Excerpt #33 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
In the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), followers must depend on self-selected humans (priests, rabbis, ministers, imams, and other clerics) with their own vested interests in the hierarchy they represent to interpret historically derived texts.
These texts provide a basis for claiming their respective gods have established a unique relationship with their followers, offering them certain supernatural privileges (heaven, salvation, eternal life, etc.) that are denied to nonbelievers.
In all instances, nonbelievers are seen as sinners, lost souls, infidels, or other such labels of exclusion and division, beings who do not merit the same protections of the particular religion’s god.
Inherent in this mutually exclusive supernatural belief structure, (meaning it cannot be confirmed by human experience and can only be assumed by faith) are the seeds of dissension, distrust, arrogance, selfaggrandizement, and open hostilities.
The stronger one worldview/religion holds to its beliefs, the stronger the faith demonstrated by another.
The principle of energetic polarities insures that the fiercer one force becomes, the more horrific the reaction.
WHEN THE RIGHTEOUS CLASH, WRONG RESULTS.
While acts of force will temporarily shift the favor in the struggle from one side to the other, a long-term solution will only be possible when enough humans adopt a view of humanity and its place in the universe that can become self-evident to people of all cultures.
A view of reality that transcends current religions and provides a credible and confirmable story of our species and its place in the universe could transmute the energy of divisiveness to an emotion of cooperation. (Excerpted from a letter from Paul Von Ward, author of Our Solarian Legacy: Multidimensional Humans in a Self-Learning Universe)
“Over the centuries, the term religion has been taken by most people to refer to systems of thought in which the answers to ultimate questions are found in a supernatural, transcendent reality
not immediately evident to the senses.
“Knowledge of that reality is thus obtained, not from the senses, but by means of extra sensory channels, particularly the revelations of certain holy men and women who have convinced others that they have been chosen by a deity to possess this channel.
“Science, on the other hand, deals exclusively with the world of sense and seeks to describe the order observed by any individual looking at the same data. This order is expressed in terms of principles that we call natural law.
“And the key to the acceptance of an interpretation of natural law is consensus.
“Thus the difference between science and religion is ultimately related to the words “natural” and “supernatural”.
“Science seeks a natural explanation for the events of the universe, while religion claims a supernatural one.” – Victor J. Stenger,physicist and astronomer, Physics and Psychics