who is better part 1: the usual suspects

So the question is: do religious people act better than non-religious people? In other words, do religious people live up to the most basic central tenets of their religions? And do non-religious people avoid all the harmful faults which they accuse religious people of doing? Or does everyone just presume that they are doing things right and everyone else is to blame for all the bad stuff?

Do Christians really do unto others as they would have others do unto them and lover their neighbors as themselves? Do Jews actually love God with all their heart and soul and mind and treat the stranger among them as they would their own people? Do Muslims remember to be stewards of the earth and surrender their own interests? Do Hindus act in accordance with eternal truth and leave aside any personal investment in the results? Do Buddhists approach life without seeking to satisfy personal desires and with compassion to all beings?

Do non-religious people really value our shared humanity above all else? Do they act with more tolerance, more charity, more altruism and generosity of nature? Who is more forgiving, more courageous, more full of joy and delight? Who controls their angry outbursts and selfishness better?

I'm not sure we can break all this down into religious vs non-religious people. It's like all the other dichotomies we create in life. Are wealthy people more civilized than poor people? Are educated people more intelligent than non-educated people? Are doctors and social workers more inclined to be kind, thoughtful, patient, and concerned for others than plumbers, carpenters, race car drivers and UPS delivery people are?

It's my theory - not yet sure how to substantiate it - that there is a certain (relatively evenly distributed) proportion of every population, every demographic, who are more often mean, self-centered, rude, cruel, hurtful, thoughtless - more than the average. There is also a certain proportion who are invariably kind, mindful, patient and all sorts of other good stuff we all like - more than the average. Most of us are somewhere in between those two. Sometimes we're really extraordinarily wonderful and sometimes remarkably mean, and most of the time we're just stumbling around trying the best we can.

There are lots of health workers, sanitation workers, police, teachers, grocery workers who are kind and good, generous and thoughtful. There are also others, in those same lines of work, and also in all walks of life, who are selfish, abusive, uncivil, and just hard to live with. We all may think that "our" kind of people are better behaved than the other kinds of people. But my theory is that it doesn't matter what kind of people we are, there's still a certain proportion who behave badly, a certain proportion who behave better than average and the rest of us are a constant mix of good and bad behavior.

At any given moment if you stop everything and take a snapshot, you might catch any one of us in a good moment or a bad moment. I'd hope that this one moment would not become the defining statement about who we each "are."



It's also hard to decide what's good and bad anyway - see the next blog