I am tired of hearing that faith is the war monger of humanity so that peace will flow at last, like mighty rivers, the day we get rid of religion.

Religions will stay with us, probably as long as humanity will survive and they may even help us survive with their lifebelt of hope.



Intolerance, rejection, hate and violence, are worldly, not divine; war has many causes other than religion; this is true even for the religious wars. To find the enemies of peace we must search here on earth, not in the heavens. 

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The ills of intolerance and unfreedom of thought were exemplified and proven by history, that case is made. Yes, those crimes were and are committed. And yes, religions went to war with each other. Each in turn, the great One-God, one-truth religions live their middle ages, we understood that. Indeed, the three brothers, descendants of Abraham, are still unable to see eye to eye.

The paradox strikes however: why faith, this pursuit of spiritual elevation, of something sacred and good, is perceived by so many as a war monger?

Look at them and observe; all religions were revealed - by noble Prophets - as ideals of peace and union. Each of them gives to peace the highest value, they all wish "Peace!" as a most important thing for the host and the guest; all religions agree on the golden rule – do not do to another what you hate to be done unto you.
 
All religions stand up as civilising forces meant to rise man above the beast, against violence and greed, towards spirit and to the unselfish values of the greatest human Good: compassion, fairness, forgiveness, love, sincerity, respect for life.
 
Isn't war the opposite of the aims defining any religion?

Religions were the vehicle and treasurer of civilisation from times immemorial, from the first respectful burials and meaningful heaps of stones in prehistoric dark caves, to the splitting of the universe between Good and Bad, between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, to the civilised man of Confucius, the compassionate Buddha, generous with all sentient beings, to the tables given to Moses, the Christ's "turning of the other cheek" and the spiritual struggle of Mohamed. War is the contrary of all that: hate, butchery, callousness, barbarianism .

Those - believers or unbelievers - who care to read holy writ - any holy writ -  with their own eyes, from beginning to end, see that they contain entire universes of parable, thought and example of wisdom and folly, in fact they contain everything human mind can understand, good or wicked. They are to learn from them not to imitate them. Selecting out from those chronicles of growing civilisation a few words of hate and an archaic call to kill - which you can always find - is perverse manipulation or beastly stupidity.

Saints, great mystics and grand theologians who live their faith deeply and entirely, understand the whole; they rise high with their faith instead of walling themselves into it, debate, commune and admire each other in their humility and love of God. Meanwhile, irritable goats clash on narrow bridges.

Intolerance, fanaticism and “fundamentalism” is not in the heart of the religions but in that of the bad people misusing religion and anything else - reason and science included - as an alibi to follow their predatory instinct, their insecurity, their interest or their proud hate. Murderous orthodoxy is not religious in nature - it merely dresses the beast in the noble garb which it abuses. Religion, like any idea grown dogmatic, nationalism, racism, business, even science or justice, any truth when it is unique and exclusive beget monsters.

The same, who killed yesterday for food, land, loot, women, power and aversion for difference, still kill today for God, ideologies or for money and will kill tomorrow to save the planet. It is because of such freaks that believers get to hate each other.

No faiths clash, no gods fight with each other in the Heavens, but people who have the impudence to pretend that they personally represent and bring God on Earth; blasphemers who dare to think that a very high divinity can be reduced to their understanding or can be offended by the differing human quidam and that they are entitled to take up an imaginary gauntlet for that offence.  Such sad bigots, instead of rising up to their God, spend their life to oppose one faith to another. Hordes of blood-thirsty barbarians are goaded to wield flags of "purity" as pretext to enjoy themselves.

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For religion to be a force of peace let us consider then – while we wait helplessly for a clash of civilisations – not the sacred truth that divides irremediably this doctrine from that – but the wisdom and the many values that make them alike here on Earth. Let us not be naive, but count on our ten fingers not what separates but what could bring together the scattered good will.

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Maybe we can advance carefully, for the sake of life, from hypocritical tolerance serviced with the lips, towards honest, negotiated, respect. Not in theory but in practice. Not by giving in with wobbly relativism, but by facing plurality. With frank identities and sacred shelter affirmed as a right of man. Maybe we can find the elements to build sacred rules of respect and conduct, the shared covenant to sign by all the respectable creeds and convictions of Planet Earth:

Which concrete things must all religious communities do – and refrain from doing - to practice respect for other religions and for the non-religions so that they have the moral right to be respected in turn?

