We’ve just come off a really ugly thread that attempted to ask this question, and it devolved into… well, …
The question is still valid and so, one more time…
Is there a way, a method, an answer to the strife and violence that is being generated by religious differences? What might be done to help religious people cooperate instead of killing one another?
I would ask for dialog and not diatribe. Please? 
JT
In so far as western religions go it’s like this:
Judaism came first. It contained the ideas about prophets and a messiah. It implied that at one time there was no prophet and no messiah. God contacted a prophet and told him important stuff. Also the messiah is on the way; he will fix things up. This sets the potential for more prophets and the arrival of a messiah and is like a poker bluff.
Christianity: It calls the bluff and delivers a messiah, thus making Judaism obsolete. Anyone that does not believe that this great guy is the messiah is simply a nostalgia buff and can’t recognize goodness when it hits them in the face! Thus, Jews are bad, stupid, and blind.
Islam: This exploits the prophet aspect of Judaism. Mohamed is the new prophet! He got his instructions from god! Why not, it happened before to Abraham and Jesus. Those Jews and Christians simply do not want to listen to reason and are stuck in the past. Also, god is not a man so the whole Jesus thing was a mistake and he was just a prophet.
All three religions are aspects of Judaism. The morale building aspects of the prophet and the messiah simply blew up in their faces.
Anyway, they are all the same group and each group sees itself as more advanced than the next.
If there really is a god, then one group has it right and they had better stick to their guns (maybe literally there).
If this is all just politics then the powerful fallacious leaders must stick with their brand of the religion to maintain their power.
It’s atheists to the rescue!
the appearance of the actual supreme god… the god that trumps jesus, judaism, islam, whathaveyouism…
until that happens, there is no common ground.
“I am”
“I am the way, the truth and the light”
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me”
strife and violence is not necessarily created by religious differences…
it only gives an excuse for human greed…
-Imp
Promoting the view that every faith, and even atheism and agnosticism, grasp bits of truth, but no one has all the truth?
Hello
I feel that strife and violance will never leave no matter what is done. Religionous people are mostly irrational and inconsistant at best with their beliefs. It is a never ending…as long as we have religion.
EZ$
Sâmkhya
I think that atheists have all the truth about god that is needed. I just said in another thread that you can’t prove a negative. Wondering about something that does not exist is a terrible waste of time and I suspect drives people crazy. It can ruin whole societies.
Tentative asks:
I believe there is a way but only a few will want it. Whether or not the few that desire to be real can have any effects on the damaging needs for self justification is an open question. I believe that it is worth the effort which is why I do what I can regardless of the resistance normal for these efforts to get beyond the need for self justification.
In the fall I hope to voluntarily lead a book discussion in a holistic center on precisely this question. “Lost Christianity” by Jacob Needleman addresses this question primarily from the Christian perspective but includes the other major traditions as well since it concerns the devolution on the surface of all the ancient traditions.
The preface of the book, written in the mid 1970s explains why I feel it a necessary and valuable question and why I am willing to help where possible:
Whatever partial good results from all this strife will come as a result of those with the courage to admit their own intolerance in the process of being open to “the experience of oneself – myself, the personal being who is here, now, living, breathing, yearning for meaning, for goodness.” We are too busy fighting and justifying ourselves and the satisfaction it produces denies the human need to “know thyself.” We would rather just tell others what they should do.
Hopefully, during a face to face book discussion, the normal tendency to argue over details can be kept at a minimum by bringing back the big picture that is always present in the book. I am anxious to learn if it will be beneficial. Hopefully, through the nature of the resistance, I can better learn how I may be part of intolerance as well.
The Adlerian wrote:
I disagree with your premise. If there really is a god, why is at least one group right? Maybe they all got it wrong. This seems like a reasonable thought, yes?
But the bottom line is that monotheistic religions are inherently opposed to one another. Each of the Big 3 (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believe that if you don’t believe what they do that you are going to hell. Also, some followers of the Big 3 feel the need to try and ‘convert’ new members. This is seen as an escalation and so the others retaliate, (sometimes through stepping up their own recruitment efforts, sometimes through bombs).
This is the same principle that drove the cold war. You have more nuclear bombs than me, so now I need to build more. It is a never ending cycle
that I do not believe can be resolved whilst these religions are allowed to endure. Ask yourself this:
When was the last time you heard about Buddhists, Taoists, or Hindus blowing each other up because they felt that they were superior and commanded from a higher being to kill all ‘infidels’? If god is so powerful, let him kill the infidels. Why do we have to do his work? Isn’t he omnipotent? If he is, surely he is very lazy, or like Saddam, he lacks the will to carry out his own teachings.
They would not have gotten it wrong if god gave them the information. He would not screw it up!
All the more reason to reject these religions.
Ha! I forgot about your famous “god is a jerk” sig! Then, according to your beliefs you are right!
Yes, I do believe that if god exists he is a jerk. That’s all I really have to say about that.
