Posted inGod Reality Religions

Why bad tsunamis happen to good people

“Why?” is a many-faceted word when it comes to disasters. Science can tell us the physical reasons why the tsunami hit South and Southeast Asia, but people in the area (and elsewhere) also want answers to broader questions: Why us? Why here? Why now? These are queries in an article by Kenneth Wordward in the January 10 issue of Newsweek: “Countless Souls Cry Out to God.” The article describes how survivors of four faiths, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, are variously conceiving the metaphysical meaning of the tsunami cataclysm. The Hindu inhabitants of poor fishing communities don’t have sophisticated theological…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Start worrying about your religion if…

After reading my last post, a friend enquired about whether any lightning strikes have been observed heading for my increasingly faithless soul. He was joking. But the vision of bolts from heaven being thrown at the unfaithful got me thinking: Isn’t it strange that, jokingly or not, we can entertain the idea that a God who supposedly is so much better than us also can be imagined as so much worse? I make no claims about possessing any divine qualities. But if you disagree with me, almost certainly I won’t get mad at you. Peeved maybe, but not mad. So…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Religions

Brother of Jesus ossuary hoax

Poof! There goes one of the few pieces of evidence that Jesus actually existed, a two thousand year-old box inscribed with “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” A few days ago Israel indicted four antiquities collectors for forging artifacts, among them this ossuary that supposedly contained the bones of Jesus’ brother.

What intrigues me most about this story is what it says about Christianity. The discovery of this box a few years ago was big news. Not so much for its archaeological significance, as a “60 Minutes” piece about the ossuary that we saw recently said that these burial boxes are commonplace. Rows of them were shown stacked in some museum storage area.

Rather, interest in the “James, brother of Jesus” ossuary was extreme because it would have been the earliest evidence outside of the Bible of Jesus’ existence. Christianity is nothing without Jesus, so if the ossuary were real, this would have offered indirect proof of the reality of the religion whose core is Christ. But the inscription on the box wasn’t real. So Christianity remains resting on a shaky foundation of gospel accounts whose veracity never can be proven.

Is this any way to run a religion? The Western religions—Christianity, Islam, Judaism—are dependent on revelations. If people—Jesus, Muhammad, Moses—hadn’t revealed the nature of God to the faithful there wouldn’t be any substance to those faiths. So the historical existence of these founders is central to the theology of each religion. Imagine Christianity without Jesus, Islam without Muhammad, Judaism without Moses. Would you still have a vital religion?

On the other hand, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism are pleasingly complete without the presence of any particular human revelation. Though bearing the name of the Buddha, even Buddhism can stand comfortably on its own without leaning on the person once known as Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhists say, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him?” Can Christians say the same about Jesus?

A religion should be able to provide universal answers to universal questions. What is the nature of God or ultimate reality? How can this highest truth be known? What is the relation of human beings, us, to existence as a whole, the cosmos? If answers to such queries can only come through the unique experience of particular people, then they aren’t real answers.

Science is much wiser in this regard. Physicists don’t worship Einstein because he revealed the theory of relativity. The laws of nature are independent of anyone’s knowledge about them. If Einstein hadn’t discovered the relativistic nature of space and time, someone else would have.

Similarly, a true spiritual science doesn’t focus on the “professor” who teaches about divine truth. This prophet, master, guru, saint, guide—whatever you want to call him or her—is separate from the truth being taught. Reality exists whether or not someone is speaking or writing about it.

Christianity, if it is true, should be independent of Jesus Christ. That statement will sound strange to most Christians, which indicates how shaky is the foundation of Christianity. If the rock-bottom truth of the cosmos is considered to depend on whether a particular person really lived and died two thousand years ago, then we haven’t gotten down to the heart of reality.

Here’s an article from the New York Times about the hoax:

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Posted inReality Religions Science

Reality is the best religion

Is religion isn’t real, what good is it? Not much. Admittedly, believing in something that isn’t real can make you feel better and offer consolation when life is tough. It is easier to accept a tragedy if this is taken to be “God’s will.” And instead of feeling powerless to change an unfortunate situation, many people embrace prayer as a way to call a higher power into action. Similarly, children ask Santa Claus to bring them presents from the North Pole. They also put newly lost baby teeth under their pillows and expect that the Tooth Fairy will reward them.…
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Posted inFundamentalism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Religion should unite, not divide

Laurel, my wife, was moved to write a meaningful short essay yesterday: “Religion Should Unite, Not Divide.” Like me, she’s been disturbed by all the fundamentalist-inspired divisiveness evident of late. Well, also evident of early, for as long as there has been religion, there has been religious intolerance and inhumanity.

We both believe that the only way to be spiritual is to be non-religious. Religion is mostly about belief; spirituality is mostly about experience. A disturbingly large percentage of purportedly religious people don’t practice what they preach. They claim to aspire to unconditional love, then vote to discriminate against homosexuals. They claim to renounce unjustified killing, then proudly support the slaughter of innocent people in Iraq.

Laurel says in her piece that if the unity of God truly is the goal to which religious believers aspire, then churches and other places of worship should be an earthly reflection of this oneness: “If this were the role of religion, the only valid religious teachings would be those which teach love, acceptance, and unity with all people.”

Well said. As much as I like the meetings of the spiritual group I attend most Sunday mornings, I cringe inwardly every time I hear a speaker say, “We are so fortunate to be among the chosen few who have been blessed to return to God.” Laurel, entirely appropriately, frequently teases me about this divisive attitude.

Putting on her best Saturday Night Live “Church Lady” voice, she will say to me: “You’re saved, but Satan has doomed me to hell!” “Yes, you’re right,” I’ll reply with tongue firmly in my cheek, “But I’ll try to put in a good word for you when I see God.”

We joke about how almost every religious or spiritual group, including Radha Soami Satsang Beas (Science of the Soul), which I’ve been a longtime member of, considers that its followers, and they alone, are the “chosen people.” If you add up all the supposedly chosen people in the world—Christians, Jews, Muslims, and members of other exclusive sects—the unchosen such as Laurel are in the minority. (I recently wrote about this “all believers are above average” strangeness in “You’re religious, but are you right?”

Here is Laurel’s essay, which she has submitted to our local Salem Monthly alternative publication. As she says at the end of the piece, we’re thinking about forming a Church of the Churchless group here in Salem which would meet in physical reality instead of the blogosphere. If you’re interested in being part of such a group, send us an email.

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Posted inGod Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

You’re religious, but are you right?

Most religious believers live in their own version of Lake Woebegone. In Garrison Keillor’s mythical locale all the children are above average. Similarly, in these believers’ mental habitation everyone is right about God. This is truly strange. And what is even stranger is that so few people stop to consider its strangeness. Religious Tolerance.org cites a survey of churches and religions that finds 19 major world religions subdivided into 270 large religious groups and many smaller ones. The four largest religions are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The fundamental beliefs of each one are incompatible with the other three. Even…
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