HOW DOES A UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY AND
RELIGION
APPROACH THE UNIVERSE?
We achieve a universal model of religion through the exercise of reason.
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
"Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries
of reason, through which every other science justifies
itself?
Are the same methods of investigation, we apply to
sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the
science of Religion? In my opinion this must be so,
and I'm also of the opinion that the sooner it's done
the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigations,
it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition;
and the sooner it goes the better. I'm thoroughly convinced
that its destruction would be the best thing that could
happen. All that's dross will be taken off, no doubt,
but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant
out of this investigation. Not only will it be made
scientific - as scientific, at least, as any of the
conclusions of physics or chemistry - but will have
greater strength, because physics or chemistry has no
internal mandate to vouch for its truth, which religion
has."
What constitutes reason?
The first principle of reason is:
The particular is explained by the general,
the general by the more general, until we come to the
universal. This is what science always does as it disentangles
lesser knowledge and opens up to larger understandings.
Reasoning is the way our minds "generalize,"
the way we arrive at larger conclusions, and reveal
the laws and truths surrounding us.
Whatever our religious background, we're always putting
"parts of the puzzle" together into larger,
more inclusive understandings, struggling to get beyond
our present superstitions and ignorance. Reason always
moves consciousness out into larger levels of knowing.
This is true of our secular understandings as well as
our religious ones. The larger the principles we hold,
the more reasonable and the more knowing we are. This search for a larger understanding is
the aim of science as well as the aim of a universal religion.
The second principle of reason is:
We have to find all of our explanations from within
the universe itself.
"A second explanation of knowledge is that the
explanation of a thing must come from inside and not
from outside.
There had been the belief that, when a man threw a stone
up and it fell, some demon dragged it down. Many occurrences
which are really natural phenomena are attributed by
people to unnatural beings. That a ghost dragged the
stone down was an explanation that was not in the thing
itself, it was an explanation from outside; but the
second explanation of gravitation is something in the
nature of the stone; the explanation is coming from
inside.
You'll find this tendency throughout modern thought;
in one word, what's meant by science is that the explanations
of things are in their own nature,
and that no external beings or existences are required to explain what's going on in the universe".
How does reason inform a universal religion and philosophy?
Please click on one of the categories in the top bar
column and see what you think.