What explicit signs of respect does science and rationalism owe to religion and to what signs of respect does Science and Reason have right in return?

Which things are - by common agreement - flagrant abuse of legitimate respect among believers of different creeds, convictions and theories?

What must the present-day leaders of a religion do to prove and keep it respectable, to deserve respect, to gain respect instead of going to war?

How to practice real-life respect in the face to face encounter and coexistence of persons belonging to different religious rites and customs or not belonging to them?

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It appears that there are minimal conditions to mutual recognition while preserving difference: 

Respect should be declared a sacred ground, safe, where conflict is at least suspended and judgment delayed with dignity. The wise will summon respect, with moderation, to suspend conflict and make negotiation possible. As long as we hold greeting hands, and pass the pipe of peace we may avoid hostility.

Second, believers must know each other, from childhood, school or by means of inter-religious events, to see the differences and feel if they are as great as the suspicion mystique around them. When we talk to each other, the ugly less than human faceless labels turn into persons with names and children, like us.

Third, when will the religious authorities legislate reciprocity? There is no such thing as demanding more respect or more freedom than what you give. Ask then not what respect you will be granted, but what respect you are able to offer, fairly; this is what you will get. Respect means entitlement, rights, but duties as well; no mutual duty no legitimate right.

Fourth, respect is clad in good manners, politeness and rules to follow – rites of peace. The work of peace will then be to draw up the golden-ruled savoir-faire book of etiquette among religions and also between religions and atheism for that matter.

Further, to allow space for respect, sacred spaces need frontiers and interspaces, not a hodgepodge melting pot.

Common sense shouts (in my ears) that humanity needs to check the hubris of this globalisation utopia and greed-driven Ponzi scheme that sweeps across the world, and crowds face-to-face, people who are not ready at all to talk and listen to each other. I know, it sounds sooo reactionary, so politically incorrect, so unliberal, but maybe we cannot but let some people live as they want, as long as they do not come with it, disrespectfuly, to our doorstep. Is peace worth that much compromise or must “the best” values and the most recent truth prevail universally, right now? Give time to time.

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For the sake of world peace, instead of blaming divinity, we may find out who exactly, personally, are the war mongers today.

Religions being lived by people, it may be effective to detect and make visible the responsible individuals who are the opinion leaders of each faith at a given time, the ones who interpret the word of divinity and the actions that follow from that word here and now. Do not let them be anonyomous in their modesty. They are the ones accountable, partners to negotiate with or wrongdoers to lock up.

It seems to me that a small minority of the uncompromising is unavoidable, ever ready to put the world on fire; they should be held responsible in person for what they do, each depending on the importance of their office and their decisions. There are international tribunals for that, not only for fallen tyrants.

Another minority of saints, sages, mystics and devoted clerics work in each religion to extinguish the fire of evil with depth, compassion and love; they are forces of peace and they deserve the respect and the support, not the suspicion and the hostile critique.

These good people of the religions became, or always were, too shy, while the fanatics shout with loud voices easy to hear. They, the saintly, are the best ambassadors of peace. When they organise and speak with one voice they are powerful indeed. That joint power I dream of when I write about Religion as a force of peace.

I dream but I am not the only one...

The rest of each religious community follow the leaders. They are people like you and me, many of us trusting and quite easy to sway.

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At the bottom-line, and deeper, to preserve peace, it is up to us, believers or not, to accept and proclaim – as civilised people - that it is normal to agree to disagree.

Since all true believers and unbelievers know certainly that the truth is theirs, to live in peace, instead of fighting to reduce other true beliefs to our own "the unique correct one" we will need to work out the human right and law that all people and all creeds have a right to error; as long as they do not force themselves upon other people. To act as forces of peace all the religions will have to learn how to agree to disagree respectfully.

“Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you" [1]


If you want an example of maxim certain to be wise, this is it: life-saving, sensible, fair, virtuous but also condition of a happier, peaceful life;

because what goes around comes around and, time given, as you saw so shall you reap.

