IS INTERFAITH VIABLE?

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Perhaps the difference here is between what is theoretically possible and what at present is practically possible. I suppose any species that rises to the top of the food chain must divide itself up into packs, prides, or tribes, and learn to kill each other, lest their populations rise to a level to eat nature out from under their own feet. Most top predator species either hunt and kill each other, or if a social species, then they go to war with one another. Our roots are firmly planted in our animal nature, yet our minds reach up for something higher. I don't know which side will win this tug of war, or how many rounds are played in a match, or even if ultimately it matters to me. The animal side does what it does because that is it's nature, yet the reach higher side must resist its nature to rise above it. It may seem that the reach higher side has a disadvantage, yet the need to evolve and become/realize more than what we are is also a strong motivator. But I suppose if the reaching up side does not believe victory is possible, then it is probably game over before it even starts.

INTERESTING POINTS; ESPECIALLY THE LAST SENTENCE.

Where I live, there was once only one religion. Slowly but slowly, other religions came and got established. Now there are a lot of various religions.

Surprisingly, some people, ever once in a while, go to the building of another religion just to see what it is like. The more the people intermingle, the more it seems that the only thing to fear is fear itself.

We really are not that much different........ after all.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Perhaps the difference here is between what is theoretically possible and what at present is practically possible. I suppose any species that rises to the top of the food chain must divide itself up into packs, prides, or tribes, and learn to kill each other, lest their populations rise to a level to eat nature out from under their own feet. Most top predator species either hunt and kill each other, or if a social species, then they go to war with one another. Our roots are firmly planted in our animal nature, yet our minds reach up for something higher. I don't know which side will win this tug of war, or how many rounds are played in a match, or even if ultimately it matters to me. The animal side does what it does because that is it's nature, yet the reach higher side must resist its nature to rise above it. It may seem that the reach higher side has a disadvantage, yet the need to evolve and become/realize more than what we are is also a strong motivator. But I suppose if the reaching up side does not believe victory is possible, then it is probably game over before it even starts.

I think it's a difference between what is ideally imaginable and what is realistic. The reason I put it that way is of course we'd like to the religions coexist with peaceful relations, but do have to overlook the actual nature of the thing, and conjure an imaginary thing which does not have the violent attributes that are inherent to religiosity. We do that because we can then say that ("name religion") is a peaceful religion despite the reality of acts of collective violence. If persons siscerely inquired as to why religion tends to violence they would have to see the violence in themselves, but it is never 'me' who is violent because I understand the true Word. It is the others who misinterpret text who enact these atrocities, so I declare that is not ("name religion"), and by so doing only reinforce the primal conflict of of us and them.


This manufacturing of 'the other' is necessary for the identity, and the problem with that is, you are only defined in contrast against such an imaginary other. If you are good, then the other is bad, and these religions have the dual paradigm built in to them, God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil and so on because dichotomous contrast is essential for a sound symbolic structure.


There is a seed of truth in the symbolic, an actual balance and consistency if you will, so it does relate to reality in the sense of being self-referential and coherent. It only becomes entirely imaginary when you envisage an 'all good" "no bad" scenario, which is entirely conjured having no basis whatsoever in the same way as "only up" "no down" has no basis. The real in itself is without definition, but we could conceive of it as a potential, so if you conceive of an up, then down is an inevitable consequence - and same with good and bad.



So, Identity: If I am 'all good' the other by which I justify that is 'all bad'. At the bottom of the religious paradigm, this is the case, as is the case with any symbolic structure, but because this good/bad is inter-defined, each pervades the other. You see it in pop culture where the crucifix is 'good' in that it wards off evil, defeats vampires, outs demons and so forth, and it can worn as a talisman, most of all to inform 'others' of one's identity via its virtue signal. Of course evil is signified by the same symbol's inversion...



In that the 'good religion' is contrasted by the 'bad other', and thus contains it, the 'other' always threatens to encroach. Other must be warded off and ultimately destroyed in order to attain the imaginary ideal. But as we destroy 'the other' we are left with nothing against which to define ourselves, and hence, we continually re-create 'the other' for the sake of self preservation, and must necessarily destroy it at the same time, but if we destroy it, it spells our own self-annihilation, so we recreate it - and thus remain in a perpetual state of violence until the identity itself is forgone, which also means the end of the religion. No one is prepared to let that go, so the violence as I've described continues.

[BigJohn]

So, are you saying you can not 'put your foot forward'?

Are fears holding you back?

[Gem]

Originally Posted by BigJohn

So, are you saying you can not 'put your foot forward'?

