On Nov 6, 2008, at 9:15 AM, Edmund Storms wrote:
But, look at this process from God's point of view, if this is
possible. As God, I know I'm the only one. Humans call me by
different names and do different ritual, but I know all the effort
is directed toward me. So, why would I care what I'm called?
Because you would not want your family of man at war in your name. It
is man's own distortion of the divine that causes religion based
war. It is man's wearing the cloak of God and injecting his own
desires, especially desires for personal power, into religion and
religious texts that is the source of strife between religions.
Peace can only become a reality through some degree of shared values
and rational discourse between members of the religions. Christians,
Jews and Muslims have an extensive base of shared values and history
upon which to build a lasting peace, but this can not happen without
identifying a sufficient foundation on which to start, and engaging
in a long rational process to bring about the peace. If even
Christians, Jews and Muslims can not reconcile, then there is not
much hope for peace for all mankind.
Also, I'm always amazed that rational people believe something that
was based on knowledge that existed over 2000 years ago. We now
know that the earth is not the center of the universe and that we
are insignificant life forms in a complex and immense universe that
is surely populated by life forms that are far more advanced.
Science works hard to update its knowledge about the physical
world. Religion makes no such effort to learn more about the
spiritual reality. Yet, these two opposite approaches to knowledge
exist in the same individual without conflict. How is this possible?
Ed
Science is limited. Science is founded on the universal
applicability of physical laws and the repeatability of experiments.
Religion is based on the premise that some things and events exist
outside the scope of science, that there is a creative will that can
work outside the realm of these laws. These are not conflicting
premises, provided the working of miracles, i.e. the violation of
physical laws, are assumed not frequent enough to reliably and
repeatedly be observed in experiments. Mysterious one of kind events
do happen. Belief in science and religion is not necessarily
logically inconsistent. It is far less inconsistent than a belief
that we can through science and logic alone, or through religion and
logic alone, understand everything. Each is filled with the foibles
of man. When it comes down to killing each other in the name of
religious principles, we owe it to each other to have a dialog to
sort out how we possibly could be so logically inconsistent. Logical
dialog is the only path to peace between religions, and it is the
realm in which religious leaders should be working as hard as
possible to achieve new knowledge.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