This, the Golden Rule, is the obvious core of Axial wisdom, on which all religions agree with good sense, from Confucius to Christ to Kant, in many tongues and formulations. As the famous rabbi Hillel observed, the rest of the sacred writ [2] is commentary. If urged to sum up today what a civilised human being is, on one leg, in positive terms, as the old rabbi did, I would say cautiously: “Respect other people as you need to be respected.”

The Golden Rule is a matchless, elegant piece of wisdom. Confucians, Hindus, Old Egyptians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Moslem, all granted that this is a good thing, easy to understand and fair to do. What is called today Democracy, Human Rights, Justice, ought to be based on the same to be sustainable. 

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In your own life, stick to this axiom in good faith and you will be of the civilised, with a chance to keep out of harm’s way. You are well advised to love your neighbour as you love yourself [3], because most probably, sooner or later, you will need him as he will need you. Treat you parents and your children as you wish your children to care for you later. Be nice to your neighbours and to aliens, in time your life will better. Do not calculate instead what they may actually do. Do not mistreat the stranger, you may become stranger among other people... If we all did this, our life would be that much less harsh, kinder and happier; if you respect the Golden Rule whenever you can, you are entitled to live as you let live and be helped as you help. If you do not, what honest right will you pretend to have?

The advent of the civilised human person, the one who understood  at least a minimum from human History, starts with this unnatural bet on the reciprocity of good will, thrown into the face of Nature’s survival of the strongest. (In fact, even animals seek peace and try their hoof at cooperation). Without this first step of a social contract, humans are condemned to mutual fear and hostility; an endless prisoner’s dilemma, that logical-mathematical abomination of the Golden Rule which is in fact nothing more than a Machiavellian opinion about the world disguised in the cloth of science. That view leads inevitably to the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short life of Man wolf to man - engaged in the war of all against all described by Thomas Hobbes [4]

With or without the fear of God as an enforcer from above, to nourish our confidence that people will have for us the regard we have for them, speaks to our reason and to our common sense.

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So far so good. Nevertheless, the Golden Rule is not as neat to apply as it to understand in principle.
 

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The Golden Rule is a compass not a measuring staff. It shows direction and goal, up there in the skies of principle and attitude, not an itinerary, nor a plan.

Based on it, you have a friendly North Star to orient your course, wherever we are; but it is a guide not a chain. You will know by it the wise way of conduct. You must still decide with your own head and good sense what you do in a given situation and how far you go.

Your breach of the golden rule is not that you stray from it when you must; but rather that you do not follow it when you can.

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In practice, it appears that attention is fleeting while we encounter other people and nations; mysteriously, we forget that they may be very much like us beyond the differences; busy, we fail to consider their point of view and their probable feeling and we neglect to imagine what it would do to us if we were treated in the same way. And of course they do not seem to care much for us.

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Practised rigidly, as a Kantesque imperative, any variant of the golden rule is horse's blinkers, leading to unilateral weakness, utopia or to outright double-faced hypocrisy.

Remember that the Golden Rule becomes reality only as much as people practice it; it is not a law of nature.

To keep the score of reciprocity, people have four guardians of lesser nobleness who would take an eye for an eye: memory, reputation, gratitude and revenge. And laws. If we do not spit in the well, it is for fear that we may have to draw water from it again.

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To prevail by its’ obvious benefit, the Golden Rule needs time, a perspective of living together, of meeting again... sharing some minimal understanding, unquestioned values and laws. Sharing that may be called a moral sphere. It pre-supposes that ultimately, we all share the same values because there is only one hierarchy of the values leading to the human Good.

In short encounters, various hit-and-run scoundrels and idiots - when they see the golden compass at our wrist - profit of it to abuse us. Worse yet, the corrupt and the fanatic, do it to us “before we do it to them” [5] just because they lost hope in good-will and reciprocity or never had it. For those, be good but carry a stick.

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The real dangers arise when other people do not care at all to respect the rule with you. Occasionally, bad foes and maddened crowds go as far as to deny us the quality of being human equally with them and the right of mutual respect.