Are fears holding you back?

Yes of course we'd put our best foot forward, though this has nothing to do with what I said. What I said is the best foot is concurrent with the worst foot. If we imagine just a best foot and no worst foot, then that's pure imaginary because there is no concurrent inevitable reference point. This is like we can only have 'up' if there is a concurrent and consequential down. You see. We don't make it up entirely. There must be a down if we have an up. We can imagine just an up with no down, but because there is no inevitable concurrent down, it can't relate to reality. This is exactly what we do when we imagine a best foot in the absence of a worst. Because the best and worst are inter-defining, they each entail the other, and if you destroy the worse, the best cannot exist in reality. Hence we continually create the worst foot so the best can be put forward, and the inevitable 'other foot' is entirely necessary for this to be done.

Originally Posted by Gem

I think it's a difference between what is ideally imaginable and what is realistic.

real·is·tic
having or showing a sensible and practical idea of what can be achieved or expected.
representing familiar things in a way that is accurate or true to life.
"a realistic human drama"

The question here is what is possible. Realistic is a subjective quality that depends on not only how different an idea seems from what we understand as reality now, but what we believe to be possibly real. It is also a question of how much faith one puts in their own understanding of what is real. We all have our understanding of anything at any given time. The problem comes in when we assume that understanding is necessarily what is real, rather than just our current limited state of knowledge and interpretation.
Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because he wanted to be like God. Now he crawls about the earth believing he has that knowledge and like God, can use it to cast true and just judgement and sentence on others that do not see good and evil as he does. Adam does not fail because he is inherently evil, he is inherently good, but also inherently afraid of what he judges to be evil. Adam ends up doing evil in the name of good because he is limited in his knowledge of good and evil, and cannot adequately distinguish between his truths and God’s, he lacks humility. The question is, how much more can Adam learn, and how much humility is needed to do so, and how well he can face up to his fears without striking out at them. It is fitting that humility and humanity share a root, Adam must remember that he is human, not God, and his beliefs about truth are just that, beliefs.
Of course, that does not mean he must stop searching for truths, only that he must remember what his truths are and are not. Krishna’s advice to Arjuna was not to give up on life because all is ultimately pointless, but to live life as it presents itself yet always doing so with his mind focused on God. With God always on his mind, he can remember he is human, and lacks the vision of God to know what the ultimate fruits of his actions will be.

The word “us” can be used to differentiate one group from another, but “us” is also a word that can be used to make a plurality of individuals into a singular unit. It is only when Adam starts putting conditions of his own making, created with his own limited vision, on who and what is justly inside and outside of that “us”, that conflict arises. Perhaps that is the ultimate reality that Adam must learn. If Adam wishes to truly understand God, then he must learn to understand that separation is illusion, and that all is one, and all is God. That whatever he does to the least of his brothers, he does to God. Whether such a goal for Adam is realistic, is still a matter of subjective judgement, even if from where he is now failure may seem like an insurmountable objective reality. But of course if Adam judges such a reality to be impossible, then there is no point in heading in that direction in the first place, God is forever out of reach, and he dooms himself to whatever hell he creates for himself where he is now.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by Gem

Yes of course we'd put our best foot forward, though this has nothing to do with what I said. What I said is the best foot is concurrent with the worst foot. If we imagine just a best foot and no worst foot, then that's pure imaginary because there is no concurrent inevitable reference point. This is like we can only have 'up' if there is a concurrent and consequential down. You see. We don't make it up entirely. There must be a down if we have an up. We can imagine just an up with no down, but because there is no inevitable concurrent down, it can't relate to reality. This is exactly what we do when we imagine a best foot in the absence of a worst. Because the best and worst are inter-defining, they each entail the other, and if you destroy the worse, the best cannot exist in reality. Hence we continually create the worst foot so the best can be put forward, and the inevitable 'other foot' is entirely necessary for this to be done.

Sounds like you live in a dualistic world.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by BigJohn

Sounds like you live in a dualistic world.

I would expect people who see some sense in what I've said to elaborate further or add nuance, and if there a flaw, point it out and explain why it's wrong, and if there is lack of clarity ask me to clarify, but I don't have any interest in myself as the subject of the discussion.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by ketzer

The question here is what is possible. Realistic is a subjective quality that depends on not only how different an idea seems from what we understand as reality now, but what we believe to be possibly real. It is also a question of how much faith one puts in their own understanding of what is real. We all have our understanding of anything at any given time. The problem comes in when we assume that understanding is necessarily what is real, rather than just our current limited state of knowledge and interpretation.

