Comparative Religion
Purpose of religion. The true purpose of religion is define and promote morality, which is to ask the following:
1) what is the greater, or collective, social good?
2) what behavior promotes the greater, or collective, social good? and
3) what behavior is inimical to the greater, or collective, social good?
In Transcendent Reality, the greater, or collective, social good is defined as those behaviors and actions that promote the collective survival, continuance-in-kind, and prosperity of the group. In most cultures, the sense of what is the greater social good is embodied in a moral code. The moral code invokes punishments for transgressions of its provisions.
The true purpose of religion is largely forgotten in many current religions, having given over to selfish concerns for one’s personal salvation.
Heaven & Hell in the afterlife. Most traditional religions have created reasons why one should adhere to their moral codes, i.e., their sense of the greater, or collective, social good. The promise of a reward or punishment in the afterlife is a common theme. The key to gaining either being linked to one’s behavior while alive. The key to the effectiveness of these reasons was that the faithful believe them and act accordingly.
Temporal rewards & punishments. To those who doubt, little effect on behavior could be expected. A rough estimate on the faith of a population is that, at best, perhaps one-third of the population might be classified as sufficiently believing to adhere to the moral code without any other coercion, another one-third of the population might be classified as acquiescing doubters, and another one-third of the population as active disbelievers. For the disbelievers, temporal laws and punishments in this life were devised to promote adherence to the moral code.
Personal salvation. Christianity and Islam heavily promote personal salvation at the expense of the greater social good. In personal salvation, one only has to believe to gain the rewards, or the punishments (reserved for transgressors and the unbelievers.) In Christianity, it is the belief (or acceptance) of Christ as the son of God, and the teachings of the Christ as the greater social good. In Islam, it is the belief (or acceptance) of Mohammed as the last messenger of God, and the teachings of Mohammed as the greater social good.
In most Christian communities, concern for personal salvation does not materially interfere with the western tenant of continually improving the temporal world around them. However, in most Islamic communities, little concern for improving the temporal environment or personal space is demonstrated.
Irreconcilable conflicts. In Mohammed’s time, Moslems were very tolerant of Jews and Christians, considering them true believers, and not requiring their conversion to Islam. Moslems (at least Moslem men) were permitted to marry Christian and Jewish women. This accommodation only worked where Christians and Jews were a small minority within the Moslem population.
However, Christianity, especially western Christianity, is a proselyting religion, eager to convert the wayward to Christianity, while Islam is distrustful of new converts to Islam, and invokes the death penalty for its apostates renouncing Islam. To the true believers on either side, there is no compromise – neither can accommodate the other.
Islamic cultures feel threatened and attacked by Christian missionaries attempting to lead the Moslem faithful astray. In addition, Moslems cultures feel their religion and way of life threatened, belittled, and under attack by western powers which are predominately Christian.
The majority of the population of earth is either Christian or Moslem. The two dominant religions are locked in mortal combat at the fringes. To true believers in Christianity, Mohammed is a false prophet, and Islam is an unacceptable creed. To true believers in Islam, Christ is not the son of God, though he is accepted as a predecessor prophet to Mohammed, and Christians are waging a war against Islam that must be fiercely defended.
And if that were not enough, Christian support of Jewish Zionism in the Middle East, at the expense of the Palestinians, greatly exacerbates Moslem resentments.
Revealed religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, have a central prophet that communicates with a deity or spiritual beings. Their prophet(s) are the only ones that can communicate with such supernatural beings. Revealed religions generally believe in divine intervention, a life after death, and a judgment day.
Inspired religions are established by philosophers, such as Buddha, Tao, Jaina and Confucius, from their teachings. Inspired religions generally wind up with deities and an afterlife after the founding philosopher dies, but generally do not have a strong believe in divine intervention.
Other religions, such as Hinduism, probably originated as revealed and/or inspired religions, but have over time lost their roots and fractured into many factions.