Would you keep golden anyway, leap for faith for goodness’s sake, sacrifice, turn your other cheek, resign with stoicism and masochism, or will you do something against the transgressor, to stop that which is evil for your civilisation? Will you fight for the golden rule to prevail? Would you find ways to educate the other party? Let me believe in my weakness that there is a justified common sense mix of hope and limit to one-way goodness, as non-violence should tolerate everything except its negation, violence.

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How to count with people who detest the basic things that are good for you and who value things you hate? People do have different needs, like the stork from Aesop`s fable who could not eat from a shallow plate while the fox could not eat from a high jar. As people are not uniform exchangeable clones, not all the same, their moral choices may differ, because their view of the world is from some angle radically different from yours. Reciprocity must be then, wisely, asymmetric; generously but with mutually respected particulars. The Golden Rule is understood and works only when translated into local language and personal meaning. Otherwise it sounds like an arrogant: “Come and live in my world, by my rule and values!" or worse "Let me tell you how things are and how you must live!"

What to do on the other hand with the spineless thinkers and hypocrites who concede that everything is relative, cultural, evolving and national, so that everything goes? Trust your judgement, I would say and be in good faith “you only understand the golden rule by living it" [5a]. You have a right to live in a coherent moral sphere even when you know and acknowledge that other, incompatible moral spheres exist. Recent discussions of "plurality" investigate the practical modus vivendi for this.

And what about those paragons who come to force-feed you virtues, rules and fair treatments which you do not want and in exchange blackmail you to reciprocate? Knock on their gift with your finger, as Nietzsche advises, they will sound empty. And tell them that today you do not buy their merchandise.

Consider also whether you and "the other" who appear to believe otherwise live in the same moral sphere; by which I understand sharing a coherent and compatible understanding of main values and obligations of being human, not split worlds of beast and prey nor master and slave.

If the moral spheres are radically incompatible, the golden rule may still have a chance be enforced by honest negotiation - sometimes from a distance acknowledging irreducible plurality. Those have a right to your Golden Rule, to any rule, who obey it but alien lands do have incommensurable laws. Reluctantly, without giving in, you may share the planet with incompatible moral spheres by means of some lesser or higher, abstracted rule of mutual benefit and peace.
 
Even with irreducibly different values, in a world of plurality, the golden rule of reciprocity may apply to mutual respect.  You deserve respect as much as you respect.

This is unfortunately a kind of apartheid, like the opportunist politeness when we say hello and smile to disreputable people we loath: you suffer to let the other - unacceptable to you - live by his rule and in exchange, you require them to let you live by yours, unacceptable to them. Live and let live on a knife's edge! This arguable, fragile solution may work, provided the respectful distance and ritual of regard is mutually preserved in a kind of armistice of powers present. Sad consequences for "human rights"! Here open the gates of Hell... The government of such a world which is ceaseless arbitration may founder sooner or later in war.

Today’s unfettered mercantile world unfortunately abolished the prudent distances and cowardly borders needed for irreconcilable differences to live in convenient mutual ignorance. Intelligent fools resolved that there is only one world which must grow all the same finally into one homogeneous nation called humanity. As a visible reaction of the global short-circuit in communications and travel,  gives the lie to this monist creed. It appears at this beginning of century that there is a cultural limit to instant globalisation. Forces not planned or measured, and which money cannot buy, clash with no holds barred and no shared reason to regulate them.

Maybe there is more than one History, parallel histories of hesitant, slow growing Civilisation, each civilisation needing their time given to time. Maybe before becoming equal, people need food and safeness and pride to their fill. If you listen to Gandhi, even God must appear to the hungry in the form of bread. Maybe bread is not enough...

Maybe tolerance without humanist education is Utopia. 
​
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Consider also some practical layers of the golden rule applicable in spite of different tastes and beliefs.

Spend some time and care to find out what other people want and detest; try to feel being them, so that you are not blinded by your point of view. That may curb your own righteousness.

Beg others, for a start, not to do to you at least what they would not have done unto them, and to their own, within their own values; that much should be easy to understand for everyone, without excuse of not being informed.

