Not primary, not secondary, not tertiary
Ah, no. Not at all. Not even close.
Think of “the 10 commandments” for instance, the ones people keep wanting to build statues to in public places. They don’t say a word about not being an asshole. Not a word about compassion or kindness or generosity; no golden rule; no don’t be evil; no be good to one another. Not. one. word. Most of it is about crawling to god, and the rest is just don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t envy. It’s an ethical desert.
Religion is about what human beings owe to god, it’s not about what we owe to each other.
Wow, yeah, no. The golden rule is definitely not the central teaching of christianity, at least. The first of the ten commandments is “yo, I’m god, and you damn well better not worship anyone else”.
The central tenet of the Abrahamic religions seems to be “obey.” IOW, abdicate any individual agency and become a slave to the priestly class.
Ethical axiom no 1 as I see it :
Be kind to & respect other lives and the environment that sustains them.
Ethical axiom no, 2 :
Think about #1 before acting or deciding anything.
Ethical axiom no 3 :
You only have a say over what you choose to do with your life. Other people’s lives are theirs to choose what to do with -until that interferes with & harms you or others. IOW. Your right to swing your fist ends at someone else’s nose. (As Mark Twain (?) famously said.)
But really most of all, above all; Think, be kind!
No supernatural divinities necessary.
Maybe even make that :
Ethical axiom no 3 :
You only have a say over what you choose to do with your life. Other beings’s lives are theirs to choose what to do with – until that harms you or others.
IOW. Your right to swing your fist ends at someone else’s nose.
To avoid speciesism and for truth. (& clarity.)
(Sorry, lotsa comments in a row because I keep rethinking things & stuffing up, mea culpa.)
Okay one last thought here please if I may :
Also Asimov’s Laws of robotics of all things apply pretty well to good people too.
Krzysztof Charamsa says “I know I will pay the consequences“.
I wonder why, if “the primary teaching” is so noble. But he is a priest, after all. If he doesn’t know the primary teachings of his religion, who does?
The primary teaching of Judaism and Christianity is “Be on the right team.” The whole bunch of really stupid rules are designed to make it difficult to keep being on the team so that people can feel superior to others and not have to think about anything more difficult than food. The promised reward for all that is life after death.
“Be kind” is the message some people have extracted from the books, but I think mainly as a sort of desperate grasping for a reason to keep on being on the team and to try to have some semblance of a pleasant life. I very much prefer religious people like that. Too bad there’s so few of them.