I am merely creating a 'reality' structure within which to illustrate how the symbolic structure is different to the purely imaginary. The real itself is not definable at all as it has no quality to speak of, but lets say it's a substrate that lends truth to arbitrary notions like up, provided there is down. IOW a symbolic structure is true only in the sense that it is internally defined. This idea was the basis of the Tao Te Ching, and saying front and back follow each other is true through inter-definition, yet entirely arbitrary. That's what I'm calling 'symbolic'.


The Tao Te Ching gives these examples in addition:


When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises
Thus being and non-being produce each other
Difficult and easy bring about each other
Long and short reveal each other
High and low support each other
Music and voice harmonize each other
Front and back follow each other.


The reason I'm saying these are 'symbolic' rather than 'imaginary' is, even though 'up' is arbitrary in space there must be an opposing 'down' to verify which way 'up' is. In the same way, although religion is only an arbitrary thought, it must be internally self-defining as a symbolic structure. All religions need this structure, as do all identity systems, including our own personal identities.


Just to differentiate what is 'imaginary' - that's when you conceive of 'all good' with 'no bad' or 'just up' with 'no down'. That has no structure, and in this way, the imaginary differs from the symbolic.


The complexity here is, 'up' is arbitrary, and in that sense only imagined, but down is the inevitable consequence of making 'up' comprehensible, or useful, or meaningful. Hence the symbolic is not devoid of the imaginary. Indeed, the symbolic relies entirely on the imaginary, but in practice there really is an 'up and down', and that symbol is applied to life as we know it, and is easily demonstrable by throwing your hat in the air.


Hence we merely say up and down connects with the indefinable reality through this perfect dichotomy, as do all symbols. So we can see, religion is symbolic, not real, just arbitrary and internally self-defining through a complex collection of dichotomies.

Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because he wanted to be like God. Now he crawls about the earth believing he has that knowledge and like God, can use it to cast true and just judgement and sentence on others that do not see good and evil as he does. Adam does not fail because he is inherently evil, he is inherently good, but also inherently afraid of what he judges to be evil. Adam ends up doing evil in the name of good because he is limited in his knowledge of good and evil, and cannot adequately distinguish between his truths and God’s, he lacks humility. The question is, how much more can Adam learn, and how much humility is needed to do so, and how well he can face up to his fears without striking out at them. It is fitting that humility and humanity share a root, Adam must remember that he is human, not God, and his beliefs about truth are just that, beliefs.

So you see how the above passage uses dichotomy to signify the nature of Adam (first assuming Adam is an identity), and then uses symbol of Adam to signify God, but in this sense we are really only using God as the real, the undefined, and the diad of Adam is symbolically actualised relation to that through the internally defined self.



This implies that the case of Adam is an arbitrary construct mostly representing the good vs. evil diad. Of course he will do evil in the name of good since these are arbitrarily defined, just as the Jihadi stones the prostitute to site the evil in her in order to site good in himself. Problem being, self-defining as 'all good' is entirely imaginary, and make that actualise, "to know good as good, evil is necessarily created", as the Tao Te Ching says. Hence the Jihadi does evil in the name of good under the very same symbolic structure.



The real stipulates there is no good nor evil, but both must manifest in order to actualise either one. Hence, good and evil are not knowledge at all, but still a useful symbol which is as real as up vs. down is. It's just that we relate to good and evil, not so much in the way we act, but by the intention that compels us to act, and we can stone the prostitute with the intention to destroy the evil that threatens to undo our good, even though we need that evil to be sited in the other in order to uphold the arbitrary notion of our own goodness.

Of course, that does not mean he must stop searching for truths, only that he must remember what his truths are and are not. Krishna’s advice to Arjuna was not to give up on life because all is ultimately pointless, but to live life as it presents itself yet always doing so with his mind focused on God. With God always on his mind, he can remember he is human, and lacks the vision of God to know what the ultimate fruits of his actions will be.

I can comment on God or what He knows or doesn't know.

The word “us” can be used to differentiate one group from another, but “us” is also a word that can be used to make a plurality of individuals into a singular unit. It is only when Adam starts putting conditions of his own making, created with his own limited vision, on who and what is justly inside and outside of that “us”, that conflict arises. Perhaps that is the ultimate reality that Adam must learn. If Adam wishes to truly understand God, then he must learn to understand that separation is illusion, and that all is one, and all is God. That whatever he does to the least of his brothers, he does to God. Whether such a goal for Adam is realistic, is still a matter of subjective judgement, even if from where he is now failure may seem like an insurmountable objective reality. But of course if Adam judges such a reality to be impossible, then there is no point in heading in that direction in the first place, God is forever out of reach, and he dooms himself to whatever hell he creates for himself where he is now.

