On Nov 6, 2008, at 1:06 PM, Horace Heffner wrote:
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.
I agree. That is the problem to which everyone who insists their
religion is the only correct one makes a major contribution. The
question is, do they want to continue to be part of the problem or do
they want to be part of the solution?
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.
The spirit reality can be studied using the same methods and rules
applied to a study of the physical reality. This kind of study is
being done. Unfortunately, the skeptic makes this work more difficult
and unknown to many people. Granted, this work is difficult and
filled with false paths, but it is possible and is revealing much
detail about how the system works. I predict the same transition in
thinking that resulted in the scientific approach being applied to a
study of the physical world will also take place in religion, but with
a 1000 year delay.
Ed
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
