alt Hacker NewsI think this is true up to a point. But you find chasmic differences as well. Polygamy is an obvious example, or lying to non-brethren (absolutely forbidden by Christianity, permitted I believe by other religions), or the caste system (unthinkable in Islam or Christianity, a base part of reality in Hinduism), etc. You find a very different attitude to wealth in many varieties of Protestantism compared to the Catholic Church. Also, as I said, whether a human being can reach a 'blessed state' by his own efforts, which I believe most eastern religions posit, and Christianity denies. Human sacrifice is an obvious example of a disagreement with very practical consequences for conduct. It was, as is well known, widely practised in parts of the Americas until the sixteenth century. Today in the west, you find people disagreeing very passionately over 'culture war' issues, which is surely a disagreement about what the good life is. And the people who say the culture wars don't matter are positing another view of the good life, different from them both. Etc.
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>Today in the west, you find people disagreeing very passionately over 'culture war' issues, which is surely a disagreement about what the good life is.
All window dressing imo over the real morals at play under all these layers that society puts on top and frequently changes by the decade. What do liberals and conservatives want out of their countrymen for example? The same exact thing ultimately: good people who might lend them a cup of sugar and won't club them over the head for one. Of course propaganda has blinded people on either side into vilifying what is at the end of the day a fungible human with the same basic needs and wants as most other social animals. At the most base we have the moral principles a stray dog seeks out in either fellow dogs or a sympathetic human: let me find someone who won't fight me off and may in fact share things and help me out while I do the same for them.
> or the caste system (unthinkable in Islam or Christianity, a base part of reality in Hinduism), etc.
The historical prominence of the slave trade in both the Christian and Islamic worlds should make it quite clear that it was hardly "unthinkable" but instead very rationalizable.
Rigid systems of social power hierarchy and oppression based on ancestry, perceived race, and occupation (which is a lot of what the worst part of caste is) were very much features of Christian and Islamic societies, even if their religions didn't codify them.