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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t think the Golden Rule is transcendental because it is rooted in religious beliefs. Rather, it got rooted in religious beliefs because it is transcendental. There have been studies to show that very young children and some animals understand concepts of fair play, and neither know anything about religion. It was a pro-social trait that served early hominids well and got bred into us more and more over time. Local religions adopted it to reinforce it in the social order.  [/quote]

This has been hashed out in the Golden Rule universal thread / but I’ll relay some of that here.

I agree on some level that the Golden Rule probably predates organized world religions because there are many versions of it in traditional oral histories or non western peoples as well. Whether it can be reduced to a self-serving pro-social survival mechanism, I am not so sure. I agree that is highly adaptive but think there is more to it that connects us to fuller human experience and identity.

It is ironic that the closest thing we have to objective truth is so utterly subjective. The way one person would like to be treated is often not the same as the next person. Hence the negative version of the Golden Rule (don’t do to others what you would not have them do to you) is equally important for avoiding intentional mistreatment.

That said, My understanding is that The earliest versions of empathetic reciprocity were rooted in religious beliefs. They  were developed far earlier than concepts of secular thought and western rationalism/ dual reality objectivism articulated during the Enlightenment.

The earliest affirmation of the maxim of reciprocity, reflecting the ancient Egyptian goddess Ma'at, appears in the story of "The Eloquent Peasant", which dates to the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040–1650 BCE): "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do."[9][10] This proverb embodies the do ut des principle.[11] A Late Period (c. 664–323 BCE) papyrus contains an early negative affirmation of the Golden Rule: "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."[12]

The modern term "Golden Rule", or "Golden law", began to be used widely in the early 17th century in Britain by Anglican theologians and preachers; the earliest known usage is that of Anglicans Charles Gibbon and Thomas Jackson in 1604.

Karen Armstrong’s (British scholar and author) books and compassion.com website have a lot more info in this subject. She started out as a devout Catholic nun and journeyed towards ethical humanist monotheism drawing from different faiths. She has done extensive historical research around all religions sharing some version of the Golden Rule. She founded The Council of Conscience, a multi-faith, multi-national group of religious thinkers and leaders to create the Charter for Compassion. The Councilors sorted and reviewed the thousands of written submissions, considered the meaning of compassion, determined key ideas to include in the Charter and created a plan for how the Charter will live in the world. 
https://charterforcompassion.org

However religion certainly has no monopoly on the GR. Atheists and agnostics certainly often act with great integrity and empathy. [/quote]

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