Any religious doctrine can get in the way of doing good -- even the "law
of love" or the Golden Rule. There are times when war and prosecution
and discrimination and lies and corruption are better than the
opposite. We need to be objective and realistic here and not sit on our
moral high road justifying what we do and tut-tut-ing others.
For example I'm stopped for a minor traffic violation. Came from being
impatient and serves me right, but rather than go through all the paper
work and disruption of my life that following the rules would entail, as
well as causing the cop involved a lot of paper work and interfering
with his continuing with his real job, we agree on a small bribe. If I
think I am innocent I will decline such a thing and I will get due
process, but even then I may prefer otherwise. In the meantime the cop
gets a little more income (lord knows they aren't payed enough here) and
society gets the benefit of traffic enforcement at lower cost.
For another example, I would far rather lie through my teeth than tell
someone unable to handle the truth -- let us say they are going to
die. Most of us would rather know the truth, but there are exceptions
and these are not hard to spot. The classic problem posed by Socrates
of whether we are obliged to return a weapon to someone who loaned it to
us, the person having subsequently become deranged, comes to mind.
The thing is religion is really -- really --
irrelevant in all these matters. Doing what is right is not a religious
impulse, and determining right and not being mislead by our culture and
our religion and our "conscience," but, instead, reasoning out what is
right on the basis of doing the most good and the least harm (compassion
and justice) as a practical matter is what we need.
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