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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A COSMIC RELIGION?
4/8/2010 6:09:32 PM

“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity… ”

Albert Einstein

I don't know whether I should try to define religion. It's so obvious that any attempt at defining
it would somehow limit it. So I prefer to talk about religion. Note that I am not saying "religions." There are so many...

Many people say religion has proven useless and that there would be no place for it in the coming New Age. Others think its role has been nefarious all along history. They forget its influence everywhere on this planet in the cohesion of societies. I doubt any of them had formed were it not for it. There would only be barbarians. At any rate, I cannot imagine what the world would be if religion had not be there keeping alive the torch of science first, and then educating the people in the spiritual matters.


Granted, religions (not religion) have many times behaved very poorly, particularly in those periods of decadence that all societies must undergo in the course of time - or rather in the course of their particular ages, for there have been as many cycles of ages as societies have existed in the course of history.

But religion is a divine force behind all religious phenomena; it nurtures all true religiosity. It is independent of men. Whatever they may do in the matter of religions, whatever their religious concoctions are, and whatever processes of decay religions may undergo, religion remains uncontaminated - simply because it is the pristine creation of God.

To see what true religion is, we have to look into the most remote past. The more we go back in time, the better we will do in finding it. In fact, we need to look back to the beginning of the human phenomenon on our planet, when man lived in perfect peace and harmony with God and the superior principles, to find it. If that is too difficult for us, we may study the very first known societies on earth and try to understand how they did to live like that, for they all had religion as their real father and mother. If we are to enter in a New Age, we had better begin with this. But I will talk about all this in successive posts.

Thank you,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A COSMIC RELIGION?
4/10/2010 9:22:15 PM

Religion and Science

By Albert Einstein

(The following article by Albert Einstein appeared in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4. It has been reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, Inc. 1954, pp 36 - 40. It also appears in Einstein's book The World as I See It, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949, pp. 24 - 28.)

Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us. Now what are the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions - fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense I am speaking of a religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.

The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.

The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.

It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.


"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." (Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)


_________________

In: "Endless Search - World Creation and Maintenance" (http://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/science_cosmicreligion.htm)



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Roger Macdivitt .

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RE: IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A COSMIC RELIGION?
4/10/2010 10:09:32 PM

Wow Luis,

This is, to say the least, weird.

I have spent about two hours trying to reply. On three occasions I failed to complete a posting without losing it. Twice here and once in Word and I lost every one.

Just going to say.

I agree with Einstein and he says it better than I could, but, I'm still a Christian because of my personal experience of spiritual things and I have a feeling of being nutured which science alone cannot offer to me.

Fascinating Luis.

Roger

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A COSMIC RELIGION?
4/12/2010 11:01:56 AM
Quote:


I agree with Einstein and he says it better than I could, but, I'm still a Christian because of my personal experience of spiritual things and I have a feeling of being nutured which science alone cannot offer to me.

Fascinating Luis.

Roger



Hello Roger,

You are of course right. I agree science alone cannot offer all that your spiritual soul mainly aspires to, i.e. spiritual nourishment. My experience is also that of the Christian faith, only at a given point in my life I found it difficult to believe in certain things like eternal condemnation and the like. That is how I learned about cosmic cycles and ages, successive lives, and other profound truths in books like Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. The next thing I found was, even in the Gospels and the Old Testament they are hinted at.

If I have started this section with the presentation of a purely scientific view (that is, from "official" science) is for comparative purposes mainly, but also to see how it fits with the rest of the material offered. As I have said elsewhere in this forum, I am going to try to present all of it as in as spontaneous as possible a way.

Thank you for your important contribution at this early stage.

Best Wishes,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Roger Macdivitt .

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RE: IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A COSMIC RELIGION?
4/12/2010 8:06:55 PM

I await with interest.

This is exciting.

Roger

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