The Large Picture of Religion – One Person’s Pathway to Acceptance of Religious Diversity not as an Aberration but as a Product of Freedom of Thought

The Thinking Post. The last blog addressed the large picture of politics and presented one person’s pathway to understanding the need for world governance.

Now for a look at the large picture understanding of religion. When I look at our planet’s religious landscape through the eyes of someone from another planet, or through the eyes of the Creator, I see a patchwork of thousands of belief systems with Christian belief systems having 2 billion+ adherents largely concentrated in Europe, the Americas, Russia, and Australia; Muslim belief systems having 1 billion+ adherents largely concentrated in the Middle East, North Africa, and Indonesia/Malaysia; Buddhism/Taoism with 1 billion+ adherents largely concentrated in China, Japan, Mongolia, and Burma/Thailand/Laos/Cambodia /Vietnam; Hindu belief systems with approximately 1 billion adherents largely concentrated in India; and other belief systems scattered here and there across the planet. I once thought that such a patchwork picture must be very disconcerting to the Creator, seeing intelligent creatures, whom he/she/it created (we need a special personal pronoun for the Creator), agreeing on little more than that the Creator exists and some (an estimated 2.5 % of the planet’s 6.8 billion population) not even believing in that.

Another aspect of the religious landscape is the bewildering variety of religious belief systems. There are 50,000+ different religious belief systems on planet earth today. There are 34,000+ different Christian belief systems, over 60 different Muslim belief systems, multiple Jewish belief systems, and multiple Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Chinese Folk, etc. belief systems with each belief borrowing from and rubbing against every other belief.

That is the large picture. And I have come to accept that that is the way it should be, and that our planet is blessed by the diversity and multiplicity of its religious traditions.

Religious belief very often boils down to being an individual matter. I have a belief system and I suspect it differs from yours and from the belief system of most other human inhabitants of our planet. My grandmother, in her 34-acre farm on a hillside in Ireland’s heartland, believed in Jesus and in the Little People with what seemed to me equal fervor. And she saw no contradiction in these beliefs.  To her, the other world of the Little People as well as heaven and hell were all part of the cosmos. She never felt the need to contemplate or question her faith. To her being Catholic mingled with remnants of Druidism was as natural as breathing, and I suspect that is the way with most individual beliefs. Just as I cannot bring myself to condemn my grandmother for her beliefs, I cannot condemn anyone for sincerely held beliefs.

My belief system, presented below, has evolved into something quite different from my grandmother’s. I spent two years studying philosophy and four years studying theology at All Hallows College, Dublin, Ireland, a live-in institution run by the Vincentians, a religious order founded by St.Vincent de Paul, a French priest, in 1625 to preach the Christian gospel to the poor and to reform the clergy. I was a good unquestioning student, absorbing the worldview of the Roman Catholic Church, as was expected of me. Subsequent to my ordination in 1957, I served as an assistant pastor at Immaculate Conception parish, City of Sacramento; at St. Isadore’s parish, City of Yuba City; at Holy Rosary parish, City of Woodland; and as Assistant Chaplain, Newman Center, University of California, Davis in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, California.

But towards the end of my 15 years as a priest, the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and the worldview they encompassed started to unravel. I can trace the roots of the unraveling to the Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII in October, 1962, with the principal objective, as John XXIII said then, to open the windows of the church to let in some fresh air and start a dialogue with the contemporary world.  Like many in the church–lay people, nuns, and clerics–I welcomed the opening of windows and embraced the fresh air. The theological, ecumenical, scriptural, and liturgical discussions that the Council engendered caused many, including myself, to commence a re-examination of church practices and later a questioning and a re-evaluation of church teachings. In my own case, there was a very gradual, almost imperceptible evolution away from a dogmatic belief system, to openness to and acceptance of ideas in conflict with church teachings and practices. I gradually came to question the church’s teaching on birth control, on divorce and remarriage, on original sin, on hell and eternal damnation, on denying the priesthood to women, on the celibacy of its clergy, etc. On this last topic, I wrote an essay tracing the history of the development of celibacy from a recommendation to a widespread practice, to its enactment as a church law in 1139 by the Second Lateran Council, which is often cited as having for the first time introduced a general law of celibacy, requiring ordination only of unmarried men. The piece entitled, “Should the Council Look at Celibacy”, was published on June 9^th, 1965 in the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly publication read by many Catholics throughout the U.S. The article, under the penname, “Sacerdos Occidentalis” (western priest), started a national discussion on celibacy in the Catholic priesthood that lasted for almost a year. Another incident stands out in my recollection of those years. During my assignment at Holy Rosary parish in Woodland, I incurred the wrath of the farming community for supporting a strike in Delano, California, to get union recognition for grape pickers (see: Clergy: The Grapes of Wrath, Time Article, Dec. 10, 1965). I was getting a reputation as a rebel. Though I resigned from the priesthood in 1972, the evolution in my beliefs continued in fits and starts down to the present.

