinctions, including
distinctions between good and evil, are at base illusory: "We might,
therefore, say that as personalities we experience a world of duality - of
good and evil, right and wrong, of spirituality and materiality. Again
speaking in human terms, this personal duality is replaced by a cosmic
duality of Being and manifestation. But in truth there is no separateness in
this higher duality, which in human terms would be experienced as an
absolute Unity . . .  freedom results from a liberation from dualistic
thinking. We look around at our world, and we see that practically everyone
is preoccupied with good and evil, with right and wrong, and is busily
upholding one side or the other, depending upon one's individual
consciousness. Everyone is trying to right the things that are wrong, and
manifest that which they deem to be good. Is it not clear, therefore, that
such action is purely of the ego and the little self? If we instead realize
that Reality has nothing to do with such dualistic thought and the physical
world, we would instead choose to rapidly free ourselves from this
preoccupation, and no longer get involved with efforts to improve our
personal life or crusades to save the world. We should free ourselves from
duality of all kinds." -- from "Being and Duality," by Brett Mitchell,
representing a fairly widespread anti-Christian perspective on morality.

So . . . is the Golden Rule really universal? Hardly. Admittedly, it is
widespread. It is widespread for the following four reasons. 1) All men are
created in the image of God, the Lawgiver, and thus naturally carry some
knowledge, albeit distorted, about true morality. 2) Dating back to
pre-babelic and pre-Noahic times, the world has received revelation from God
concerning morality, and this revelation has naturally has a widespread
influence on various traditions despite the numerous corruptions and
perversions that crept in. 4) During the Babylonian Captivity, the Jewish
religion, which at that time had a moral character identical with the
essential moral character of Christianity, was spread throughout the
Babylonian empire and remained permanently widespread under the Persians,
Alexander, and the Romans, leading to a lasting transformation of the major
world religions with which it came into contact: we see the disappearance of
human sacrifice around this time. 4) The Christian gospel has had 2000 years
to influence non-Christian ethical thinking. Every single society and
religion that teaches the Golden Rule owes Jesus the Messiah a debt of
thanks, because it comes from Him and He personally demonstrated it through
every aspect of His walk on this earth.

-- Chris


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