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Post |
| Gokul |
Posted
on 10-Jun-02 03:28 PM
A general framework for understanding core religious issues
It is interesting to see the different approaches we are taking in proving or disproving whether a particular religion promotes violence or peace. My opinion (let it be known that I am not an expert in this field and all this is just for the sake of healthy discussion in this popular virtual forum) is that we cannot make any conclusion based on some isolated incidents but it also does not mean that these incidents have no significance at all. The incidents such as 9/11 are symptoms and not the causes. They symbolize something deeper and more fundamental and unless we try to understand those issues, we will not be able to comprehend what is going in the world in the name of religion. There have been many scholarly attempts to provide a framework for classifying religions. For example, oriental vs. occidental is the most popular one and people still talk about being eastern or western thinkers. While this approach may be useful in understanding some aspects of human thinking, it does not cast much light when the issues of violence and peace arise. What we need is the understanding of fundamental principles (axioms) and the knowledge of how they differ from one religion to another. From this perspective, the generalization that all religions are essentially good and peace promoting; it is only some misguided people who give bad name to their religions is as FALSE as saying that all political thoughts are good; it is only the leaders that are corrupt. All religions have some fundamental precepts upon which they rely for their teaching. It is this fundamental that really matters. Everything else is secondary. There are two types of religions. (1) Emphasizing Mutual Inclusivity – Those that recognize the validity of the other approaches and sometimes may recommend other approaches as more suitable than themselves. (2) Emphasizing Mutual Exclusivity – Those that negate the validity of others. Violence is intrinsic in these religions because they believe others must perish for their survival.
All attempts of reconciliation between these two types of religions are useless unless there is some paradigm shift in the latter type. When you negate others, you become fearful, which inevitable breeds violence. The component of violence in any religion is directly proportional to the amount of its negation of others.
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| trulyYours |
Posted
on 10-Jun-02 04:05 PM
Gokulji:
I like your analysis, btw. It may be that the religion in question has more of (b), but
again, nothing permits to make the sweeping generalisation that the religion is
promoting violence.
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| _Nepali_Chora_ |
Posted
on 10-Jun-02 10:45 PM
I am not an expert in the subject either. But here are my thoughts.
Religion never promotes or endorses violence. If you look at the fundamentals of religions of the world they all promote understanding and non-violence. Having said that there are extremists that believe in violence is the only way to solve their issues. Do I think that religion is to blame for their beliefs? Absolutely not.
Religion is like a modern art. An artist paints a picture and the viewer interpretates the painting. All founders of the religions are the artists and different religious leaders at different times are the viewers or the critiques. As time passes after the origination of a particular religion, more sects or belief develops. Please looks at the different religions of the world. Different leaders emerge in different times and have their interpretation of the religion. This is how some new beliefs are born and old ones modified. Relegion at the core is good.
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| _BP |
Posted
on 11-Jun-02 03:49 AM
Religion is yet another thing that divides us... makes us feel "different" from one another.
Religion had (and has) its place amongst the uneducated and the spiritually impoverished, especially historically when education was not as pervasive in our lives as it is today. It gave people laws to live by, virtues to uphold, and generally instructed then on how to get along in the community that they lived in.
Now, if you are educated and emotionally independent and healthy, you don't need religion. You already know how to be a good responsible person, for you would only do onto others as you would want them to do onto you...the golden rule. Your concept of God becomes the intrinsic humility in you that recognizes you don't know everything...such as the essence of life, the size of the universe, the concept of infinity...and thus there must be a God, a higher power who makes all of this possible.
Unfortunately, not all the people of the world fit into this category yet. And even amongst those of us who do, some like to cling to it in the name of culture and spiritual support during the unfavorable vicissitudes of life. Sometimes to the extent that we feel different from the "others" of fellow man.
What say you?
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 11-Jun-02 06:14 AM
Now somewhat in the lighter vein:
Suppose the following are the fundamental axioms ( as fundamental as - Passing through one given point, only one line can be drawn parallel to the other line in Euclidian Geometry) of a religion.
(1) It is the only TRUE religion. Others are either wrong or misguided or imperfect.
(2) It is the last religion. There will be no other religion in the future.
Let us see the implication of these statements:
The first statement negates the validity of all others that originated in the past. That is, it covers the time period from minus infinity to the present. The second statement is much more subtle because it tries to kill the embryo of any thing coming better in the future. If something better than present can occur in the future, then the present is certainly not the perfect state. So, it is imperative that the future door be also closed and this effectively nullifies the whole temporal spectrum from today to the plus infinity. So these two statements are necessary and sufficient conditions for establishing oneself and negating others. Unless you change these axioms, the conclusions from the higher order theorems and lemmas cannot be changed. And that is what I meant by going to the FUNDAMENTAL. Just like one has to understand the axioms of Euclid to understand Euclidian geometry, axioms of Riemann to understand Riemannian (Non-Euclidian) geometry, one must look at the fundamentals of religions to understand what and how they assert something. Just like one cannot generalize by saying that all geometries are same (In Euclidian - the sum of angles in a triangle is always 180 degree whereas in Non-Euclidian, it is either greater than 180 (Concave) or less than 180 (Convex)), it is equally naive to generalize and say that all religions are same.
Suppose a Non-Euclidian religion has the following axioms.
(1) All religions in the past were good or at least in the direction of being good.
(2) All religions in the future will be good or at least in the direction of being good.
When a religion is based on these axioms, it will have different conclusions(theorems and lemmas) than those based on the previous axioms. The religion based on these axioms does not have to compete with others because by the first premise, there is the validity for the past efforts and by the second premise, there is a validity for the future efforts as well. This framework also covers the whole range of time spectrum.
Now we arrive at the very important conclusion.
(a) It is very IMPORTANT to notice the difference between:
Some people saying that all religions are good AND
A religion itself saying that all religions are good.
When a person says that "All religions are good", there are two possibilities.
(1) The person is completely naive so he/she is just making a lazy statement, not trying to do homework and set the record straight.
(2) The person is completely knowledgeable but what he/she is saying is just from the teachings of the person's own religion. In this situation, the person hasnot proved that 'All religions are good' but unknowingly, what he/she has proved is the validity of his/her own religion if the religion is Non-Euclidian or type 2.
So, in order for a religion to belong to group 2, the religion ITSELF must state the axioms for group 2. Sayings or acceptance of persons who cannot influence or change the axioms of their religion has little significance. Using Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, we can show that Euclidian religion is contradictory and limited.
Now coming back to the issue of Violence:
One way to approach this issue is by looking the statistical significance (p value ) of
Null hypothesis : A religion is NOT promoting peace.
Alternate hypothesis: The religion is promoting peace.
Suppose a religion has persons A, B, C, D etc. who have worked hard to promote peace being CONSISTENT with the premise of their religions. For some confidence interval (say 95%), we can test whether the p value is less than alpha (one tail test). If so, then we can reject the null hypothesis that the religion is not promoting peace.This approach will avoid the problem of making "sweeping generalizations".
Although approached from the humurous and lighter side, I hope I have presented some valid statements. Otherwise feel free to disagree or ignore.
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