The Basis of My Current Religious Understanding. Humans have been on planet earth for at least a few million years and it is logical to conclude that religion in some form has been part and parcel of the human experience from the beginning as humans sought to understand where they came from and the meaning and purpose of their lives. The many different religions and belief systems grew out of and is a direct reflection of the geographic, social, and linguistic diversity of the planet. It would seem that culture, geography, inheritance, language, and tradition are all contributing factors to why certain religious belief systems developed and took hold in certain parts of the planet and not in others and why religions splintered into multiple belief systems.

Why are there 34,000 different Christian belief systems as against only 60 different Muslim belief systems? The almost incomprehensible proliferation of Christian belief systems happened after the Reformation in the 16^th century, when many Christians were released from authoritarian interpretations of the Christian Bible, and were free to interpret God’s word as their conscience dictated. Whereas, the Muslim faith has experienced no reformation and a corresponding splintering of that belief system has not taken place. Hence, it would seem that the impetus for the multiplication of some belief systems is directly related to freedom of thought and expression.

Another factor contributing to the fragmentation of belief systems is the conjecture of sociologists that 150-200 is the outer limit of the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. So where individual freedom is a core value and there are no laws or norms enforced to maintain group cohesion, people tend to form splinter groups. A solution to this natural tendency within mega churches is the breakup of the large worshipping community into small cohesive interest and service groups.

The central question is: are all the different religions and belief systems of divine origin or merely of human origin? I have come to understand that they are merely of human origin for I cannot attribute the multiplicity of beliefs to direct intervention of the divine. And I ask myself, why would the deity be directly involved in disseminating ideas and concepts that confuse and divide the human family? History tells me that divine revelation, the concept of the deity reaching down to enlighten humans, has been a recent phenomenon. The Holy Books or scriptures of the various religions are recent entries on the stage of human history-all within the past 5,000 years. That is part of the large picture. I have no problem with the concept of religion, the human attempt to relate to the divine, but I have many problems, which will be discussed in the next blog, with the concept of divine revelation, i.e. communication from the deity, embodied in Holy Books such as the Bible and the Qur’an.

Problem #1. In trying to understand revelation, I asked myself why was there no divine revelation in the first few million years of human existence?  Were early humans not worth enlightening with divine messages? Or were they too underdeveloped and not ready to receive such messages?  Or, in the parlance of some belief systems, did they not have souls to be saved? I now know that our ancestors, prior to 5,000 years ago, were certainly intelligent human beings.  And it does not make sense to me that an all knowing and all loving deity, so concerned about redeeming mankind sent Jesus just recently (2,000 years ago) to redeem humans from their evil ways, or, if you wish, sent Mohammad even more recently (1400 years ago) to enlighten humans about the divine plan. Yet, that same concerned deity allowed mankind to flounder around in unredeemed darkness for millions of years. That to me is the preposterous assumption that Christians and Muslims make when they claim that the Bible or the Qur’an contain exclusively the deity’s revealed truth!

Problem #2. In thinking about revelation, I had equally big concerns internal to the divine revelations themselves. All Holy Books claim to offer to humans a divinely inspired roadmap for living on our planet. However, some statements in the Holy Books are open to multiple interpretations and have been construe d by many over their 5,000 year history as justifying all kinds of abominations from human sacrifices, to crusades against other belief systems, to burnings at the stake, to stoning to death, to deep-seated prejudices against some of the Creator’s children, to mutilations, to wars, to suicide bombings, to discriminations, to denials of basic human rights, to human torture, to enslavement of millions, to mass murders, etc., etc.  Unfortunately, to my growing understanding, divine revelation provides a worldview that in the minds of many empowers them to become "soldiers of the deity” with a mission to convert or eliminate all who do not share their belief system. I see evidence of that mindset today among some Muslims and Christians.

