Morality should be summed up in a rule that seems to transcend cultures. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Yep, the old Golden Rule. What else do we need?
Yet, most religions are crammed with rules for behavior. Some apply to ritual, some to personal behavior and all are mind numbing in their scope. The Western faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, are all obsessed with governing ever aspect of our personal lives. Hinduism, and I will admit that my understanding is limited (please correct me if I am wrong, I welcome comments) in its formal structure has a vast array of rules governing caste behavior. Confucianism is primarily a religion based around rules of behavior. Buddhism and Taoism are looser, but they have their own difficulties, mostly the nearly incomprehensible Cosmic views.
As far as we know, the same problems arose in the old religions. The Greeks and Romans had very rigid moral beliefs, at least during their strongest periods and, if we are reading their writings correctly, the Egyptians and Sumerians were equally strict.
It seems to be a human thing to want strict control of our behavior, whether it is enforced by the State or God seems not to matter. Since every culture has its own set of rules, I am wagering that God is not really involved. No, it is us people who are obsessed with uniformity and we do our Creator a great disservice when we lay it all at His/Her (I wish I could find some gender free pronoun to apply to the Creator; I guess It would work, but that sounds somehow disrespectful) feet.
So, let's try this for awhile. Apply the Golden Rule to your behavior, forgetting all the moral dogma we've had shoved at us for all these years. I will bet all I have, admittedly not a lot, that life will go better for us all.
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