5. RELIGIONS, CHURCHES & SECTS

‘They can’t all/any of them be right can they?’

All religions are not the same

Not all religions point us to God

All religions do not say all religions are the same (and every religion is at its core exclusive)

Every religion has a commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not, and therefore of defining life's purpose

Sometimes religion can be the greatest barrier to attaining an authentic spirituality

Religions are birthed in a shame system, reinforced - in children (of all ages) - by a set of helpful-to-mindless prohibitions. Departing from this shame system is discouraged - by stoning, excommunication, or various forms of shaming. This is also behind the 'clash of cultures' 

(Source unknown)

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Civilization and its Enemies by Lee Harris: Religion is not primarily a set of beliefs, a collection of prayers, or a series of rituals. Religion is first and foremost a way of seeing. It can't change the facts about the world we live in, but it can change the way we see those facts... and that in itself can often make a real difference.

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Fit Bodies Fat Minds (Os Guinness): There's a link between New Age silliness and the more sinister manifestations of fundamentalism and right-wing manipulation. All three phenomena trade on the naivety and intellectual sloth of people, on their unwillingness to think for themselves, on their readiness to surrender their minds to a dogma, a holy book, a wacky theory... We're dealing with different manifestations of irrationality, with the retreat from reason.

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Philip Adams: The Australian, 1997: 'Unsuspecting people make a fatal mistake when they give their allegiance to a system of thought by focusing on its benefits while they ignore its systemic contradictions.

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The way God has designed us: One of the most startling things about life is that it does not start with reason and end with faith. It starts in childhood with faith and is sustained either by reasoning through that faith or by blindly leaving the reason for faith unaddressed.

The child's mind has a very limited capacity to inform it of the reason for its trust.
But whether she nestles on her mother's shoulder, nurses at her mother's breast, or runs into her father's arms, she does so because of an impllicit trust that those shoulders will bear her, that her food will sustain her, and that those arms will hold her.

If over time that trust is tested, it will be the character of the parent that will either prove that trust wise or foolish. Faith is not bereft of reason.

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http://vedanta.org/2000/monthly-readings/religion-in-the-twenty-first-century/

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http://www.patheos.com/Topics/Future-of-World-Religions/Future-of-Religion.html