Moral codes exist in both revealed and inspired religions, Followers must adhere to them if they are to enjoy the rewards of the religion - generally conferred after they are dead. In the revealed religions, the rewards are a promise to live forever as a spiritual being in a place named paradise, or heaven. In inspired religions, the reward is generally escaping the everlasting recycling of the soul from one life to the next.
Deities in religion range in concept from one separate and supreme being creating everything else, to a whole clan of supernatural beings creating and confounding things. Most religions rank their supernatural beings from a king of gods to subordinate angels and messengers. Some religions consider Reality to be a deity. Very simple religions accept any higher power as a deity.
Worship in the various religions range from honoring a dead ancestor, public prostration, chanting, prayers, supplications, offerings, and various elaborate rituals.
In Transcendent Reality we do not blindly worship the One, as might primitive natives who might sacrifice virgin girls to some idol, volcano god or imaginary being. Nor do we assume some personal salvation and spiritual eternal life in some imaginary heavenly garden, or among hordes of imaginary angel servants. Rather, we recognize the One, as a path or a force (the interpretation left to the individual according to his temperament and understanding) and seek to understand its will or way so we might better serve the greater social good – as measured by our collective survival, continue-in-kind, and prosperity.
It is clear to us that most religions tend to attract followers who are ethnocentric and schizophrenic, even xenophobic. The behaviors of the various religious groups are not consistent with their claims of linkage and protection from a Supreme Being. Some examples are as follows:
The God of the Jews, is a Jew, looks like a Jew, and only cares about Jews - giving Jews permission to invade the territory of others and kill or enslave them all - men, women, children and babies. The Jewish concept of God is very ethnocentric and self-serving - not an encompassing one capable of uniting all humanity in common cause.
In Christianity, each sect has a different concept of God. In many Christian sects God is simultaneously three separate creatures - a father, a son and a spirit, and many super-human beings join the chorus - reminiscent of ancient mythologies about families of gods. In other Christian sects God is a good, superhuman king who fights an eternal war against a powerful and evil superhuman enemy - his ex-lieutenant Lucifer, over dominion of the humans. Christian sects have been observed fighting vicious wars against each other - invoking the aid of their God. Christians' habit of praying to their God for victory at a football game between other Christians further degrades the meaning of God. The Christian concept of God also has too many roots in Greek & Roman mythologies in that all the invisible beings are human in appearance and their organization is feudal in makeup - inconsistent with modern social organization. The Christian concept of God is very parochial and seeping with mythology, not a fit paradigm for coping with Reality.
In Islam, God is formless, an improvement over the humanlike limitation of the Jewish and Christian Gods. In its early stages, Islam was meant to unify Jews, Christians, and Moslems. Islam must be credited with preserving much of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians and Egyptians during the Christian Dark Ages. But Islam long ago failed uniting the religions, and knowledge soon was eschewed for ritual. Islam turned inward on itself and dreamed of a simpler life and simpler times. It fractured into schisms, and continues fracturing today. Different Moslems ethnic groups battle each other as fiercely as do Christian groups - giving the Islamic God a decidedly nationalistic limitation.
The biggest failing of Islam as a religion is that there is a war being carried out by Islamic fundamentalists bent on exterminating any abstract thought among Islamic adherents. There was a young cleric, a mullah, in Khartoum, Sudan, in the 1980’s, who stated the rather obvious:
“We must understand Islam in light of what we know today, not what was known in Mohammed’s time,”
Unfortunately for the future of Islam, that brilliant young cleric was charged with heresy, convicted, and executed. That was a dark, perhaps fatal, day for a progressive Islam.
Moslems also tend to focus excessively on an imaginary next life - almost to the exclusion of evolving in this life. The Islamic concept of God, as practiced by a majority of Moslems, is unsuitable for abstraction, evolution and change.
The Eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and others have some aspects of unifying gods, or Gods, but are very regional or national in practice, making them unsuitable as a globally unifying force.
The Eastern philosophies such as Confucianism provide remarkably good guidance for promoting social harmony, but do not quite rise to the task as unifying forces attaining global godhood.
Also see Prohibited Practices.