i asked myself a simple question, what do i like most roast dinner or thai green curry, the only conclusion i could come to was that they are both equally great. however i don’t think i would like then mixed, they are both fine as they are. why isn’t religion like this… for years i have been trying to find a universal truth, i ask myself; would it be so bad if you had say, Islamic imams as bishops or what have you within the Christian church, and Christians in Buddhism or Taoists in Hinduism.
once we go down that path in the end there would be a mix of everything in everything, it would essentially be like putting ideas religions and cultures in a blender. if we done this with food all we would end up with is soup!
worse than this universalism itself becomes a religion to the detriment of all others, in the end it is all that remains! i have done a massive u-turn and i now agree with people when they say that universalism just takes everything else away replacing it with a bland and meaningless ideology. further than this we can say that by being fully universal we end up being specific which is in contradiction with the original intent.
i feel that after a long journey i have come to a rather obvious truth; i like roast because it is roast and thai green curry because it just that. we may learn form each other then add and take ingredients away, yet there comes a point when it becomes something else entirely.
the message is thence; be what you are, but don’t put orange juice in my curry for it will taste like vomit!
isnt this why religion is comparative after all, in truth we are here to question
for sure, but what use is that if it is not to take each and every one of us nearer to our own truths! we need the contrasts without them we are all nothing.
you can have common denominators and universals which are the same and are used by various faiths, its a bit like them all using rice and potatoes ~ you still end up with a different meal.
we could all have stew or soup, but i think we would be the lesser for it.
I think there are movements for that. Like the ecumenism espoused by Pope John Paul (the Great). And I have this professor in Symbolic Logic who happens to be a Catholic ( who also belongs in the Order of Preaches you know where St. Thomas of Aquinas belong) priest also practice Buddhism and even teach and live some of it!
Well yeah, I think there would be one ultimate something. A soup if you will.
But I think distinctions will still persist but not that sharp nor contradictory anymore. The different puzzle of our consciousness already start to find it place and now we can enjoy the whole picture even if all of us still persist to start in different area of the picture.
So I am all for religious tolerance and dialouge. For ecumenism.
But do beware not to fall into indifferentism. That will just destroy our soup experience.
Common denominators simply suggest common needs, which can be expressed and addressed differently. This has nothing to do with fear of some globalistic doctrines becoming big-brother mandated in think this way or die situations. This has nothing to do with fear that some doctrine that has helped many could be watered down by relativistic thinking.
Iose, I like your professor. At least he does not mistake universal need for universal remedy. Our personal differences (geography, ethnicity, socializations) demand personalized solutions to common needs. When various religions reach common consensus on what can ameliorate the human attitude toward the human condition, they are relevant to each and all humans. Case in point–circa 500 BCE the Golden Rule appeared in writings of Confucious and Buddha. It appeared in Plato a century or so later and in NT accounts of Jesus’ sayings, circa 1st century CE.
From the Huxley book I recommend, I find Sufi attitudes on religion compelling.
Soup? The idea that soup is not substantial nourishment whereas meat and potatos are is fallacious. What is substantial, by this analogy, is what nourishes. Spare me ideological cholesterol.
You haven’t heard him talk about him being a born-again Catholic and why he became a Dominican priest.
Well I think I will work from that man’s ideals.
Tolerance of faith does not necessarily mean indifferentism, it is rather good to walk another path so we can see our own faith (whatever that is) in a new and wonderful light.
Personally I am entertaining Taoism so I can understand my Catholicism more. And so far it’s doing great and makes me more happier as a Christian.
this would mean that we should be blending xtians with muslims, buddhists etc ~ i don’t think the congregations would comply!
it will either take a long time or a new and necessarily radical worldview and ultimately absolute change. either way wouldn’t we be doing the same as what people have tried before?
ultimately universalism is indifferent as it is un-different. we all end up agreeing some new terms would be introduced that mean god and the tao and buddha being and there will be little contrast.
it is all a little like if we blend all races we just get a beige monoculture ~ i would rather have the difference. this brings me to an important point - if i may, no matter how much we mix cultures we just get more difference [if we cast our eyes over history]. i would rather that religion was similar and that each religion and ideal is reviewed and transformed over time, leaving us with an even greater contrast.
ierrellus
like american evangelicals trying to turn the world into a big isreal type pie. yes this is definitely the antithesis.
indeed, the soup has all the ingrediants of the others. i didn’t mean that it was less in that context, more that we are better for having the relative differences [as you say]. perhaps we need a common soup philosophy that is applicable to all but allows for the differences. however i am sure that you will agree it is better if invisible, that things continue without someone coming along and trying to impose soup on everyone.
Yes, you read me well. I agree with what you say. My problem with the Christian religion in particular, is its concepts of some cosmic heaven in which wars and hubris appear (hence it is not a place of pure love made manifest) and, on Earth, corruption is inherited. My problems with some Eastern religious concepts is their idea that our human experience in the flesh is sangsaric (illusory). These concepts are what I describe as ideological cholesterol. They present unrealistic, divisive notions of the human trinity–mind, body, spirit. What I need as a human, born without my consent, is that my being is valuable by virtue of its possibility, that my becoming is a natural beauty, that my survival needs are not indications of corruption. I’ve heard some such positive affirmations from my Am. Native friends.
well said. reality is not an illusion and evil does not exist [as an entity].
god and the gods etc [if existent] would be made just as everything else is, there is no such thing as ‘creation’. nirvana [if existent] would also be part of the greater universal and hence not an absolute entity and necessarily a part of the greater reality.
as someone at another board said;
Regardless as to how the ingredients go in, once it is chewed, swallowed and digested it all comes out as the same thing.
Of course they won’t comply. It is too early and humanity is quite immature. I suggest take it one step at a time. And when I mean indifferentism, I mean in the current process of the evolution of religious thought, indifferentism would be very dangerous and will defeat the purpose of arriving at that ‘soup’. What I mean by this soup is: The truth as it is.