I conclude that an all loving and an all knowing deity could not have been so careless or be so lacking in foresight as to permit inspired statements in Holy Books to be open to interpretations that justify such terrible deeds enumerated above.

Problem #3. I know from history that multiple interpretations of the Holy books have spawned multiple religions and branches of religions, each with its own belief system. Even within the mainstream religions there are multiple sects with their own distinct set of beliefs, their own distinct understandings of the divine. The Roman Catholic belief system that I was born into and grew up with is but one of thousands of Christian belief systems that are quite different from each other. There are almost more religions than we can count-34,000+ different Christian belief systems, over 60 different Muslim belief systems, multiple Jewish belief systems, and multiple Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Chinese Folk, etc. belief systems with each belief borrowing from and rubbing against every other belief. That is the big picture! Even if I accept the premise that the deity revealed certain truths, the truths evidently have become fragmented and distorted in human hands, leaving me and many others in a quandary as to what to believe, which again in my mind underscores a monumental failure on the part of the divine message.

Problem #4. With the advent of the Holy Books, and so many claiming to have the truth, I think it is logical to conclude that either only one-belief system or set of Holy Books has the whole truth or no belief system has it. If only one belief system has the whole truth revealed by the Creator, then, to my thinking mind, that belief system should stand out above all the others like a shining light on a hill as the only one possessing the divine revelation. But after multiple claims of divine revelations over the past 5,000 years no single belief system so stands out.

Problem #5. This problem is about the timing and duration of revelation. It is not helpful to say that God’s revelation started with Genesis some 2,500 years ago and stopped with the Book of Revelations some two thousand years ago as Christians claim, or that Allah’s revelation started and stopped with the Qur’an some fourteen hundred years ago as Muslims claim. That is to say that God/Allah not only started very late in the day communicating with humans (over several million years too late) but stopped communicating with humans in one belief system 2000 years ago and in another belief system 1400 years ago. So all that I and other humans can do in matters of religion is rehash old news and old insights over and over! For nearly 2000 years the dominant western understanding of the divine has been stuck in place with no major advancement or development. And since the western understanding of the human has been for the most part inseparable from the western understanding of the divine, the dominant western understanding of the human has also been stuck in place for two millennia. The same can be said of the Muslim belief system, as its understanding of the divine and of the human has been stuck in place for the past 1400 years with no major advancement in understanding.

Imagine where we would be in matters of scientific understanding, if we dogmatically stated that we reached the pinnacle of scientific understanding back in the second century with the thinking of the Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy (83-161 CE) or with the geocentric solar and lunar theories of the 14th century Arab Muslim astronomer, mathematician and engineer, Ibn ash-Shatir (1304-1375 CE), with no further growth possible in scientific knowledge!  That would be to permanently condemn our scientific thinking to a twilight zone.

But that is precisely what Christians and Muslims have done. By dogmatically declaring that revelation ceased at a certain point in time, they declared the Creator impotent to communicate any new religious truth to humans, who are then limited until the end of time to rehashing old truths, deprived of the capacity for change. By excluding originality and freedom of thought in their belief systems, religions have erected a major roadblock                     to advances in knowledge and understanding of the divine and of the human, and logically down the years have also fought tooth and nail acceptance of advances in our scientific understanding.

Revelation Problems 1-5 Lead Me to One Conclusion. With the above problems it seems to me that accepting revelation, any revelation, as the word of the deity, flies in the face of common sense, at least my understanding of common sense! And anyway, why would an all powerful deity intervene in human history (only in recent times) with revelations that have been largely failures, for the vast majority of people do not believe in any single belief system or revelation. Revelation has been such an utter failure that I cannot attribute it to an all-knowing, all-just, all-loving, and all-powerful deity. My logical mind cannot lay such incompetence at the feet of the divine. As I see it now, to accept the deity of revelation, any revelation, is to accept in some respects a small tribal deity; a deity that has a “chosen people” and plays favoritism; a deity depicted as an all powerful, just, and a loving father; a deity depicted as cruel and vengeful; a deity that condemns erring humans to the worst kind of torture imaginable not for a hundred, a million, or even a billion or a trillion years but for eternity, which makes the deity into a monster torturer; a deity that micromanages human activities and is concerned with each human peccadillo; a deity that reaches down now and then to cure an individual of some illness or infirmity (a miracle), but takes a hands off approach to the big problems of natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, and tsunamis, and major disasters brought about by humans such as wars, famines, genocides, and mass murder and torture.