Then we have a problem for religion. If say Adam was a Christian, identified as a Christian, then he has separated himself from me who does not identify and hence not-Christian. Not by my making for I never identified as something, but by his making when he identified in the symbolic system. Adam, then, created a paradigm of us and them and I follow that paradigm only because he believes it. I Don't think that way because I don;t adopt the religious identity, so to me Adam is a person just like me, but he has created the thing and identifies with it, and I do not, so Christianity is upheld by me as the Other against which it can be defined symbolically. If everyone becomes a Christian, they will faction into smaller sects to continue to create 'Others' against which to orient themselves, because the identity is the symbolic must be internally self-defined by Othering.

Originally Posted by Gem

[left]I am merely creating a 'reality' structure within which to ......

Well now, I think we are in danger of hijacking Big John’s thread and taking it on some sort of esoteric ride, so I will try to keep this oriented toward the original question…. somehow.

But first….one can say that real is undefinable, or alternatively one can simply define real as whatever is, as the perceiver perceives it, in the present moment. It is after all, the only reality one will ever “know”, even if they cannot know whether it is truth or not. I am also curious as to your differentiation between symbolic and purely imaginary. Do we not always imagine symbols to create any reality structure, to have experience, and to explore the definition of any thing or any concept, but perhaps these are concepts to explore in a different thread?

So yes, most, if not all things, can be seen through a dualistic perspective. One pair of opposites is those who believe this means that nothing has any inherent meaning and only has the meaning we perceivers give it, while others cannot quite reach this same conclusion. We could perhaps look at the symmetry in a dualistic pair. Up/down left/right forward/backward are dualistic pairs for which a translation along any axis does only differ in the distance from any arbitrarily defined origin point, and no origin point is preferred, there is no preferred frame of reference.
On the other hand, hot and cold do seem to have a predefined origin point. At absolute zero, there is only one remaining direction, one cannot go toward “colder”. So we see, I think, that not all dualistic pairs are the same. Of course, good and evil are also such a dualistic pair. Perhaps there is no absolute good or evil origin point, or perhaps God is absolute good, even if God is beyond our ability to truly imagine through our creation of symbols. If so, then good and evil are not translationally symmetrical, there is a preferred frame of reference, even if it is beyond our ability to comprehend it as fully realized. Movement along the good/evil axis would then have meaning beyond the arbitrary one which we finite minds give it. Up and down are truly arbitrarily defined directions. And though we finite beings may arbitrarily define directions for good and evil from the origin point that we currently occupy, I do not believe that this makes all such origin points equal. My understanding of good and evil may always be internally defined, but that does not necessarily mean that there is no true direction at all. It then becomes a question of how well my good/evil axis parallels the true one. Or if one is open to it, whether my good/evil axis shares an origin point with God, regardless of where I am on it. Even if these are questions I cannot now or could never answer, they are still questions with meaning.

Sailors navigated using Polaris because that is the star through which the earth's axis most closely intersects. Without such a reference point(s), they would have just drifted about on the ocean aimlessly, fighting about which way the dragons be, not even knowing which way they were going.

But the question here, as I understand it, is whether interfaith harmony is possible. Can our beliefs and opinions differ and yet we can all get along. If any difference in belief leads to the the formation of an us and them which automatically dooms us to conflict, then perhaps it is not. Perhaps conflict is inevitable until we all safely arrive at the north star, if it even exists, but I don’t think that conflict is necessarily inherent in difference. Yes some will define an origin point and axis direction that we find aberrant and can not live with in harmony, so perhaps some conflict will always be at least potentially present. But I think it is up to us to understand that our origin point and defined axis directions are not necessarily the true ones, assuming we believe true ones exist. Our good/evil origin and axis directions are just our approximation of the preferred or true frame of reference. Such an understanding may not eliminate interfaith conflict, but I think it would go a long way toward making things better. Of course if better or worse are just another pair of dualities, with no inherent truth, arbitrarily defined by us, then perhaps it doesn’t really matter at all.

This concept that everything is dualisticly relative and therefore doesn’t matter (not saying this is your position) bothers me. I get what they are saying, yet I need to believe that somewhere there is dry land and I can learn to navigate my way there, or at least that I can get myself going in the right direction. Otherwise, I am just forever floating aimlessly on the cosmic ocean with no shores, which I would rather not believe is true.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Well now, I think we are in danger of hijacking Big John’s thread and taking it on some sort of esoteric ride, so I will try to keep this oriented toward the original question…. somehow.