Actually, all religions need to be part of the dialogue. It’s not just Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that are responsible (not to take any responsibility away from those groups). But, for example, in Hinduism there are religious zealots that wage war in the name of Bharat Mata, or “mother India.” Once such Hindu group is the VHP. And Buddhism can be critiqued with an opposite but equally valid point that they are too disengaged, which can take the form of apathy or hopelessness about the state of the world. Granted, Buddhists seek release from the worldly state, but another tenant of Buddhism is “do no harm,” and I argue that apathy is a harm just as destructive as violence. Apathy allows zealots to go around teaching that it is God’s will they kill themselves and others.
So what must begin (or continue) to happen is genuine dialogue among all religious groups (even if it’s just among those willing to talk), where one of the things EVERYONE needs to get clear is that it is never ok to kill or harm in God’s name. (Now how that is exactly going to reach the crazy people, I admit I don’t know). But the people who do care shouldn’t shrug it off as hopeless. Even this conversation may contribute something; it is a medium that spans the world and at least people attempt to exchange ideas and listen.
My thoughts on this problem are incomplete because it seems to me that the first step would be to make sure that we ask the right questions. The sheer complexity suggests that the questions are what is important and less so the answers.
This problem cannot be solved at the organization level, but must be addressed to the individual. It is a heart and mind issue, solved only as individuals find respect and tolerance for others and gather collectively to express that understanding, and so, the question is what might we do to encourage people - all people to enter self-examination, a self-appraisal of their spiritual selves and how they should act out that understanding among their fellow man. One may not ask for a pre-determined answer without becoming part of the problem. The only validity of such an endeavor is to ask for individuals to look into their hearts, for it is there, and only there, that any possible answers reside.
Who asks this of the individual? Who encourages the stop and look at myself? Who can make the question visible without becoming part of the polarization?
If we can answer that, we may have answered the only question that need be addressed.
JT
1.This problem cannot be solved at the organization level, but must be addressed to the individual.
This appears to be the only way.
It would take a world wide campaign that was very well crafted and would take several generations.
there’s no one single religion alone that’s a problem but I’ll list a few things I’ve noticed:
Born Again christians are following the “ego god”, and thusly are more likely to tell you everything your doing wrong, and less likely to want to find common ground.
Jews have a cultural exclusion, that many of them STILL to this day think of themselves as god’s special people.
Muslims combine both the jewish and christian problems when dealing with other religious beliefs.
that’s a careful dance that must be performed, but first we must decide what to ask to promote integration and push down exclusivism.
I agree! We are in quite a pickle!
Personally, I can’t wait until more Indian people move to the states! The mass confusion of ideas should be entertaining! Their religion should shock the crap out of the average joe.
That’s for the evil part of me that enjoys human folly!
Hi everyone,
having read through the quote that Nick posted, I think that Jacob Needleman has got it right. We pretend that Religion or God is about some objective “Other†but forget that we are the subject, not any other. It is truly a case of self deception when we start fighting about our idea of how God is supposed to be, when in fact we are the problem.
I have several times tried to make clear that sentience is common to man and that the “Unknown†is unknown to us all. It is no surprise that Mankind has investigated sentience as well he can and in various places all over the globe, various concepts have appeared. This means that the experience that begins a religion, however different it is explained, is a common experience. This also means that the reality behind the experience or behind the Metaphor “God†is the same, but just given different names.
It is also common to man, that philosophy began with myths, legends and allegory. Myths have always been utilized in societies to shape the culture’s values and moral beliefs and thereby creating acceptable cultural norms. Societies, like individuals, have rituals, beliefs and stories that bind them together to create a community, and they do not grow around scientific fact, which has a different role in society. It is quite normal for symbolic meaning to be attributed to natural elements which influence cultural perceptions, and are passed on from generation to generation.
The aversion expressed against this insight comes from the above mentioned self-deception of avoiding the fact that I am the subject in religion, not my vision of God. Myths are stories that should be experienced rather than just heard or watched, just as the myths about the Archetypes of the Bible want to help us experience what is said to have happened to them, not just tell of something that happened a long time ago.
My attempt has been in the past to show that religions that come from related languages also have common ground on which they can find many similarities amongst them. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have this common link, which has been lost in Judaism and Christianity, where the Semitic languages are no longer dominant. In fact, it is this break that could explain the criticism of Judaism and Christianity by the early Moslems, since both Judaism and Christianity had little or no links to Semitic languages when Islam came into being.
Why is all of this important? If we are talking about varying experiences with the same reality, then surely there is no ground for animosity – especially within Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also within other Religions too. The differences are external, the similarities are internal. As long as believers are only concerned with the external features of their religion, they will fight over it. Once they become concerned with the internal qualities, they will recognise their affinity with each other.
Shalom
Bob,
What do you think of my point that the middle-eastern religions view themselves as updates of the previous religion? This coupled with the belief that scripture is the holy word implies that the previous group is too stubborn to hear the new update from god, thus making them bad people in the eyes of the true believer.
it’s funny I had an interesting thought cross my mind the other night. Generally when people look at other groups, people, religions they compare them to themselves by what is different. Like he’s got different colored eyes, skin, etc. we forget that they’ve got the same basic body structure we do, their eyes work the same way ours do, etc.
same with religion, they do this and this, we do this and this.
The only time similiarities are seen is when two groups, people, religion are being negatively compared. the similiar, differences to you.
we’re more alike than different.