Mick, thank you for your response
Pilgram,
I told my wife that I would bet this individual was writing a paper.
The book? Probably wouldn't read it. There are already a large amount of books written by people that are trying to reinvent religion/spirituality.
Interested in your ideas? Sure. In the seventies, I discarded all beliefs and dogma that I had encountered and looked at what I knew. I found I knew that God existed and that He represented love to me. Because of this, I was able to spend time in college looking at all of the religions. For instance, I met some Islamic individuals and was able to spend time in prayer and discussion with them. They were very spiritual and loving individuals. Without that experience, I could be looking at the crisis in the Mid-East differently.
The concept that God evolves and not man batters my brain. Can't make it work.
Wish you well on your journey,
Mick
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Mick, to answer your last comment first, I never said that I thought man does not evolve but only that god, (through man and others beings), man and other beings, all evolve together. I think that we (god, humans and other sentient beings) are all connected and/or ONE and that we are all evolving together. This is simply my belief and I have no evidence nor am I aware that anyone else believes this. I have a suspicion that I am not the first person to think this.
Like you, I too have much in common with Moslems and others who embrace different religions. That is the point of my anticipated book. The problems in the Mid-East and everywhere else are in many ways directly related to the fact that different religions (and the people who embrace them) espouse different dogma as well as identical dogma. My thought and hope is that if people could be satisfied with the dogma that all their religions set forth (love, compassion, forgiveness, etc) and simply stand mute on the dogma that differs from religion to religion, we might be able to live in peace and harmony.
No religion is going to "win" in the sense of converting others therefore it can only be by focusing on the agreed upon beliefs of all religions (this is the important dogma anyway, love, compassion, forgiveness) and leaving behind the areas of disagreement that lead to fear, hate, war and death, that all human beings may come together and live in peace with each other. It is the dogma that differs, no matter how old the myths and metaphors may be, that causes people to strap bombs to themselves and kill in the name of god. It is the minority dogma that leads people to kill doctors, nurses and secretaries in abortion clinics. It is this same minority dogma that causes a supreme court judge to violate the separation of church and state of which he was cleary aware.
All beliefs are dogma. But I guess what I'm asking is that since man does not KNOW very much and since we have to make many assumptions, let us make the minumum number of assumptions that we all agree upon (love, compassion, forgiveness, etc) and leave the other assumptions (where religious dogma disagrees from religion to religion) behind. It is this dogma that differs that is causing us to kill ourselves, mutilate children and fill ourselves and our children with prejudice and hate.
I realize that asking people to consider this is difficult. Everyone wants to be RIGHT. And to release ANY of our beliefs is a difficult undertaking. But the alternative is even more difficult.
Many if not most people seem incapable of peacefully coexisting with others who hold different religious dogma. It is fairly clear that these differences are the main cause of much war, terrorism, greed, hate... and the list goes on.
It is not being suggested that anyone abolish ALL their religious dogma. In fact, Jesus, Buddha and other great teachers and prophets seemed to have implied that all that was important was the BASIC teachings (love, compassion, etc.) and they encouraged people to actually DO those things instead of wasting time TALKING about the more trivial different beliefs that do not feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and comfort the sick and dying.
It is my belief that GOD and the many prophets and teachers who have been inspired by GOD, would want fewer committees and theological studies, debates and degrees and more DOING of the work of the Spirit. But until we put aside our differences, we will have a lot less time and energy to help people who really need help.
I invite you to offer any constructive criticism that you may have. I know that many will find my ideas not to their liking and that's okay. What I'm interested in is hearing from those of you who can see what I'm proposing and have ideas about how to possibly bring this about.
I am not putting down ANY religion or any people. I believe that we are all doing the best we can at any given moment. And since I was brought up in the Catholic religion, I know how difficult it would be for the average Catholic to leave behind all the ritual and comforting repetion. But the imporant thing to any good Catholic should be GOD and doing GOOD. And so it goes for any religion.
Any suggestions, brothers and sisters?
Peace and love, Pilgram
the organization is called the Universalist-Unitarian Church... which is a combination of the Universalist and Unitarian sects respectively.
