how can any one religion make a valid claim to be the fundamental truth?

All those of a religious mind put your religious belief in a little box and step into a world without a god, any god or anything divine. Not for ever but just for a moment. just long enough to look at religion from the outside. Turn round in this new world and watch the religions bounce off one another each 100% sure they have the single irrefutable TRUTH.As you circle round this seething bubbling mass of dogmatic idealisms peppered with the red hot anger and fear of fundamentalism you notice something else. It seems that while there are many distinct groups with many sub groups within them, each and every tiny group is denying the validity and fundamental truth of all the others. Even the ones closest to them in the theological huddle.It’s as if cereal manufacturers started claiming their product is the only ‘real’ cereal and that all the other manufacturers are lying to you because what they offer isn’t really cereal. Anyone, with even a half once of sense will laugh and then dismiss the claims as absurd. Cereal is cereal it doesn’t matter what claims you make for one box it won’t stop the other boxes also being valid as cereal will it? It’s the same for religions. From outside of religion it’s plain to see that religions tend to put their beliefs in to little boxes and market them as ‘The One True Religion’ denying the validity and truth of all the others. As with the cereal analogy, just because a religion claims the others to be false and flat out wrong, this doesn’t actually mean they are. It doesn’t invalidate them as religions or their claim on ‘the truth’.So if simply claiming you have the one un changing fundamental truth, simply because your doctrine says you do, doesn’t in any real sense invalidate another religion’s claim to the same,(no matter how much one claims the other to be false) then all religions have to bee seen as equally valid or equally false. In the end which one you take off the shelf has more to do with how it suits your tastes rather than an accurate claim to be the one true religion.--Edit-- edited in responce to Admin Moderation --This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-13-2005 08:35 AM

OP has been well pruned and re-shaped. And now illustrates my thoughts in a far clearer manner (I hope) Again I guess it’s best suited for ‘Faith & Belief’ unless you feel it is better suited to another.

Ah yes but whose word and whose truth? This is the point. What validates one religion’s truth over another’s. esspecialy when the only vlaid argument seems to be that that the texts used to form that religion tells that religion that those texts contain the only truth.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-13-2005 12:56 AM

Sorry if my choice of analogy is weak (seemed ok to me) please let me know where you feel it falls down. Or suggest a more robust alternative.

fine, that is your religious point of view, so how does that invalidate any one elses ideas?

You mention Wm Scott’s preaching post, and yet not see your attempt at the same thing. You and he are so deeply embedded in your respective dogmas you don’t see any possibility you could be wrong.So we have 2 similar but contradictory views where the only argument that seems to be voiced is because it’s the truth, what more do you want? And stepping away form the internal squabbles of Christianity for a moment you also mention other more diverse religions in a tone of pity as if ‘bless them’ they can’t help it.So in regard to the Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and so on, in fact all the wonderfully diverse flavours religion comes in, how does your insistence that your ‘truth’ based on your religious texts is the one single real truth invalidates any other religion’s claim to the same.Look at it this way. Imagine I have no pre conceived ideas of anything spiritual or religious, and to me a representative from each of all the worlds religions comes and in turn each tells me their concept of their spiritual reality and what they believe. They also give me their religious texts and I read them. At the end of all this they ask me to choose the one, and only one, I believe to be true. Now they are all convinced I will pick them because how could I refute the obviousness of the ‘god given’ truth?. So in the light of this how could I pick any one over the others? What gives one fundamental truth domain over all the others? And quoting scripture at the problem isn’t gonna cut it, for every religion uses it’s scripture to justify it’s claim, so you need to find some thing more compelling than dogmatic responses. Just because you believe you have the only true truth does not invalidate some one else’s claim to the same.You are right this subject does pain me. I desperately ache when I see the vast majority of the earth’s human population warring against itself, spiritually and sometimes physically, over the most insignificant details when they essentially believe the same thing

Nice post Wm Scott Anderson. It neatly proves the way Religions make unsupported dogmatic justifications of their claim to have the single valid truth.Hold religious text up and then claim it is the truth and only truth, other religions that use the same text aren’t reading it right. Those that use different texts are deluding themselves. And so on. All your post does isA: State your belief
B: Points out you have written a book.What is doesn’t do is offer a valid reason why your version is any more valid than someone else’s, other then you claim it to be true. And as all other religions make a stand from the same concept you are gonna need some thing more then blind dogmatic responses to prove your claim to the highground.As a side note I checked out you book on Amazon.com. If you are gonna write supposed user reviews to boost your average user rating (you book has 3 reviews all writen by you..), try to use different accounts to mask the fact. But at least it’s utterly blatant this is what you’ve done, so it should take in only the truly dull of thought.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-14-2005 10:16 AMThis message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-14-2005 11:10 AM

I have my ‘truth’ but though I believe what I believe quite strongly I don’t deny I could be wrong. I don’t deny that the other persons view ‘could’ be right. After all my views are my views and yours are yours. I openly admit my truth could be wrong (and the divine really does exist, though I really doubt that). Can you accept and admit that your beliefs could indeed be wrong, that a different view like Shinto or Atheism could be right? That the God you believe in might actually not exist? Can you?

Certainly not. Buddhists are as welcome to participate as any one else In seriousness, I don’t know much about the Buddhist faith and traditions, but do vaguely remember being told once that Buddhism was the only religion you couldn’t blaspheme against (mainly because they don’t hold their beliefs as the only truth, and thus if you say it isn’t so what skin is it off their nose?)So while Buddhism would indeed be included in the OP as it is a religion, or at least widely accepted as one, Buddhism is hardly going to argue that any one religion does have claim to the fundamental truth. I realised that there are exceptions to my generalisations in previous posts but it was easier to write them that way then in clued every exception to the ruleSo as I may have the Buddhist position wrong, and may even wrongly assume you are Buddhist, could you give us the Buddhist position on this topic?

