In the religious history of mankind with its immeasurable variety most religions have God as their true purpose but they don’t all come down to the same thing – each claims to be the only right one.
There is just no way to equate all religions because not only is it so that all religions are different but even one religion is not the same century after century or from country to country or even from city to city and there is interdependence while every possible kind of divergence and convergence between religions. There have been attempts to bring religions into unity but without success. It is not so much the conflicts between them which disrupt but also conflicts within them, such as in Christianity with its numerous interpretations of the life and meaning of Christ and in the conflicts within Islam with the enmity between Sunni and Shiites, and in the irreconcilable hostilities in India between Hindus and Sikhs and between Hindus and Muslims and between Buddhists and Catholics in Vietnam and Catholics and Protestants in Ireland and between Muslims, Jews and Christians in the Middle East…
The most fanatical and the cruelest wars and political struggles are those that have been inspired by religion and so religions must share the responsibility for bringing peace to our war-torn world because there will be no peace among the peoples of this world without peace among the world’s religions, and there will be no peace among the world’s religions without their reaching understanding of God who is The Universal Father of all. There are now over 7 billion people living in this world. Of these approximately two billion are Christian – about one third of the world’s population. By comparison there are over one billion Muslims, nearly one billion Hindus and over 500 million Buddhists, and the knowledge which each has of the others is very limited. For instance, serious dialog between Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism had not been going on at all until the 20th century – we must change not merely our understanding of ourselves and the world but also our understanding of God. God as the Absolute transcends all concepts and definitions yet he is not separate from the world, from humanity.
The boundary between truth and falsity does not simply run between one religion and others but is in part within each of the religions, and nothing of true value in any religion should be denied but neither is anything without value to be accepted. Here a consensus should be possible among the representatives of the various religions – none of them possesses all truth but all of them should tread the path towards the understanding of the truth about God without anxiety, for the truth will enrich the lives of all.
If only the different religions would just freely reciprocate in exchange of information and open discussion there would develop mutual enlightenment and enrichment which would lead to greater understanding between them and genuine peace between all of the polyglot peoples of our world.
There is a great continuing struggle between beliefs – Faith – and knowledge which we must overcome because the present authority of science promulgates pure coincidence for the origin of the universe and for the origins of life. Questions about the very existence of God and why there exist so many different religions are presented in the book THE INFINITE DIMENSION which follows…
THE INFINITE DIMENSION 