But first….one can say that real is undefinable, or alternatively one can simply define real as whatever is, as the perceiver perceives it, in the present moment. It is after all, the only reality one will ever “know”, even if they cannot know whether it is truth or not. I am also curious as to your differentiation between symbolic and purely imaginary. Do we not always imagine symbols to create any reality structure, to have experience, and to explore the definition of any thing or any concept, but perhaps these are concepts to explore in a different thread?

So yes, most, if not all things, can be seen through a dualistic perspective. One pair of opposites is those who believe this means that nothing has any inherent meaning and only has the meaning we perceivers give it, while others cannot quite reach this same conclusion. We could perhaps look at the symmetry in a dualistic pair. Up/down left/right forward/backward are dualistic pairs for which a translation along any axis does only differ in the distance from any arbitrarily defined origin point, and no origin point is preferred, there is no preferred frame of reference.
On the other hand, hot and cold do seem to have a predefined origin point. At absolute zero, there is only one remaining direction, one cannot go toward “colder”. So we see, I think, that not all dualistic pairs are the same. Of course, good and evil are also such a dualistic pair. Perhaps there is no absolute good or evil origin point, or perhaps God is absolute good, even if God is beyond our ability to truly imagine through our creation of symbols. If so, then good and evil are not translationally symmetrical, there is a preferred frame of reference, even if it is beyond our ability to comprehend it as fully realized. Movement along the good/evil axis would then have meaning beyond the arbitrary one which we finite minds give it. Up and down are truly arbitrarily defined directions. And though we finite beings may arbitrarily define directions for good and evil from the origin point that we currently occupy, I do not believe that this makes all such origin points equal. My understanding of good and evil may always be internally defined, but that does not necessarily mean that there is no true direction at all. It then becomes a question of how well my good/evil axis parallels the true one. Or if one is open to it, whether my good/evil axis shares an origin point with God, regardless of where I am on it. Even if these are questions I cannot now or could never answer, they are still questions with meaning.

Sailors navigated using Polaris because that is the star through which the earth's axis most closely intersects. Without such a reference point(s), they would have just drifted about on the ocean aimlessly, fighting about which way the dragons be, not even knowing which way they were going.

But the question here, as I understand it, is whether interfaith harmony is possible. Can our beliefs and opinions differ and yet we can all get along. If any difference in belief leads to the the formation of an us and them which automatically dooms us to conflict, then perhaps it is not. Perhaps conflict is inevitable until we all safely arrive at the north star, if it even exists, but I don’t think that conflict is necessarily inherent in difference. Yes some will define an origin point and axis direction that we find aberrant and can not live with in harmony, so perhaps some conflict will always be at least potentially present. But I think it is up to us to understand that our origin point and defined axis directions are not necessarily the true ones, assuming we believe true ones exist. Our good/evil origin and axis directions are just our approximation of the preferred or true frame of reference. Such an understanding may not eliminate interfaith conflict, but I think it would go a long way toward making things better. Of course if better or worse are just another pair of dualities, with no inherent truth, arbitrarily defined by us, then perhaps it doesn’t really matter at all.

This concept that everything is dualisticly relative and therefore doesn’t matter (not saying this is your position) bothers me. I get what they are saying, yet I need to believe that somewhere there is dry land and I can learn to navigate my way there, or at least that I can get myself going in the right direction. Otherwise, I am just forever floating aimlessly on the cosmic ocean with no shores, which I would rather not believe is true.

YOU ARE ON A FANTASTIC ROLL!!!!


Interfaith viability's main issue may not be what we think it is.

Let me explain. If we look at the Christian forum and the Buddhist forum on Spiritual Forums, a common theme 'raises her head'. Some people on each respective forum have 'members' that are polarized in each respective 'faith'. For example, the 'conservative, fundamentalist?' Buddhists here, seem to generally look at the bulk of Buddhists in predominate Buddhist countries to really not be Buddhists because their customs surpass what the writings say. This resonates very similar in the Christian forum were the 'conservative, fundamentalist?' seem to stick to the writings and claim they have the 'true beliefs' and proclaim the others are governed more by customs then writings.

The main issue seems we have to work better on our communication skills within our own 'faiths' in that of trying to bring unity before we can bring all of mankind into unity.

But then, the coronavirus does seem to have 'brought' some diverse groups together. Maybe we need a common enemy?