Amoeba Rules: Doing Unto Others

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

1.1 Like most people in the West, I grew up to the musical sound of this pretty saying. For most of my life, even after reason rescued me from religion, I believed "the Golden Rule" to be the apex of ethics, the unimpeachable monarch of morality. Whatever was good or trustworthy in human relations, or even (from a neo-Buddhist point of view) relating to other species, could be answered by applying this Rule. Yet now, at age 52, in view of the ceaseless genetic competition, the ruthless amoebic warfare which constitutes life, I seriously question the principle of "doing unto others".

1.2 The Golden Rule is essentially a doctrine of compassion: of seeing my own suffering in the suffering of others, or their need in my needs, and responding as if they were myself. Compassion is based on a tacit assumption of reciprocity, or at least of reward: if I do good unto others, they will do good unto me; or God will do good unto me. I now see that this entire assumption is false.

1.3 First off, large portions of the world do not follow any such Rule. In the nation of Islam, for instance, people do cooperate and help one another- but only other Muslims, and only those in good standing. An exposed face (for a woman), an accusation of adultery (again, mostly for women), or a hint of apostasy, and other Muslims zealously apply a Rule that reads something like: "do unto them what you would never have done unto you".

The greatest reason to reject religion is that dwelling on the "supernatural" takes our attention away from the natural. The religious care more for god than for other people. This explains why religion has been the source of every kind of evil. When god is the center of attention, other people can literally go to hell.

Moreover, even an otherwise benign religious belief deprives the believer of the pleasures of reality. Instead of enjoying a full life, he spends his time in fantasies with invisible friends which, if they were not socially sanctified as "religion", would be considered evidence of a psychological problem.