PART 2 - MY LATEST IMAGE OF GOD

2.1 Narrow thinking: the source of evil

Historians are of the view that the Vedas are the first written collection of ancient knowledge of people of Aryan culture which spanned central Asia and India. Hindus continue to believe in Vedic myths, traditions, moral codes and practice rites often blindly. There are as many interpretations of these writings as the number of people who believe in them. Surprisingly one does not find in this culture the terms “religion” and “spirituality” in the sense known in the West.

Like the Vedas, the Torah recapitulates the knowledge of Mesopotamia and the Middle East. Communities and individuals interpret it differently. Subsequent sacred writings starting with discourses of Buddha, Hindu Upanishads, the Bible to the Koran hardly add more to earlier knowledge; but they certainly interpret ancient writings critically primarily to better adapt them to social conditions of their times. It should be noted that new sacred writings were often retrogressive compared with their predecessors.

Evidently this was inevitable in the regions where tribes fought incessantly. Leaders of small communities were obliged to promulgate and apply considerably constrained moral codes in order to safeguard daily life and regulate the functioning of the society. Sadly, the narrowness and rigidity of thinking used by religious and political authorities to acquire and maintain their power over people is the main cause of inhumanity that the world has suffered for centuries. That is how religion became the source evil, contradicting itself.

Be happy! We have survived whatever the price paid. Narrow thinking during the Dark Ages produced the Age of Reason and Light. This succeeded by modern times has offered to us knowledge of unimaginable depth and coverage. This infinite knowledge has clearly helped us to keep away from narrow thinking and dogma. Nevertheless, parent institutions derived from ancient writings have no desire to accept the new treasure of knowledge that has accumulated since they were set up.

Every one knows that authors of ancient writings had criticized, sorted, and consolidated the pre-existing and contemporary knowledge. Is it not our responsibility to do the same with regard to these writings using the phenomenal treasure of modern knowledge acquired in the last millennium? There is no doubt that such an action is not only necessary but also a moral obligation in order to achieve peace in the future. This is the main theme of this thesis.

2.2 The way starts in Switzerland

It is in Switzerland that after a painful pregnancy and an extremely agonizing delivery came into being the League of Nations in 1918. Hardly twenty years had passed before the League suffered a sudden death followed by a terrible European inferno, misnamed World War Two, tearing apart the entire humanity. Neither human intelligence nor religiosity could save us from this self-inflicted catastrophe.

From the ashes of the war of civilized countries, emerged, in 1945, the United Nations Organization (UN). This organization has managed, so far, to save us from another world war without actually transforming the world much. However, new sacred books much more exact and complete than the Vedas, the Torah, the Bible, the Koran and the Granth have been drawn up under the auspices of the UN, majority of them in Geneva, Switzerland. These books enunciate codes of conduct pertaining to all aspects of human life so that human beings can live in peace.

All countries have adopted charters dealing with human rights, habitat, governance, environment as well as protection of nature, education and culture. Well-balanced values depict the reality that is the true basis of spirituality. In this respect, the old books are flawed and only partially beneficial to resolve problems of the present day society and individuals.

Too much optimism can often make one forget that the human nature and behaviour change very gradually and that certain malevolent traits are impossible to eradicate. My spiritual balance has been toughened by a number of forceful ideas that were expressed in recent Swiss press mostly before Easter and before Christmas. It is necessary to underline the religiosity of five of these forceful ideas.

2.2.1. Religious contention

Contention has blazed between religions and between religious sects for centuries. We must give up all hope of pacifying this blaze. We must accept the truth pronounced by the English novelist, Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels:“We have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love one another.”

Recently a similar thought of Hans Küng introduced the programme of the Parliament of World Religions, held in Barcelona, Spain in 2004: “There will not be peace between nations unless there is peace between religions.” Religion persists as the foremost cause of conflict between humans. The world could do without the religious parliament if we had gone along the wisdom of four loving wise men: two Muslim, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Arabi, a Jew, Maimonides, and a Christian Alfonse the Wise, who lived not far from Barcelona in Andalusia, a thousand years ago:

My heart has become capable of every form:
It is a pasture for gazelles,
And a convent for Christian monks,
And a temple for idols and the pilgrim's Ka’bah,
And the tables of the Torah, and the book of the Koran,
I follow the religion of love:
Whatever way love's camels take,
That is my religion and my faith. (Ibn Arabi:“Interpreter of Ardent Desires”)

2.2.2. God is dead

Human beings (this term is used to high light the fact that we belong to the community of living beings and not a caste apart of “man”) have invented God to explain a phenomena or force that is inexplicable, therefore incomprehensible. In scientific terms our psych and ability to reason require this concept that is also the origin of mythology. Politically, heads of government and religious institutions need this dominating Figure that is God in order to continue justifying the legitimacy of their authority in His Name, even if defining God in religious terms is no longer valid in present conditions. For example, God sitting at Jesus’ left is dead; the kingdom of God does not exist, nor hell’s fire and the supreme serenity of paradise. Our concept of a supernatural Power is outdated, but it is not wrong in the context of the old way of thinking and perception.

