Excerpt #12 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Exclusive Possession of the ‘Truth’
High priests and priestesses are not in short supply.
There is quite a varied menu of teachers and scriptures from which to choose.
It is remarkable that so many of these religions claim exclusive possession of divinely inspired and infallible truth.
Surely, they can not all possess what each claims to be: the one and only truth.
Even more remarkable is the public’s general unwillingness or inability to acknowledge and question this obvious contradiction.
“Why is every utterance of the Pope considered to be worthy of worldwide attention and respect? The Pope is not exactly on the cutting edge of world events or anything else, for that matter. It was only in October 1996 that John Paul II announced that the scientific theory of evolution could be said to be valid.
“That message was received with enthusiastic approvals in many circles throughout the world. Warm congratulations were offered to John Paul, just as they had been in 1979. In that year, he declared that the Roman Catholic Church had been mistaken when it sentenced a 70-year-old Galileo to house arrest (with threats of the tortures of The Inquisition) for insisting that Earth orbits the Sun, not vice versa. Mistaken?! No, not mistaken. A mistake is when you slip the wrong key into your front door. The Church’s treatment of Galileo, one of the world’s few geniuses, was viciously cruel and betrays the unenlightened, progress-impeding attitude that has dominated the Church since its inception. And they were as wrong as it is possible to be.” – Judith Hayes, The Happy Heretic
“The whole conception of god is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all, it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.” – Bertrand Russell
A Needed Universal Belief System
It is self-evident that we require a universal belief system relevant to the complex, sophisticated age in which we live.
A belief system responsive to the problems of our time (not “out there” somewhere in some afterlife) and capable of drawing people together.
Of most importance, a belief system that can reduce ignorance and suffering and expand knowledge and justice.
Countless people — an evergrowing number — seek such a belief system.
People seek a vision for the long term; where integrative approaches to problem solving are utilized; where poverty is eradicated; and where wasteful consumption patterns are eliminated.
Our limitation is not technology, it is old-world thinking and ethics among leaders and followers who have vested and narrow interests in maintaining the status quo.