No. What I’m saying are the spiritual things like virtues which we can all accept. There’s no need to join any other religion at all.
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What if we accepted each others Religion?
- Thread starter loverofhumanity
- Start date
The spiritual teachings such as the virtues are common to all religions and they are the things which we have in common.
So I can expect you this evening or tomorrow morning?
The spiritual teachings are all very similar and something we can accept without having to join any religion.
Then sorry, your proposal is self-defeating. As others have pointed out, the Bahai and other groups have made the attempt.
Fine by me. But I expect that many, starting with the Abrahamists, will take issue.
Or, perhaps most likely, we will find out that there isn't a whole lot that we can all accept.
I understand the need for community, too, but I like opera, classical music and great stage plays, and I don't expect those who prefer rock and rap concerts to join me, nor will I be joining them, in our cultural pursuits. Communities do not need to be homogenous. In fact, I think diversity adds strength.
The Baha’i temples do have the symbols of all the major religions in their architecture. Including Hinduism. We accept all the religions as true just not the manmade dogmas. Here I’m speaking about relationships between religions not atheists. It’s not about fun for me when our world is falling apart with wars breaking out everywhere. It’s about us putting aside our prejudices and being welcoming and kind to each other.
That is very, very deeply self-defeating.
Not least because of the Abrahamic theism-based premises.
That seems most likely to me. After all, religion is that to which one binds oneself, from the Latin religare. It's very hard to say that you accept the beliefs of others where they contradict those things that you believe.
I consider for how long the mainstream Christian denominations have been working towards ecumenism, and how little real progress has been made. Sure, there's a World Council of Churches, but the Catholic Church participates only as an observer, not a full member. It was in 1920, more than 100 years ago, that the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Germanus V of Constantinople, wrote a letter "addressed 'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations". And tghis is as far as they've got, in all that time?
More than that, @Evangelicalhumanist : what price was paid for that ecumenism?
Many people seem to believe that agreeing on "the existence of (Christian) God" is an achievement.
It isn't. It just tries very hard to believe that it is.
That is actually considerably worse than no achievement whatsoever; it is an unwelcome distraction from attempts at dealing with the reality of facts.
And a dangerous distraction at that. Far, far too often people rely on that certainty to justify actions and goals that they would otherwise recognize for the immoral, destructive things that they truly are.
Many people seem to believe that agreeing on "the existence of (Christian) God" is an achievement.
It isn't. It just tries very hard to believe that it is.
That is actually considerably worse than no achievement whatsoever; it is an unwelcome distraction from attempts at dealing with the reality of facts.
And a dangerous distraction at that. Far, far too often people rely on that certainty to justify actions and goals that they would otherwise recognize for the immoral, destructive things that they truly are.
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I am sorry. Part of accepting other religions is that You do not get to decide what is true and what is man made. If you are going to be serious about acceptance, then the acceptance has to be based on actual open minded meeting of minds and hearts on the principles that are considered critical to both faiths....and not an apriori declaration that this is what I accept and these we do not accept because my founding books and leaders say so.
I don’t believe so. Many people who are tired of antagonism between religions towards welcome very much this tolerance towards other religions. Because of the Baha’i teachings I believe in Buddha and regularly read the Dhammapada. I find it is spiritually liberating to accept Buddha. Why should I be prejudiced or keep aloof just because Buddhism doesn’t mention God? There is truth in all religions I have found and I find having a view of oneness about all of them enriches my life. After all why should I deprive myself of the wisdom of Buddha or Krishna or Muhammad or any of These great souls. They all teach truth so I accept Them all.
The point is that you can't in good faith attempt to extent dogmatic theism to "all religions" without serious distortion, if not all-out oppression.
As history so painfully and so clearly shows.
The flaw, I am sorry to have to say, is in the Abrahamic conceptions of gods and of their roles.
True but if Buddha teaches to defeat hate with love and Christ teaches to love one another Who am I going to disagree with? Go through all the scriptures and you will find similar like in the Quran it says to return good for evil. Zoroaster says ‘good thoughts, good words, good deeds’. Baha’u’llah says we are all ‘the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch’. With regard to the spiritual virtues all the religions complement one other. Which of these truths am I supposed to deny? Only those who haven’t studied these religions in depth see the differences but those who have see the same thread throughout all of them.
Well, hold your horses, I would say there has been a lot of good progress, for example:
- The Anglicans and Catholics, where I am, have a very close relationship and work with each other exceptionally well. The priests all know each other and invite each other to participate.
- The laity are emphasising understanding and acceptance. The local Anglican Cathedral has icons in and is very hospitable to all denominations.
- The books that are being produced by formerly partisan groups are much, much more ecumenical; SPCK, for instance, started as an Anglican Mission but now caters to every denomination, including and perhaps especially Roman Catholics. In line with this, there are more ecumenical Bibles being produced and read.
- Things like the Anglican Ordinariate are becoming common.
- The Anglican Church is very accepting of things that, just a few decades ago, would have been sniffed at, such as praying the Rosary.
- The Catholic, Anglican and Scottish Churches recently went together to their communions in Africa to oppose the proposed legislation to ban homosexuality.
- The Roman Catholic Church has allowed the Eastern Catholic Church to start using its own forms again, including dropping the Filioque and other such practices. This is catching on in the West, too.
- The Archbishop of Canterbury recently said 'Anglicans recognise the Pope as the father of the Church in the West'.
The Eastern Orthodox Churches, I am afraid to say, have been an outlier here, and cannot even call a council of themselves, let alone have ecumenical dialogue with others. The two groups doing the best at this are the Roman Catholics and Anglicans, with the most dialogues; second are the Lutherans, iirc.
If you are serious about that goal, you will end up demanding that the Abrahamics deemphasize god-belief to an extent that puts their very continued existence in doubt.
I’m saying I have no problem accepting the spiritual teachings of Buddha. The Dhammapada and things like the Noble Eightfold Path, the Five Precepts are so insightful. These teachings are for all humanity and we can all benefit from them.
Why? From the outset, this premise already negates the notion that everyone can just accept other religions. The above condition has already excluded Neopaganism, Jainism, Sikhism, and many other less-common religions from the conversation. It also seems to me a self-defeating one, because the Baha'i Faith only has around five to eight million followers worldwide. By what metric is it a "major religion" in light of that? Should it also be excluded from the proposal for universal acceptance?
Some religious claims are mutually exclusive, so this would never work in practice. The Qur'an teaches that Jesus was a prophet and a human, while Christianity teaches that he's God. Buddhism doesn't speak of a personal god like Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and Christianity do, and the Abrahamic conceptions of virtue and sin are different in some key ways from their dharmic counterparts.
People believe in different religions for a reason. Not everyone finds the same beliefs and teachings convincing, and I don't see why one shouldn't accept this diversity instead of expecting everyone to accept each other's beliefs as accurate or beneficial to one's own life and spiritual growth.
I think the mutual exclusivity of many religious and non-religious beliefs renders this both impossible and unnecessary. I would never expect a Christian to worship at a Buddhist temple, nor would I expect a Muslim to worship at a church where crucifixes and Christian iconography that directly contradicted Islamic teachings were on display. I also wouldn't find it reasonable to expect an atheist to partake in theistic worship and claim to accept its premises as true; such a claim would simply be deceptive and contrived.
I find it much more realistic to embrace coexistence and diversity instead of trying to fit square pegs through round holes by assuming that everyone could accept others' beliefs or find them convincing.
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Maybe if you feel unhappy with my posts then maybe it’s best if you just put an ‘ignore’ on my profile. That way you won’t even see my posts.