Social ethics are standards and customs established by the community, within a community and for the benefit of that community and individuals therein. Social behaviour is a learned behaviour but it is helped by our innate desire for co-operation and contact with others. Depending on the degree of seriousness, those who disregard social ethics automatically reap disapproval or loss of friendship of their fellows.

The Christian religion is a negative philosophy of people seeking to save themselves from the wrath of their God in another world. It is what they call 'being saved'. After forty years of church allegiance I found the Christian experience to be like living in a box with limits on all sides. It was a place to hide. Everything outside the small or larger box was regarded as a danger. People living in the box feel secure and protected by its walls. I found those walls to be paper thin and offered a delusion but no real protection. They blocked out the view and communication with reality. The reason most people enter the religious box is usually to do with fear of the supposed 'Judgement Seat of God' or as an insurance, just in case.

Let us discard the borrowed, second hand, supposed virtue offered by Paul with all its superstition and unreality. Let us embrace a positive philosophy toward life which offers far better protection and happiness. We can live virtuously, happily and fully in the knowledge that we are complete and responsible persons of worth. This is a quality you can recognise within yourself; something by which we can gain love and happiness for all of life.

If you put your hand in boiling water, you will get burned. If you run with bare feet over broken glass, most likely you will get cut feet. If you want a garden someone will need to dig the ground. Social ethics are exactly the same. The personal fulfilment we get during life will automatically be measured by what we give to society. We are all social beings, part of a social family. Each person is born with natural social needs and personal dignity. We all need to trust our fellows to communicate, to work and play together. No person is an island unto himself or herself. My wife and I go for a walk in the morning. Most people will say good morning as we pass. We were in London on holiday and had to carry our suitcases up and down the stairs of the underground. Repeatedly young men would offer to carry our heavy bags up or down the stairs without reward. We never had to ask, they spontaneously and immediately offered to help. They were displaying social caring. The reason is that society functions best on honesty, co-operation, trust, friendliness and reconciliation. With-out these human virtues society would fall apart. Both the need and the desire are part of human nature. We are born with an inner need and enjoyment of social contact. A strong adhesive of society is our natural inclination to co-operate with others.

Religion is an assumed relationship between a human being and a non-human God. A small child who believes in fairies and Father Christmas who brings presents to good little children, has the same kind of trust that a human can have in a non-human God. A child can have an emotional feeling and trust in the imagined fairies. But that does not make fairies real. This is similar to the Irish Logic of belief in leprechauns, the wee folk. (see story, page 41.). A religious person will also have feelings related to the object of their belief. It may feel real, even exciting but that does not mean that it is indeed real. What they are feeling is the echo of their own thoughts and emotions but that does not make imagined spiritual beings real. People create their own emotions.

Ethics is quite different, involving only people to people relationships- Ethics is not something newly dreamed up by philosophers. Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Jesus and very many others were ethical people. Throughout all the ages there have been people with good ethical standards. For our purpose we will define good ethics as an attitude of enlightened concern for the welfare of all human beings and nature.

Justice, trustworthiness, love, honesty, goodwill, loyalty and compassion are all natural social virtues or ethics. They are the social lubricants and necessary ingredients in all human concourse. Social ethics is the glue which binds family, friends and the wider community together. An attitude of goodwill is also a powerful helper. Goodwill has an expectation of friendship, trust, honesty and success. Goodwill is totally good in itself and needs no qualification. If we set about it we can fill our homes with goodwill and peace between adults, between parents and children and our society. Antisocial behaviour and anger arise as a result of conceived injustices of all kinds including disrespect, poverty and much more. Both social and antisocial behaviour can be taught by instruction and example.

For the early pre-historic human race, social interaction would have been necessary for survival. Only by working together with their fellows could emerging humanity have achieved the huge steps toward civilisation. There must have been codes of behaviour to resolve disagreements- or deal with family privileges, rights of possession and responsibilities. Indeed, all social animals, including chimpanzees, wild dogs and dolphins, have understood codes of behaviour. The prehistoric human animal would not have been an exception.

Perhaps the best known ethical rule of behaviour is the Golden Rule spoken by Jesus, "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you." Matt. 7:12. This very same ethic, in various words, has its origin at least as far back as 600 B.C. and was recorded by Confucius as "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." The idea that religion is the author or indeed the chief propagator of ethical standards is totally erroneous. Good laws provide social order and security for its people. Good ethics provide the lubricant to make society work to everyone's satisfaction.

Ethical codes have been written into the laws of many countries for thousands of years. Hammurabi was the king of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 B.C. That is over 3,700 years ago. Hammurabi is most famous for the written legal code used throughout his kingdom. It is inscribed on a stone stele over two meters tall and now preserved in the Louvre in Paris. The top portion of one side, in bas-relief shows the king standing in an attitude of prayer before the seated sun god, Samash, the god of justice. The king is receiving the laws of the kingdom.

Hammurabi's laws constituted a remarkable framework of social order. They deal, among other things, with the administration of justice in matters such as murder, adultery, false witness and offences against persons and property- My Encyclopaedia Britannica tells as that the "Hammurabi code had advanced far beyond tribal custom and recognises no blood feud, private retribution or marriage by capture. There is a regular postal service. The position of women is free and dignified." What the code did. was to clarify social and individual rights. It established compensation and punishments for injustice and thereby made possible a secure and orderly community.

Confucius tells us that "All men are born good.....True goodness springs from a man's own heart.... Only he who has the spirit of goodness within him is really able to love-.- Virtue cannot live in solitude, neighbours are sure to grow up around it." Speaking of a virtuous person he says. He should be circumspect but truthful. "He should have charity in his heart for all men.... Make conscientiousness and truth your guiding principle. We become less than good through the pressures and evil to which we become subjected."

Spinoza, 1632 to 1677, wrote on Ethics and was translated by Andrew Bogle. Here is one paragraph of note. ''He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavours to drive away hatred by means of love, fights cheerfully and with confidence. He resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield cheerfully, not from want of strength but increase thereof. All these things follow so clearly from the definitions alone of love and intellect that there is no need for me to prove them in detail."

Plato the Greek philosopher said "To live morally and justly is to live in spiritual health, to live immorally and unjustly is to be spiritually diseased." For Aristotle ''All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."

Personal peace has its strength in self knowledge, self identity, a sense of personal worth and positive self esteem. The centre of maturity is always found in self awareness and inner strength. Shakespeare was right when he said,

"This above all; to thine own self be true and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Our greatest achievement is to know the ethical beauty and strength of the self. We can become free of the dictates of religious and social restraints when we become fully committed to the human virtues of justice, compassion, honesty and social caring. Then the whole muddled concepts and restrictions of a God become totally unimportant and irrelevant. After all the idea of a God cannot be proved by science. It is a mental fantasy taught by brainwashed people who are frightened of a supposed hereafter. Take fear out of all religions and they would all fall apart and God and God talk no longer exist.