Ye Olde Rad Blog

Had a discussion today with some friends about world religions. (It's Sunday.) What are the three taboo subjects one should never discuss? Religion, politics and money? Anyway, we noted how there exists many different world religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism & Christianity. And how, within each of these, there exists many different denominations and sects.

Regrettably, I never took a class in World Religions. But I have friends who have. And I like to pick their brains about what they learned in these classes, just to be better informed.

Most interesting is not that there are so many different "belief systems" or that most people remain in the particular belief system they were born in, as if the roulette wheel of birth was kind to them and few others .. but rather that most people never learn anything about other belief systems, and that most people believe their particular belief system to be the "one, true" belief system, and other people are going to a bad place (hell?) when they die, for not adhering to their particular belief system. Talk about ego-centric.

Simple mathematics will tell you not everyone can be right. It's this universal exclusionist policy I find so interesting .. and so presumptuous. If you ask most Christians what a Hindu believes, they can't tell you. If you ask most Catholics how their belief system differs from that of a Baptist or or Methodist, they can't tell you. All they know is that what they themselves happen to believe is undeniably true, and what the other guy believes is unfortunately wrong.

It's like they are saying, "I'm right, and the rest of the world is wrong. What else is there to know?" Or, "If you're not in with our little group, so sad for you, hombre." The problem (it seems) is that most of the world is saying this same thing (I'm right; everyone else is wrong), and (obviously) not everyone can be right.

Anyway, I have no answers today. Merely a humorous observation. And I doubt I am the first. I ordered the PBS special titled Islam: Empire of Faith to learn more about that religion, since all of the terrorists who crashed planes into the World Trade Center claimed to be Muslim.