Negotiate with them, point by point, not to do to you that which you promise that you would not do to them. Draw the list of unacceptable transgressions, when they visit you or you visit them. Clarify the notion of being a guest, all nations have a tradition of this. If you are unable to conceive such a list of obligations, you may be a colonialist without knowing.
 
Affirm explicitly and request those things which, amazingly for a different country, nation, culture or community, you do not want to be done to you to be considered too. Affirm your right to be different in your own house. Those who ignore your difference should expect you to reject theirs (and this is the way of banishment and war).

Do not let others do to you what you rightly do not suffer under the false excuse that they have different beliefs, better ones. Your own absolute beliefs, good, right, beyond discussion, are not justified to be imposed on differing people in their own house. Actions are answerable but beliefs are free, at least in the part of the world where I live.  We all have the freedom of thought and of faith, in truth or in error. If you accept other people’s right to be wrong they must too. Are you able to think like this? If not, how to apply the Golden Rule?

Without a right to be wrong there is no golden rule.

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It may be needed, as I mentioned, to establish separated private sanctuary - freedom of thought, faith and speech - for the individual and, on the other hand, public, secular territory of neutral, rule based, lawful, democratic coexistence. Such secular territory has some right to follow a land's traditions. At least this is how fairness appears to our Western civilisation. We earned with much blood and revolution a right to our sphere of justice.

It may soon become wise for the dreamers and powerful leaders of humanity to reinstate national borders as long as building one World does not work. Unfortunately, if nothing works, we must also consider that force will be the arbiter, Pandora's box is now wide open: si vis pacem para bellum. [6]

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There may be some wisdom even in a tit-for-tat way to punish those who break the Golden Rule:

First of all, as a person or as a group react proportionally, not by all-out conflict. Try justice first. Then frank negotiation. Then borders, open but with visiting rules. It that is impossible, I dread that we may revisit History.

Those who do to you knowingly that which you would not do to them should expect to be visited an eye for an eye, not a life for an insult; an eye for an eye is the contrary of the cruel revenge some believe it to be. From Hammurabi on [7], it was great progress, calling for proportional compensation instead of killing each other in revenge as it was the habit of old times.

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My choice looking at this mountain of real-life inconsistency is modest; to reserve my uncompromising, free-will obligation of the Golden rule to people who share reasonably my foundational values or who do not share them at all but respect them. For the rest, I do my best to navigate on track, on stormy seas.
 
This is my golden rule: respect all people in their difference as you request them to respect you; agree to differ!

I learned that history has successive ups and downs; I believe that all civilisations decay and fall; that barbarianism will be born ceaselessly, with each newborn, with each new generation, whereas it takes long years to grow civilised. This appeared to be true for all past civilisations.

I will still fight beastly nature and barbarianism whenever I can and apply the golden rule, whenever I can, whatever I start, for the sake of my own dignity and well-being and for beauty in my life; and my life includes the world around me, wherever I live and wherever I go. I found it true that to have friends you better be a friend; be sincere and you will encourage honesty; be polite and you build a greenhouse of politeness; respect to be respectable, smile to be smiled to and of course, give to receive.


Do not adapt to the reality of "Let the stronger win!" Live and let live!

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[1] Confucius, Analects 15:23

[2] of the Tanach, the Jewish Old Testament    

[3] “You shall love your neighbour like yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)
    
[4] “...a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain : and consequently no Culture of the Earth ; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea ; no commodious Building ; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force ; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society ; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Reprinted from the edition of 1651, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1929, Part I. Chap. 13. p 99.

[5] “You'd better do it to them before they do it to you!” Donna Hightower, This world is a mess, MetroLyrics.com

[5a] Wattles, Jeffrey, THE GOLDEN RULE, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996, vi

[6] “qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum” FLAVI VEGETI RENATI, EPITOMA REI MILITARIS, recensuit CAROLVS LANG, Lipsiae : in aedibus B.G. Teubneri, 1841  p. 65    

[7] The code of Hammurabi writes, precursor to the Law of the Talion: "196. If a man destroy the eye of a man (gentleman), they shall destroy his eye." THE CODE OF HAMMURABI, P. Handcock (ed), The MACMILLAN Company, New York,
1920, p 33