Equipped with the stupendous quantity of information acquired since God was invented, modern intelligence and notions do not accept and trust orthodox, national, social and ethical religious doctrines. By resisting laws of nature, philosophy and sociology, humanity in general and religions in particular have screwed up the opportunity to modernize by refusing to reinterpret ancient writings in the light of available knowledge much more divine, refined and up to date. We have missed the chance that God continues to offer us to postulate new interpretation of traditional benchmarks in the form of religious festivals that fewer and fewer people follow. Even God does not “understand” why prestigious newspapers continue to issue self-incriminating headlines, such as: “A decisive step by Christians towards peace”; “The next challenge: Rome and Byzantium embrace each other”; “Reformed churches kept out of negotiation process”. In the name of liberty of expression we are not ashamed of continuing to support and propagating the correctness of religious differences, which, in actual fact, are the summit of greed for power. Religious guides continue to translate tribal socio-economic traditions of eras long past as religious codes for the entire world. One of the most odious of such manipulations is the caste system that has been raging India for centuries.

The Christian monotheism replaced the Greco-Roman tradition and scientific thinking; the Pope dethroned the Roman emperor and set up an intolerant monolithic system resulting in appalling sufferance in the name of wrongly interpreted faith for the European society and the world at large during colonization.

Arabs filled in the political vacuum left by the fall of the Roman Empire at a spectacular bloody speed. A large majority of Muslims attribute this Arab success to Islam. They continue to firmly believe that they would conquer the world in the same manner and thus amplify the number of the faithful circumambulating the monolithic black idol, the Ka’ba. Stuck in the religious rut Christian and Muslim societies are suffocated and fail to see true God. For centuries they have inflicted wars of religion and conquered the world evoking religious morals to justify themselves. One does not have to look far to see these criteria being used today.

2.2.3. The evil will stay

Traditionally evil is attributed to natural disasters or accidents or wars which were seen to represent the divine punishment on humans to rectify human acts of malevolence. The majority of modern people other than the religious fundamentalists categorically reject this thinking. Accepting human causalities caused by disasters is relatively recent although the wise had confirmed this a long time ago.

We know that “humans never learn from history”. In trying to look for therapeutic solace for injury caused by a disaster, humans block their thinking. Evil, natural or moral, does not exist. Unfortunately, the propensity to do evil consciously or deliberately is deeply rooted in human nature. In the animal kingdom, the human species, intellectually the most evolved, is prone to the most serious evil behaviour: the seven deadly sins. For example, only humans kill his own type as well other living beings in order to acquire power, material gains (that he does not need) simply for pleasure and to impose on others his concept of God and life. Religions would not exist without human evil.

2.2.4. A new God

We need to recast God using laws discovered and results of experience acquired since the revelation of ancient sacred writings. Obviously, this task will be extremely long and arduous because of the expected intensity of resistance from traditional institutions and, above all, the existence of outdated thinking that persists in the society that has no desire or does not dare to reflect.

Nevertheless, today we are better informed than ever before. It is high time to correct erroneous, partial and archaic concepts of God All Mighty. We can understand and explain numerous doubts of those who do not accept that God exists. Religious institutions and their blind flocks, priests, mystics, mullahs and gurus, who possess only limited knowledge of the Force we call God and have little love for modern knowledge, bear considerable if not total responsibility of disseminating a partial or wrong image of God. A more complete image of the Force (God) is possible. Such an image should captivate the imagination of the young.

2.2.5. Criticizing religion

A point of cardinal importance is to note that all sacred books were based on a reasoned criticism of antediluvian religious practices, antiquated traditions, repugnant social customs and immoral politics. At the same time these books had sifted existing information, opted for universal ideas and practices prevalent in a relatively restricted society and territory. In the fifth century BC, Buddha criticized Hindu practices; Jesus did the same with regard to those of the Jews; Judeo-Christian practices were criticized by Mohammed; and Luther, Nanak, the list is long.

We have only one option that would enable us to surmount the formidable barrage erected by religion against peace in the world: let us criticize religion with the aim of enlarging human brotherhood and love as expressed in the simple but enlightening poem of Ibn Arabi. We must stick to the right path amidst the evolving globalization of spiritual and cultural values. This would enable us to translate and reinterpret ancient spiritual writings and traditions and make them applicable to daily life of humans in the present time in their environment.

Part 3