Knowing, Truth, and Unknowable Reality
We like to believe we know how the world works. We want to understand and control everything we can, including religious matters. And we want to be right.
But who's right? Religions directly contradict each other. There's no way they can all be 100% correct. So how do we learn what is right and what is not? And why do religions hold things that aren't true in them?
Faith comes from contact with the Divine. Religion, however, is when that contact is codified and rituals created for people to find that same contact. The contacts themselves are True. But everything we create around that contact is just as flawed as all other human institutions. We place our own preconceptions, our own desires and flaws inside the religion. Over time, some people come to see the preconceptions and other human flaws as the religion and ignore the actual faith aspects, causing schisms and broken faiths.
We need to accept that we aren't capable of truly comprehending the Divine. We don't have a box big enough to shove a person in completely, much less a god or all of creation. The more we try to hold all the answers in our hands, the more we're left with smoke and straw. What we can hold is infinitely smaller than what exists, and even what we can hold is larger than what we can express. Humanity as a whole constantly tries to expand its knowledge as to the functioning of the Universe. No religious box can be smaller than our scientific knowledge. Everything that exists needs to be acceptable to religion. The parts that do not match are not Truths, but human preconceptions and flaws that we create to make the world a little smaller and a little easier to hold.
We need to accept that we cannot be 100% correct in how we think the world works. The more we try to hold and shrink it, the more it slips through our grasp.
Questions:
How do you try to hold the world smaller? How does that limit you?
Do you see a conflict between science and religion? Reality and religion? How do you resolve these conflicts?
Do you see faith as something that needs to be constrained or set free? Do you have the faith to let the Universe be what it is, instead of what you want it to be?
But who's right? Religions directly contradict each other. There's no way they can all be 100% correct. So how do we learn what is right and what is not? And why do religions hold things that aren't true in them?
Faith comes from contact with the Divine. Religion, however, is when that contact is codified and rituals created for people to find that same contact. The contacts themselves are True. But everything we create around that contact is just as flawed as all other human institutions. We place our own preconceptions, our own desires and flaws inside the religion. Over time, some people come to see the preconceptions and other human flaws as the religion and ignore the actual faith aspects, causing schisms and broken faiths.
We need to accept that we aren't capable of truly comprehending the Divine. We don't have a box big enough to shove a person in completely, much less a god or all of creation. The more we try to hold all the answers in our hands, the more we're left with smoke and straw. What we can hold is infinitely smaller than what exists, and even what we can hold is larger than what we can express. Humanity as a whole constantly tries to expand its knowledge as to the functioning of the Universe. No religious box can be smaller than our scientific knowledge. Everything that exists needs to be acceptable to religion. The parts that do not match are not Truths, but human preconceptions and flaws that we create to make the world a little smaller and a little easier to hold.
We need to accept that we cannot be 100% correct in how we think the world works. The more we try to hold and shrink it, the more it slips through our grasp.
Questions:
How do you try to hold the world smaller? How does that limit you?
Do you see a conflict between science and religion? Reality and religion? How do you resolve these conflicts?
Do you see faith as something that needs to be constrained or set free? Do you have the faith to let the Universe be what it is, instead of what you want it to be?
posted by Vieva @ 2:26 PM
1 Comments:
At 5:14 AM,
Anonymous said…
although the religious practice may be contradictory, perhaps there is a similarity in the underlying principle. eg. the underlying principle may be something like "show respect to god" but the way that various people interpret this and practice this requirement will vary. so religion A does practice X which religion B finds offensive in that they follow practice Y.
BUT both believe that they are following the same requirement to "show respect for God/ess"
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