Several
time-tested guiding ideas are parts of the foundations upon which Judaism,
Christianity and the United States of America are built. They act like
lighthouses to keep individuals and human collectives from crashing into unseen
dangers. They are recorded in their founding documents which were written by
survivors of previous crashes. These documents are the heritages they left to
guide future generations to keep them from crashing into the same obstacles as they
sailed through the dangerous waters of life. The first two are religious documents
-- the Torah and Synoptic Gospels. The third is a political document -- the Declaration of Independence. Very
recently, science has produced a fourth document – a scientific understanding of what humans are. We are the only
generation in history to have access to all four.
The Torah
The
words of the Torah were inscribed on a scroll by Ezra a Jewish Scribe around
450 BCE in Babylon. He lived in Babylon and was the descendant of Judeans who
were brought there after being conquered by Babylonians in 586 BCE. Three years
after they arrived, Persians conquered the Babylonians. A little over a century
later, Ezra began gathered information about his nation’s history, laws and culture
from fellow Jewish exiles and recorded them in the scroll that is now called
the Torah. It opens with the story of
the guiding idea – “all humans are
created in the image of God.” It established the equality and value of all human
lives. No matter whom you are or whom you meet, you are equal and value in the
eyes of God, but for people to be aware of this they must be taught.
The Synoptic Gospels
Its
words were spoken by Jesus, leader of a Jewish sect in 1st century
Judea and Galilee. They were preserved orally and passed down by others until
they were recorded on scrolls that later became part of the Synoptic Gospels. He
was born around 6 BCE, raised in a poor family, and trained by Joseph to be a
builder and teacher of the Torah. The Jewish people of that period lived under
the constant watch of Roman soldiers. Lines of crosses with dead Jewish people
hanging from them were commonly placed along major roads to remind people of
the cost of disobeying Roman authorities. The words of Jewish were spoken to
Jewish people who worshipped the same God and heard the words of the Torah
regularly. Jesus’s guiding idea was this – “God
commanded people to give to Him! The only way a person can give to God is by
giving to their neighbor as they give unto themselves! “ The phrase “give to” is translated by the word “love” in many Bibles; for Jesus “giving to” was “love.” Jesus’s message was based on the idea of equality
and the priority of human life revealed in the Torah and he the primary
instruction he have his followers was “go
make disciples,” which means “go and
teach this to others.”
The Declaration of
Independence
On
June 11, 1776 CE, the Continental Congress created the Committee of Five to develop a formal text of the declaration that
will separate the colonists from the rule of the King of Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson was placed at the head
of the committee, which consisted of John
Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston. They were very familiar with the guiding ideas of
Ezra and Jesus, as well of those of other ancient and contemporary philosophers.
They concluded that the guiding idea of the new nation must be – one must hold sacred the survival and flourishing
of others. They based their conclusion on the two underlined phrases in the
first paragraph of the Declaration of
Independence:
When in the course of
human events I becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Both
phrases declare the “equality of humans.”
For people who believed in God, the Creator established it by “creating all men in His image.” For
others, the Laws of Nature
established “human equality.”
The colonists decided
to deal with the world by presuming it to be populated with fair judges and by
making their case to those fair judges. They could presume this because they
believed that nature had given all human beings an innate sense of fairness,
which, though it perhaps lay dormant sometimes, could nonetheless be activated
by spelling out the terms on which fair judgments are made. It could be
activated with explanations of principle[i] . . . The fundamental feature of human equality in
the argument of the Declaration is, we now realize, this: None can judge better
than I whether I am happy; each can judge for himself, just as well as I can
for myself, whether he is happy. As judges of our own happiness, we are
equals[ii]
. . . The Declaration’s combination of
ideas with process is built on the foundation of a sublime optimism about human
potential.[iii]
The
Committee of Five wove the two views together through the use of the word “sacred,” which has two meanings, religious and secular.
1. religious
-- made holy by association to a god
2. secular
-- worthy of reverent protection and
celebration
For
believers, the guiding idea that “all
human lives are sacred” came from
God. But, for others, they offered a very democratic process for them to come
to same conclusion:
But, in those early
days of drafting the Declaration, as the word “sacred” acquired a religious
hue, the phrase “We hold these truths sacred and undeniable” gave way, as we
have seen, to this one: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” This was a
profound change.
