Is being good to your fellow man creation of Judism and Christinity?

Question

I am an agnostic at the most,its hard for me to believe the bible but is the idea of being good to another human just because you think its right a natural human thought. For example, did slave owners free the slaves (before civil war) because they just saw a black guy who just a good guy who deserved to have a decent life jsut like themself or was it fear of the afterlife. What do you guys think.

Answer 1

these idea were around long before christ you should read some ancient greek philosophy especially socratese

Answer 2

Nope. We're social creatures, so we've always valued being nice to others, within culturally determined limits. For instance, hunter/gatherers practise repricocity. It's what you do with your friends and family. You know how you sometimes buy your friend a drink, or lend them your car, or help with moving, and you don't really expect anything in return? But if you always do stuff for them, and they don't help you out, you get p!ssed and probably end up dropping them? That's reciprocity, and hunter/gatherers practise it with their entire group, and not just with those close to them. When it's with friends, we consider it just helping a brother out, but it's our most basic, oldest system of exchange.

I tend to believe in the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest myself. What it boils down to is that most people will do the right thing, as that is determined by their culture, because it is in their best interest to do so. For instance, we are social creatures. We rely on each other to survive. Therefore, we're going to value nice, helpful people who help the group out. The people who are nice and helpful are going to get rewarded by the group. They'll be liked and included and people will be more likely to want to help them out. Look at what happens at, say, restaurants. Yeah, the loud blowhard who can't stop b!tching will get lots of attention, so that the waitstaff doesn't have to hear him yell. But who gets the free drinks and the genuine smiles? The nice people who are patient when it's busy and always tip well. It doesn't always fall exactly along those lines, especially in a culture as complex as ours, but it happens often enough that we are not all cold, heartless @sses.

Personally, I think what happened with the slaveholders who freed their slaves is that they didn't pick up on or keep the thing they were taught about black people really being inferior. Whether it was because they were thoughtful, or became close to a black person, or whatever, their experiences didn't jive with what they were taught. For some, the cognitive dissonance made them even more cruel. For others, they were able to accept that their culture was wrong and to take steps to correct it. It doesn't matter, in the end, if they felt it was wrong to enslave a fellow human being, or if they were just afraid of what God would say to that, because the point was that they recognized the slaves _as_ fellow human beings, which their culture was telling them wasn't so.

Answer 3

Being good to your fellow man is a way of life, you either have it or not. The bible just tells you how it should be.

Answer 4

No. That would leave the vast balance of the world as evil.