Monday, October 07, 2013

If faith and ethics mean anything in life they must bring real profit

But what is ethical and what isn't. Eve's pursuit of divine wisdom doesn't seem to have yielded any tangible results. I know there are uncountable sets of rules and regulations - legal, religious, cultural and whatnot. And most of them are very useful and going against them can get you into real trouble even if your indiscretion is not discovered by the relevant authorities. I am not talking about divine intervention because it seems that God more often than not looks the other way when the good are crushed and evil prevails. To sum it up life's different from an old Western with a happy ending. Perhaps there is some higher purpose or perhaps the atheists are right and the only real law is the law of the jungle of a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye.
Do moral principles work at all? Could there be a workable set of rules worthy of keeping by providing adequate return for the good guys apart from the questionable place in that luxury retirement home - Heaven - resplendent with scores of virgins singing boring hymns? What if there is no afterlife and we just die and rot which seems rather obvious except for that atheist Richard Dawkins who reckons we live forever in physical form through our own immortal selfish genes. And we are destined to live in this real, material and fluid world which could be Heaven or Hell depending on perspective, luck, attitude and the results of your actions.
Can you judge others and complain about their actions - yes you can but that is mostly a waste of time because you have to look at yourself first). If you don’t like the world you’ll have to start  and from the man in the mirror and be the change you want to see in the world. To look deep inside and find that divine God given soul or genetic predisposition for survival - depending on how you prefer to call it. Because that idea/form/gene/meme/soul that will survive is the only thing that matters. There is the way of life and the dead end of death. There is a way to learn to be immortal - we are all offspring of a race of survivors - all the way back to Adam and Eve. So we have inherited a treasure of useful knowledge and a lot of nonsense (there were people who believed you have to kill someone to make the sun rise or kill an innocent child to win a battle). I don’t covet the neighbor’s donkey or his ass and we all believe his partner in life is free to choose. Still if I treat my neighbor badly and disrespect his right to life, liberty and to choose the way he pursues happiness than most probably my neighbor will disrespect my rights and property. And then we’ll both be in real trouble.
And if you ask whether you are your brother’s keeper then he might be asking the same silly question too.
Thoughts by Jesus, Ghandi, Buddha, Petar Danov were used throughout the text.


1 comment:

  1. Hi Alex,

    The atheists use a religious argument (i.e. an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth)? I am surprised. You spoke of God looking the other way when the good are crushed and the evil prevails...in a very quick thought, He doesn't look the other way, for Himself He said that He creates Evil. Good and Evil exist for a reason, one can't exist without the other...they keep the equilibrium of things. Then we have the question of Cause and Effect (i.e. Karma) to render things even more complex...
    Yes, moral principles work; however, like in all things in life, they must be applied in a pliable fashion.

    "Can you judge others and complain about their actions - yes you can but that is mostly a waste of time because you have to look at yourself first)"

    Absolutely.

    "And if you ask whether you are your brother’s keeper then he might be asking the same silly question too."

    Basically, yes.

    Excellent article for reflection.

    Cheerio

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