To say that truths are self-evident is an epistemological
claim, or a claim about how we know the things we know. How do we know that
these truths are true? Because they are
self-evident. Well, what does “self-evident” mean exactly? It does not mean
that the instant you hear a proposition, you recognize it as true.
It means rather that
if you look into the proposition, if you entertain it and reflect upon it, you will
inevitably come to affirm it. All the evidence
you need to judge the proposition for yourself is in the proposition itself.
That’s why a proposition can be called self-evident. And to call these
truths self-evident is to invite everyone into the process of judging them.
This is a very democratic approach to truth.[iv]
In
either case, the Council of Five concluded that for the new representative
democracy to work “all or least a
majority of Americans must hold
sacred the survival and flourishing of others.” They knew that many did not
hold it at that time, but they believed “nature had given all human beings an
innate sense of fairness” and even though it was “lying dormant” it could be activated by people “spelling out the terms on which fair
judgments are made.”
Genes, Memes & Better
Societies
In
the late 20th century a new guide about human equality was
discovered. Humans are all genetic creatures. All human bodies are produced by
a 3 billion letter DNA code and they are all 99.9% identical. Nature
bestows upon every newborn a considerably complex brain that is flexible and
subject to change, like a book in which the first draft is written by the
genes. No chapters are complete at birth, and some are just rough outlines
waiting to be filled in during childhood. But not a single chapter consists of
blank pages on which a society can inscribe any conceivable set of words — be it on sexuality, language, food
preferences, or morality.[v]
A
growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary
moral sense from the very start of life. Humans are born with a rudimentary
moral sense -- the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others,
some sense of justice, and gut responses to altruism and nastiness. You won’t
find a society where people don’t have some notion of fairness, don’t put some value on loyalty and kindness, and
don’t distinguish between acts of cruelty
and innocent mistakes. Humans are genetically endowed with compassion and empathy -- the capacity to
put themselves in someone else’s shoes and feel their pleasure and pain.[vi]
Science
discovered that humans are also social creatures that are dependent on the
actions of other people for their very existence and survival from conception
to death. From an evolutionary sense, being genetically endowed with compassion
and empathy, benefits all humans because it increases the chances of choosing the
“best” humans to work with.
But
science also discovered that humans are memetic creatures that require memes to
survive and thrive. Humans acquire them from members of their society, beginning
with their parents/caretakers. This is what turns immature babies into mature civilized
adults — social creatures who can
experience empathy, guilt and shame; who can override selfish impulses in the
name of higher principles; and who will respond with outrage to unfairness and
injustice. [vii]
Every social group has at its core something “sacred” and
members of societies learn about it from their “grand narratives,” which identify
and reinforce the sacred core of each matrix. Each narrative is designed to
orient listeners morally — to draw their
attention to a set of virtues and vices, or good and evil forces — and to impart lessons about what must be
done now to protect, recover, or attain the sacred core of the vision.[viii] Science
tells us that humans are born with a rudimentary intuitive
sense about whom to trust and love, but who humans collectively distrust and
hate comes from societies.
Incorporating These
Ideas in Your Life Journey
The Torah, Jesus and the Founding Fathers all taught different
versions of the same guiding ideas – human
equality and the sacredness of human all lives. Each version builds on what
came before it. None created perfect individuals and societies, but each
contributed to making individuals and societies better. Science provided
factual discoveries that support the ideas.
● Humans are genetically endowed with the
capacity to benefit from them.
● Humans are memetically equipped to acquire
specific memes required to activate them.
● Humans require other humans to provide those
memes.
We created the Biblical Heritage Center to educate people about how to benefit from this process and network
them with others to transform the ideas into concrete actions that make lives
safer, healthier, happier and more fulfilled today. In other words, we help people discover “the best” of the heritages
they have received, learn how to incorporate that into their lives today and create
better heritages for their descendants to build even better futures.
We invite you to join us on this “sacred” journey of
creating better lives!
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[i] Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of
Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen © 2014l Liveright
Publishing Corporation, New York, NY; p. 142
[v] The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By
Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt © 2012; Vintage Books, A Division
of Random Books, Inc. New York, NY;
p. 152.
[viii]
The
Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion By Jonathan Haidt © 2012;
Vintage Books, A Division of Random Books, Inc. New York, NY; p. 330.
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