Sad thought about Jesus.

[robvalue]

Indeed yes, empathy comes from evolution. However, to the untrained eye, it seems like magic. "Why would I care about anyone else? I wouldn't! But I do, so it's magic!"

Pure ignorance.

I was looking at a few other religions with my wife the last few days, and found out that almost every Eastern religion seems to work around karma and reincarnation. There seems to always be this common thread of a reward for behaviour in this life, which you get in the next. I wonder if there are any religions which advise you to be good just to be good and not because the nature of your reward hinges upon it.

We looked briefly at Jainism, which I said to my wife was one of the least offensive religions. Funnily enough we found out it has a lot of sexism and bizarre ideas about women, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Sexism and homophobia are only recently being addressed (and still not fully) so any even vaguely old religion is going to have such crap in it.

Jainism also had the reincarnation crap, but interestingly it seemed to claim that karma actually has physical particles which attach themselves to your soul according to your actions. Very odd for a religion to make a claim about reality. I'm not sure how they answer the question of why this is obviously false.