That is the deity of revelation, a loving father on one side, and on the other side a capricious, impulsive monster that is all-controlling and all-powerful but missing when catastrophe strikes, that is omnipresent yet very aloof and above the fray when most needed.

There Has to Be Another Explanation! The evidence forces me to conclude that the Creator made no revelation, which would mean that all the various religions, spawned by various revelations and interpretations thereof, are but human attempts at various times and in different parts of the world to understand and explain the divine. That helps me understand the multiplicity of religions and lets the deity off the hook for causing such confusion with multiple revelations that historically have sown confusion, intolerance, prejudice, hatred, and division among people.

Hence, it seems to me that the only rational way to look at the cacophony of competing divine messages or revelations, which can be interpreted by extremists and others to suit their particular agendas, is to regard all the divine messages and revelations as merely human attempts to understand the divine. As such, the “holy books” have no divine authority. All “holy books” merely present the human understanding of the divine at a given time and place, and therefore have all the limitations and proneness to error shared by all human writings be they secular or religious in nature.

Consequences for a World without Divine Revelation. For me, and no doubt for many others, it is difficult to come to terms with a world without divine revelation. The worldview spawned by the Bible has shaped my understanding for over 50 years. The world of the Bible is the world that I grew up in and lived in for most of my life. To understand that the Bible is not God’s word means adopting a radically different worldview, a different relationship with the Creator. It requires of me a conversion and a recovery from long-term addiction to indoctrination. It requires of me a new faith in the Creator and a new resolve to grow in understanding of the Creator and of the Creator’s plan through the study of creation. The more I know about creation, the more I know about the Creator. Creation gives me a clear and direct understanding of the Creator. The ‘holy books” give me an understanding of the Creator that is for the most part tribal and comes to me reflecting the limited human thinking and cultures of a given time and place.

It may be interesting to some that I have never stopped praying. I continue to pray nightly for family and friends. But now I see the energy of my prayerful thoughts and good wishes for health, happiness, and support in trials and tribulations as reaching out to and going directly to those prayed for rather than up to the Creator and then down to the intended beneficiary.

The Role of Religion. The big picture understanding of religion that I have embraced does not do away with religions. I understand them as legitimate traditions or worldviews searching for truth, not necessarily as possessing it, but striving to build upon human insights down the ages the way scientists have done and continue to do to grow in our understanding of the great universe of which we are a very small, even minute part. The big picture understanding enables me to see religion, like science, as a journey of exploration - a search for understanding in the spiritual realm just as science is a search for understanding in the physical realm. In religion, like science, we cannot say that we possess truth, only that we are striving after it, striving for greater understanding and insight.

My big picture understanding sees religions as having a major positive role in the development and betterment of civilized society; in building communities of caring, giving, and sharing people; in breaking down barriers between peoples; in fostering altruism among adherents and sharing of the planet’s resources; in controlling human greed and hostility; in promoting human equality and eliminating prejudices; in caring for the poor, the aged, the sick, the outcast, and the forgotten; in teaching stewardship of the planet; and in fostering a deeper understanding of the divine and a deep sense that all humans are children of the Creator and have a right to a quality life on the planet.

What Flows from the Big Picture Understanding of Religion?

·      All religions should come together and join hands, minds, hearts, and resources in a common effort to:

a) Learn from each other and promote a deeper understanding of the divine

b) Proclaim that all the Creator’s children of all faiths and of no faith are brothers and sisters of a common Creator, traveling together through space and time on a shared spaceship with a common destiny

c) Reduce conflict and tension among religions and among the left and right elements within religions

d) Lead humans across the planet in working together to eliminate prejudice, poverty, disease, and war

e) Teach all humans how to achieve an improved quality of life for all on our beloved planet.

·      Leaders of religion should call for a religious summit to declare:

1.     That on planet earth there are no chosen people, not Jews, not Muslims, not Christians, not Buddhists, not Hindus, not Mormons, not Sikhs, not Deists, not anybody, and that all are equally the Creator’s children.

2.     That all religions are on the same level playing field with no group having divine revelation

3.     That religions stop all dogmatic pronouncements that serve only to inhibit further inquiry and understanding.

4.     That religions stop their imperialistic and divisive evangelizing and proselytizing programs across the planet and turn their energies to improving the quality of life for all inhabitants of the planet with no religious strings attached

5.     That religions not identify themselves with particular political or economic systems, but should transcend such systems, consider themselves as champions of the study of the divine, and have an unwavering commitment to advocating and promoting the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the entire human family.

