Religion

Religion is another one of these subjects that many people feel uncomfortable discussing. I suppose a major reason is the push back that happens during such discussions. At its heart, religion is truly faith based. Hence, any argument about a religious point of view will by necessity end up leaving the fact world and enter into the world of belief structures. In effect, all religion makes a leap of faith. And in an argument, it is very difficult to defend a leap of faith. It simply is what it is. You either believe or don’t believe. In effect, you make a leap of faith both into belief, and into non-belief.

Why have such a forum? I hear from so many young people today that they simply are not interested in religion, that religion is bunk. This is perhaps the oldest subject known to humankind and many dismiss it without much thought at all.

At the center of religion is the search for a primary force, for DAO, for God and this search is as old as history. By the time Confucius (551-479 BCE) was thinking about the divine the search was already 3500 years old, or much older. “He preferred not to think about the divine because it lay beyond the competence of language” wrote Karen Armstrong, in The Case for God. “People have believed that God exceeded our thoughts and concepts and could be known only by dedicated practices… Religion starts with a mystery and never will be satisfactorily understood through rational processes… Zhuaqzi (370-311 BCE) said that it was ‘no good trying to analyze religious teachings logically’.”

Let me bring the subject into the here and now. In the March 2019 issue of National Geographic, an article titled “We are not Alone”, exploring the physics of exoplanets, stated that there were trillions of galaxies in the universe. It made me laugh. As the movie quote goes, they had me at a billion.

Consider what that means in human terms. The closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, at 4.24 light years away. A light year is about 183,000 miles per second. Voyager technology traveled at about 37,000 miles per hour. Last year, NASA launched a spaceship, the Parket Solar, that will travel toward the sun and reach a top speed of over 433,000 miles per hour. Some years ago, a spaceship traveling in our solar system reached over 150,000 miles per hour as it approached one of our planets. Without doing exact math, a simple happy medium is that it would take you over 4000 years to travel to Proxima Centauri. I submit that a human can barely relate to that. But there are billions and billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, which is said to be 100,000 light years from one end to the other. But science tells us that there are billions of galaxies, and National Geographic just upped that number to trillions. And the Universe is expanding.

Do you get this? Of course not. This is absolutely meaningless to a human. There is nothing here you can relate to in space-time. You can say the words, but your words express nothing because there are no words to explain the universe – “it lays beyond the competence of language.”

What we do know is that religion and the universe have this in common. They are concepts that we feel, concepts we may experience as knowing, concepts that have for many a core truth. God is experienced in this way. And from such experiences flowed religion, and religions translate doctrines and myths into rituals or ethical norms.

“Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as the appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed.” (Armstrong)

Religion in the 21st Century is filled with rituals and doctrines. Many of us strive to find the truths of religion, because we believe that we can find the keys to “getting rid of selfishness, greed, and self-preoccupation that perhaps, inevitably, are ingrained in our thoughts and behaviors; but are also the source of so much of our pain.” (Armstrong)

It is also very difficult to separate religion from a moral code.… Confucius said that “we must dethrone the self from the center of one’s world and put another there.” (Armstrong) In effect, all major religions preach a very similar golden rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Jesus said, love God, then love your neighbor.

Most of life’s major questions lie in this space: why am I here? What is my life all about? How do I build a perfect life? Is there a God? Is there not a God? What is God? If there is a God, does this force care about me? Is there a moral code? Is there a universal moral code that has stood for millennia? How should great religious writings be interpreted? Can you understand great religious writings if you do not understand the times in which they were written? How do I tie ethics, morality, God, and religion together?

By the 4th quarter of life, many people have lost their curiosity on this subject. They adopt a belief structure and then leave it alone. Others are just getting started freed, by years of investigation and learning, from religious doctrines and dogma, promulgated primarily by men, interpreted by men, but proclaimed in God’s name. Freedom from doctrine can actually make a person a deeper believer.

So, for those who are curious, this forum is a place to exercise such curiosity, and to perhaps deepen faith together or continue the journey.