Examples of non-Christian Moral systems.

Jar,I would suggest even more of that horror should be laid at the doorstep of Britain's imperialistic devastation of China. Will Durant in his first volume of the Story of Civilization was writing before WWII. He predicted that Japan would go to war because Japan saw what Britain did to China, the opium wars, etc and realized that it could either be forced into being a colonial state, or become an imperialist itself, and to do that it needed raw materials. Durant predicted Japan would go to war. How is that for successful prophecy?Much of the fighting and terrorism in the world is stemming from British colonialism, from Northern Ireland to the middle east. And for my bias I will state that I am a born in America of British and Scots/Irish descent.Imperial Japan and Germany were examples of highly authoritarian cultures. I note that the fundamentalist on this list seem to feel authoritarianism is neccessary for a moral culture. Certainly the writers of the Bible claimed their god demanded genocide of them. This was more wishful thinking than fact however, as there is no evidence of Moses, Jericho, or an invasion of Canaan by Israelites.Interestingly the Mongols converted to Buddhism and became peaceable.
How wonderful it would be if the Jews, Christians, and Muslim would also convert and live compassionately and non violently with one another.peace,
lfen

jar,I don't have a personal interest in Shinto. I did study it in a class on Chinese and Japanese religions. I don't recall anything about good and evil though. I was interested in Buddhism and Taoism rather than Shinto.Have you reason to believe the Japanese were worse than the Nazi's and SS? Also, Stalin and Mao and Polpot among others have committed large scale atrocities. And we have seen small scale atrocities at the least by Americans in Vietnam and most recently Iraq. I see part of the problem of Germany and Japan at that time was they were very authoritarian cultures which held citizens to unthinking obedience. The Japanese did terrible things but I dont' think it was because of Shinto or Buddhism, Zen's appeal to the Samurai class notwithstanding.China is doing terrible things in Tibet and I hate communism, but look what the Christian's did to the natives peoples of the Americas.peace,
lfen

What's the question?peace,
lfen

jar,My recall from the religon class is coming back a bit.
Shinto as I recall is an animist religion relating to the spirit of places. Interesting in their origins story is that rather than an expulsion from the garden of eden thay are living in it. The islands of Japan are special to the sun goddess. I don't recall anything about good or evil.The thing is that Buddhism came to Japan from Korea and had an influence for centuries.I recall something from anthropology readings of years ago but I don't know if current thought in anthropology upholds these ideas or not. There was a distinction made between "guilt" based and "shame" based cultures. Guilt based is more on internal controls and shame based on external controls. Japan was said to use a shame base. That might have an influence of behaviour such as "the rape of Nanking" in that if your superiors ordered something and others were doing it there would be less internal reluctance to take part.I suggest that the unique thing about Shinto is that it is the one example of an animist religion surviving into modern times and incorporated into a civilized society. Generally animistic beliefs are found in more primitive social organizations.Zen, the japanese tranliteration of Chan, Buddhism arrived in Japan after Buddhism had already been embraced. The samurai class were attracted by its austerity and Zen teachers seem to have made some attempts to be intelligible to warriors. How deep the influence went in either direction I really don't know.I've a long standing interest in Buddhism. I'm personally just not very interested in animism or Shinto. So this is hopefully my last words on it. Best of luck. There are some good books on comparative religion. We read in the class I took in Huston's Religions of the World. Not a bad place to start.peace,
lfen