(What a breath of fresh air that would be, releasing untold spiritual and intellectual energy and innovation across all religions! Humankind would be eternally grateful. Did I hear you say, “yea, dream on”?  Yes, my dream is seeing religion on the planet as it can be, not as it is).

·      For me personally, I have the freedom to let my imagination soar in my attempt to understand the spiritual and the divine, for my mind is no longer boxed in by a static belief system fostered by a closed system of revelation.

·      I do not have to tie myself up in mental knots explaining how the Creator could utter or be associated with some of the inconsistencies and wildly unreasonable stories contained in the Holy Books, for the Creator was never directly or indirectly involved in the authorship of any of the Holy Books.

·      I understand that leaders or pastors/rabbis/imams of all religions have no more authority than their church/temple/mosque communities bestow upon them as in any human organization. My understanding of history asks: why look to religious leaders as the sole dispensers of divine guidance, who down the centuries have not only failed to bring all of the Creator’s children together, but have divided and splintered the human family, have made excuses for tyrants, sanctioned slavery and blessed wars, covered up abuses, rejected the enlightenment, fought against universal franchise and particularly the franchise for women, and sown disunity, intolerance, and hatred that have grown into rigid systems of human separation, mistrust, and conflict. And continue to this day to do so.

I have come to accept that history has demonstrated that religions for the most part are not equipped to deal with advances in scientific understanding, very reluctantly adapt to change, and consistently set up roadblocks to advances in human progress and understanding. I have come to understand that religion is the only area that claims to possess the ideal of completely correct and unchanging knowledge or truth.  No area of science makes such a claim. Truth is not a goal of science, and it asks how can knowledge that is completely correct, which is what we mean when we say that it is true , keep changing all the time?  In fact, it was only by giving up the certainty of truth and adopting questioning and inquiry as its approach to discovery that science became such a wonderful source of understanding and knowledge.

I have come to understand that science sees the concept of truth as very elusive (many would say unattainable) and is much happier with the concept of understanding, which changes with each new discovery and better ways of observing and measuring things. I now see that every scientific understanding is open to repeated assessment, questioning, and revision. Science constantly revises our ways of thinking about our planet and its place in the universe. Sometimes these revisions of our understandings are stunning. For example, we once understood the earth to be the center of our universe. Then the Polish astronomer in the 16^th century, Nicholaus Copernicus, had the epiphany that the earth was revolving around the sun. Later, it was discovered that the sun and earth together were revolving around our galaxy, the rim of which is the Milky Way. But our galaxy is also in motion in its local group of galaxies, and there are further layers of motion beyond that. Since there are millions if not billions of other galaxies, we have no reason to conclude that our galaxy is in any sense central. Indeed, the universe may not have a center. Now, some astronomers point out that there is mounting evidence for the existence of multiple universes. In the words of the British physicist, Sir Arthur Eddington, “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine”.

As for the future, I know that many facts and principles that I now accept will be replaced by ones that are superior, not just a little better understanding, but whole new ways of looking at things. What I now understand about the natural world will someday be completely revised with the advent of new discoveries, improved analytical tools, and more refined measurements. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the worlds of medicine and astronomy. Science is constantly in a discovery mode and never makes its answers final. I think that religious faith would do well to emulate science and have its beliefs open to repeated assessment, questioning, and revision. If my understanding of creation is constantly changing and growing, how much more so should my understanding of the Creator be likewise constantly changing and growing?

The one set of Holy Books, that I am most familiar with, the Bible, presents a growth in religious understanding. The Bible reveals an evolution in the Jewish people’s understanding of God. Israelite society drew heavily from neighboring Caananite culture and the God of the Bible was initially, like the Caananite gods, a local tribal god. Later, Jewish understanding of god developed to a primary deity among many, and later to the most powerful god, and finally to the one and only God-the monotheistic God of the Hebrews, Christians, and Muslims. Then the New Testament part of the Bible was a major shift in understanding of God from that of the Old Testament part. The Bible’s understanding of the divine, at least initially, was constantly changing and growing.

