Sure! That's kinda important when we're determining what a 'natural law' that people need to obey to be moral should cover.
Let me suggest that no religious people I know began by sitting in a lounge and saying "let's get to the bottom of this natural law business!" I think you'll find more of interest in what they consider core, if you're after a conversation, than you will by parsing every few words of the Catechism. Many people will have different answers - a feature, if you're into free will.
I find substantial agreement, and a lot more trouble when people choose their one favorite (negative) sentence. But, I think you'll find more people in more religions than ever gather to share faith today than at any time in history. You can go into schismatic timelines if you like, but today a priest, an imam, and a rabbi walk into a bar, and there's no punchline.
Agreed. Building up impossible standards, and then acknowledging that the standards cannot be lived to is a common religious technique. It's prevalent though, because religions tend to try to force a square peg into a round hole.
Do you just dislike that religions do it in a broader social context? Setting impossible standards and coming close (or breaking them) is sort of the innovator/Olympian's mantra, too. I use the technique all the time, both to give myself slack if I didn't go to the gym, or to get myself to go to the gym and live up to a better version of myself. So I see no problem in the technique, or to the potential of people to get together and hone their practice of a thing. "The forum" was once a physical place, but people still use it to trade tips on growing better mustaches, I hear.
If they contain 'natural' truths, then there's no need to sell 'em . . . they're self-evident. When someone tells others that what is 'good and true' is absolute and revealed by their God it tends to get my hackles up.
A lot of cruelty has been dressed in religious certainty, but cruelty wears any clothes it can find. I hold that against the cruel rather than the religious. While I wasn't arguing a "need to sell religions," suppose your proposal in reverse. What if, instead, very little is self-evident, "natural" or otherwise? A human is born with almost no faculty, needs the most care of any animal before self-sufficiency, dies young without extensive bonding, and dies early from loneliness. A human needs little after food and shelter other than not to be left alone. Young people mimic everything they find in order to "try it out." Without others to compare ourselves to, some would argue, we wouldn't even be really aware of what a self is. Social interaction may be what has made most things "evident." There are cruel, terrible evangelists, and there are people who invite Witnesses in for coffee despite having a different religion. I've heard of Mormon missionaries showing up in their full suits to garden for atheists. What's the point? Well, it's a lot better than just yelling at each other. As for "more good" or "more bad" apples, I find people are people everywhere you find them. We've been making, changing, and breaking rules since... rules. mastrr was received as warmly as a vacuum salesman, but kept sharing as long as you kept responding. I'd raise a beer to that.
A friend of mine apologized once for "maybe evangelizing a little." I said I would have been disappointed if he hadn't, given what he said he believed. Trying to form mutually beneficial bonds is a pretty good... order.
