Personally I would consider men and women to be as equal in the stakes of selfishness and selflessness!
I could post many reasons to back up both claims, but when all is said and done everything leads back to each others self in the end.
Each act we do can be distinguished as an act of selfishness, even acts of charity give us a feeling of warmth inside, so it can be argued even that act was done to make us feel good. This can be applied to everything.
People in essence are:
Products of there need for attention.
Ego robots.
e.t.c
You get the picture and if not, here are some examples:
Posting on forums, posting help guides and advice means nothing other then getting some form of appreciation, that can be derived from many areas, be it: The knowing of offering advice, the acceptance of advice or the recognition from another in seeing errors in the advice.
E.t.c
I could post more, but you can apply this to almost all world interactions, including products from your holy books and the fundamental self act in those where trying to make converts to that’s persons beliefs.
As for the part about religion and people who are selfish as being evil.
Evil to me does not exist, the reference to evil changes like the weather:
Just a few centuries ago, it was not evil to burn witches or drown them.
It was not evil to Stone a man because he was gay.
It was not evil to drops bomb or mutilate women and children of different nations that oppose our doctrine.
Also evil is only applied to the acts of man and not acts towards any other creature, so in that evil is merely an engineered idea! It simply does not exist in reality, it is subjective!
Now selfish acts.
Each act even though selfish is derived from a need for attention from your own kind, ie human.
Just like other animals compete and work with each other so we do too.
Take an artist or an architect or a cartoonist, a musician, an actor, you writing forum articles, me writing this article, doing a good piece of work at school/work, looking after some-one. E.tc e.t.c e.t.c.
So in that we can see that due to this need of self appreciation derived from self acts, with the need for the feeling of importance no matter how small, we can see that the whole structure of our society is not a product of religion or control it is simply a product of our social climate changing in line with our emotional state.
Religion only helps to control people, to slot them into ideals of right and wrong, even though religion is the 2nd product of the world worst recorded deaths.
With what I have been told the lack of water being the first.
So religions do keep people in power, but more importantly it keeps people going down a certain route of conformity which does equal a social order.
As put the man (or men, since it is stronger to assume a multitude) who invented religion was an intelligent man, but then again if you research religions of today you can see they are simply jigsaws of past religions melded together to form a social order to control man, since I believe there exists some outside or internal source, that does not trust men to live free without control. This can be traced back to hierarchy, what better control can this have then dictate your life and afterlife to conform to a way which some one thinks is right for you!
Religions are simply a product or beliefs that are unfounded and unproven, with the only proof linked into discrediting them. (having faith, or have faith, was probably the best invention of all religions).
People assume this is a bad thing, since they don’t trust the nature of man, or the fear death (fear is the main selling point of all religions).
Fear is all it is about religion.
And yes there are people in great power that have control over your lives, you only have to read a paper or turn on the news to see evidence of it.
The control is usually centered around money and a need to keep it going around, a consumer culture is what some call it as this is exactly what we are living in.
I will be sexist and say women buy into the consumer culture more then men, since there is strong evidence they suffer more from peer pressure and the need to conform and fit in! This means there need to shop is greater then a mans due to sociaty acceptance.
But then is money evil?
Feels dam good to have it and spend it!
Maybe the idea money is evil is something your where meant to think to keep you in the chain or circle!
There is no evil there is no religion there is simply do what you like as long as you don’t find yourself in a very negative state for it.
Fear as generated the need for religion or an internal source of intellect wanting to know where we came from, what we are and what the hell are we doing here! This is not religion, its just some called it religion put a stamp on it shipped it out and you all baught it!