Tricky one. Firstly it hits on a whole new topic in regard to ‘Mind and Soul’ which if we got into here it would take over this thread and I don’t want that. But to briefly state my view, your mind isn’t your soul we don’t have souls. Your mind is an emergent property of the biological thing called your brain. Though I would be interested in the differences, as you see them between ‘Spirit’ and ‘Soul’.But my truth comes from the culmination of all I have learned over the years of my life. It’s not from one source but all, every time I read some thing or watch some thing or talk with someone I learn things. Through the calmative effect of all this on what I ‘know’ my concept of what is ‘true’ slowly emerges. And as such I freely admit, that whilst I believe what I hold to be true IS true, that doesn’t change the fact I could well be wrong. So the answer is yes, you do accept the possibility your views could be wrong. Despite believing god exists ( as I believe he doesn’t) with every ounce of your being you acknowledge that ‘if’ someone managed to falsify the concept of god you would have to accept that, and to accept that is to accept the posibility you could be wrong. In that light, if you accept the concept you might be wrong, no matter how infinitesimally small you believe this chance to be, you also have to accept that no one viewpoint has a cast iron claim on ‘the truth’.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-15-2005 06:43 AM

Thank you for your reply, and thank you for acknowledging that no religion can claim to bee 100% true. But then you under cut that by making claims for the bible that it is 100% true, and more over that it’s been proven to be true.Those who claim to have proved the bible true are generally, no I will say exclusively, those who start with that conclusion firmly in mind and will therefore tend not to be 100% objective in their proofs. They tend to cling to the supposed history and the supposed prophetic claims where there really isn’t much evidence for the former and no rational person would claim validity on vague prophesy that may or may not have actually been fulfilled.I have yet to read a fully objective academic study of the bible in regard to it’s claims of historical accuracy and thus it’s validity as a truthful document. (I’m not suggesting that such an analysis doesn’t exist, I just haven’t read one) So All I have seen are proofs from those determined to prove the bible or those wanting to disprove the bible as a valid document of un-disputed thruthIn the light of this it’s clear that the argument has not been settled one way or the other in regard to the bible and it’s claims to be what it is. You came to the table believing it to be the undisputable word of god and thus will cling to any ‘proof’ no mater how tenuous supporting this claim. Academically there is no reason to believe anything other than the bible, important though it is, is nothing more than a collection of books and letters written by men in the early period of the Common Era, creating and supporting a particular theological outlook. Where as religiously, if you fall into the Christian frame of thought then it’s vital that you believe in what the bible says as being the word of god else your religion can’t function.Now from a non religious point of view there is no reason to give any religious text greater importance over the others, to assign a greater value of truth and less to the rest.Just because you believe the bible to be the one truth as said by god, and just because Christian scholars have created some extremely tenuous attempts at validating those claims doesn’t make it true. After all as Charles says there are many other religions out there who make the exact same claim for their texts as do you for yours.If the sole base of your argument is the validity of your religious texts as the truth, then the debate is still wide open because the validity of none of these texts has been proved beyond doubt, save for the wishful thinking of those who follow believe them to be true.Show me a truly objective academic analysis and historical study of the bible and I may have to change my mind.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-16-2005 08:24 AM

thank you.and to Buzzsaw:I have never denied the uniqueness of the bible. And I would never do so (well at least for the second half, I’m sure I’ve read the first bit somewhere else).It can truly be said that there is nothing else quite like it, in it’s history and purported claims, it’s literary achievements and ability to engender belief. However NONE of this validates any claim for it as the one and only ‘truth’.It was my own personal objective study of the bible, when I was a child and was taking my self to Sunday school, that put me on the road to my current views, and lead me away from my religion and God. I’ve been there bought the tshirt, read the books and found them lacking. These are MY views and MY truths and I openly admit I could be wrong whilst believing very strongly that I am not.What I was asking was for you to provide a totally objective, impassionate academic study of the bible proving it’s validity beyond doubt or reproach. Because if you could produce such a document, one that wasn’t obviously working it’s way to a pre-conceived conclusion then, I would have to read it carefully and assess my position once again.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-16-2005 10:43 AM

Did I ask for a Biased academic study?
No, I asked for a truly objective academic study. And please excuse me if I’m wrong here but I’ve always believed objective to mean: The truly shameful thing is that as this IS such an emotive issue that virtually all books on religion ( the vast majority written in defence of religions) are written from a 100% subjective view point.I would love to read a clinically objective study of the bible, one that looks at the bible's own history it’s own contents and how this ties up with it’s claims and so on. Because I know I tend to colour things from my own perspective and everyone else does the same. So to read some thing that is truly objective would be a joy.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-16-2005 11:08 AMThis message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-16-2005 11:12 AM

but as a radical Calvinist, i would susspect that you would have to question his objectivity...

so someone can be Objective through being subjective?I agree that is it quite possible to be 100% objective on a subject that you have strong beliefs in one way or the other, but it's hard.I would have to read his book to understand if he remains fully objective or allows himself to fall back on subjective standpoints. But as he was a radical Calvinist and most books written defending faith are written from the 'accepted belief the bible is true, I would be surprised if true objectivity played much of a part in his works.