The small picture understanding of religion limits belief to that envisioned by one set of Holy Books, that often present a dogma of exclusive salvation, which leads to intolerance. And this intolerance at one time or another has been expressed in torture, death, and murder of those who do not believe, and this is justified in the name of defeating evil, saving souls, and “eliminating the weeds from the wheatfields”(The New Testament, Matthew, Chapter 13). This was no better than primitive cultures that sacrificed human beings to their deities. Belief systems were often defended by political authorities not for their truths but for their usefulness as a governing and controlling system. In the case of Christianity, in its period of greatest influence, reason was enchained in a prison, and it took centuries for Christians to scale the prison walls. Christians stopped burning people at the stake for their beliefs, but Christians continue to condemn people to hell for their beliefs and actions and to torment them psychologically. Christians have still many other walls to scale. The Muslim belief system has yet to experience a reformation, any scaling of the walls. But some Muslims are currently speaking out for reform.

A leading contemporary and internationally renowned Jewish author, Rabbi David Hartman, Director of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, has stated: “ The Bible does not teach you tolerance…..you go there for passion, for zealousness, for extremes. Bible people are extremists”. Religious passion instills fervor for one’s own belief system, while dogmatically excluding all who do not share that belief.  Condemning non-believers and fellow humans to hell for all eternity is extremism. Both Christians and Muslims are very quick to condemn not believers to hell, which, when you think about it, is a billion times worse than torture or death (actually, any real comparison fails, for torture and death is pain that is short lived, and hell is torture and pain for all eternity). Christians and Muslims may say that that is not their doing but God’s or Allah’s doing. Then, there is little option but to conclude that they have fashioned their God or Allah into an extremist.

The big picture puts no limits to our spiritual understanding, invites us to learn from every religious leader (past, present and future), which means we can continue to grow and change and expand our understanding of the divine with each passing day.

Do the Holy Books Have Real Value?  Yes, most assuredly. Cumulatively, the Holy Books constitute the history of human thinking on the divine, and consequently, they should be wonderful sources of spiritual insights and understanding. But they are not, nor should they be considered as the last or best insights on the divine.

If all Holy Books are human attempts to understand the divine, not the Creator handing down eternal truths, are the concepts of the Creator as presented in the Holy Books merely tribal deities with a small “d”? What about some of the teachings of the Holy Books? What of the existence of an after life? Does the existence of hell, a place or state of eternal damnation really make sense? Or is hell simply a creation of human vengeance? Is there a heaven, a place or state of eternal happiness? Or is heaven simply a creation of human hope for immortality? These are major questions where humans must continually strive to grow in understanding and knowledge.

Big Picture Versus Small Picture Understandings. These pages have been contrasting the small picture and the big picture understandings of our world. The small picture understanding is largely religion-directed and is a constricted, dogmatic, closed perspective. The big picture understanding is largely science-directed and is open ended without limits. The small picture understanding is fertile ground for narrow thinking, prejudice, intolerance, and absolutist and extremist views. The big picture understanding on the other hand offers freedom for the imagination to soar, for multiple perspectives, for adventure and risk taking, and unlimited horizons.

IGOs and NGOs and the Promotion of the Big Picture Understanding.  It seems to me that Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) concerned with peace and economic development among nation states and Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) concerned with disaster relief and economic/medical assistance across the planet should be interested in promoting the big picture understanding of both politics and religion, for political and religious conflict directly inhibit their work.

IGOs include the United Nations (UN), Organization of American States (OAS), NATO, European Union (EU), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), The Group of Eight-France, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, and Canada (G-8), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and African Union (AU), etc.

NGOs that operate internationally include multinational corporations, International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, Geneva International Forum, CARE, Institute of World Affairs, Amnesty International, Medecins Sans Frontiers, etc.

These organizations wield enormous influence reaching almost every corner of the planet and have untold potential to spread the big picture understanding and reduce political and religious tensions and conflict.

A Prediction that flows from the above worldview. Future generations on earth may well regard Christian and Muslim worldviews and the worldviews of all existing religions on our planet in much the same way that we currently regard the worldview of the ancient Greeks. We usually refer to the worldview of the ancient Greeks as Greek mythology, which is that body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of their world, and the origins and significance of their cult and ritual practices. Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. mythologies are those bodies of myths and legends belonging to Christians, Muslims, and all other religions concerning their gods and heroes (saints), the nature of their worlds, and the origins and significance of their cults and ritual practices.

(Inputs, expansions, adjustments, counterpoints, rebuttals, etc. to the above are very welcome. Send comments to: ajmeagher.aol.com