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Radical Author Issues Invitation to Religious Leaders

Albuquerque, NM (PRWEB) November 21, 2005

At his recent 70th birthday celebration, the Dalai Lama said all religions were “more or less the same,” with their fundamental compassion holding the key to world peace. In the same week, conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson warned citizens of a Pennsylvania town who voted against “intelligent design” that they had rejected God and could expect disaster to strike.

At first glance, the two attitudes seem very different. But radical thinker Sankara Saranam, author of the award-winning book God Without Religion, claims both leaders are misguided. “Robertson is obviously a deeply disturbed individual, and it’s unfortunate, though not entirely surprising, that a major religious sect has such a person at its helm. But the Dalai Lama, who is positioned to be a spiritual role model, ought to know better than to mouth platitudes about religious compassion as the solution to world conflict.”

“If compassion is so fundamental to organized religions, then why have religious beliefs caused so much war and violence?” Saranam asks. “Leaders who represent religious authority—which by definition fosters exclusivity, a false sense of superiority, and a narrow sense of identity in both ecclesiasts and followers—are incapable of promoting peace.”

In God Without Religion, Saranam uncovers the hypocrisy underlying all religions and calls for an end to organized worship. Religions, Saranam says, represent centralized authority that removes power from its rightful place in individuals in ways even more insidious than governments and corporations do. “Organized religions have never represented loving others as ourselves,” he says. “Rather, they embody the perversion of universal virtues that would otherwise be naturally expressed by an expansive human heart.”

Saranam suggests that the way to find peace is not through more reliance on organized religion, but through freeing ourselves from religious identification altogether and expanding our sense of self to unconditionally include the rest of humanity. “Simplistically touting any single virtue as the solution to conflict from within one of the very institutions that causes division is like trying to save a burning house with a water hose in one hand and a flamethrower in the other. Only when we give up identifying with institutions that foster a narrow sense of self and instead devote ourselves to the entire human family will we cease to interpret virtues in self-serving ways.”

Saranam challenges today’s spiritual leaders to symbolically cast off the outer accoutrements of organized religion and exemplify genuine inclusiveness. “If the world’s religious leaders took my criticism to heart and truly embraced a universal spirituality, they could greatly advance the cause of peace—an initiative that, as history abundantly proves, cannot be achieved from within the confines of a prescribed faith,” he counsels. “To end the wars caused by narrow identification with a religion, spiritual leaders need to march side by side as human beings—brothers and sisters free of the artificial boundaries and insignias of authority that foster divisiveness and violence.”

www.godwithoutreligion.com

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It Cant be done, if not as One ( 2nd letter to all Religions, and it’s leaders)

It Can’t be done, If not as One

(A Letter to the Worlds Religious and Political Leaders)

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

Folks, I wanted you to read all of that for a reason, I wanted to point to a fact that (1) God first said “I AM THAT I AM” (2) He told Moses to say that to all the children of Israel, (3) and then He (Who?) I AM, said moreover, (meaning an addition to what has been said: besides) (4) Tell the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (5) and this is my memorial ( meaning serving to help people remember, anything meant to help people remember a person or event). So in essence God said my name is I AM. Question, I am what? Answer, Well your fathers call me God, so that is my name to you GOD. So in other words God said, hey your fathers and your fathers, father calls me God, so hey to avoid confusion why don’t you call me God too.

In other places, other cultures some call Him, Allah, Buddha, and the list of names goes on and on. Bottom line is folks, He said, His name was I Am, it was only then when talking to Moses that God as a second thought, to simplify things told Moses, just call me what your fathers and forefathers has called me, GOD.

Now we all call upon God by a different name, all worship Him in a different way, But He is God nevertheless. Our problem , as diverse as our world religions are, is that we all done the same thing, we all broke one of the first commandments that God Had given to us, We all have taken our eyes off of Him, and I believe I can prove it.

Folks it’s really very simple, If, we are pointing fingers, If we are always running at the gums about our pet peeves, How in the world are we then Looking at and hearing God?

We religiously try to annihilate one another over our petty differences, Why? We took our eyes off of God. We will hate, kill, and destroy one another because we may call God by a different name, or worship in a different manner than you or I.

I hate to say it but we, every one of our world religions has done this very thing, When, we placed our eyes upon what others are doing around us, we took our eyes off of God. We can’t do both, we can’t listen to or pay attention to God if our mind and thoughts are looking and listening elsewhere. Our problem is that we try to dictate to other how to view, talk to and listen to God, and if it’s not done to OUR liking we will alienate, hate, maim, and even kill, just because this group or that group doesn’t do things the way you do.

God said in Exodus, said, that His name is I Am, basically I am what YOU call me, that is WHO I AM.

Buddha, Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh,, all cultures call God by a different name, worship Him in a different way. Truthfully, that’s between them and God, not between us, them, and God. Who are we to force our way between them and God, just because we don’t like the way they worship or by what name they call God by? But it does prove my point, if we are so busy bashing others, then we are not listening or looking at God, we are looking at and listening to everything else other than God, and look at what strife that has caused us all throughout history.

In truth, we can’t keep all of our focus on our creator if we are busy rubbernecking at what others are doing around us Religiously, Politically, and Personally.

According to the Christian Bible, (for those in a religious frame of mind) In Genesis, it states. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth (Genesis 11:1-9) (Emphasis mine). In other words to the scientific evolutionary crowd, they migrated.

Why did they want to build a city and a tower? It wasn’t for God that’s for sure, it was for them, and why was that? To make a name for themselves? Thus they took their eyes off of God and placed it upon themselves, again why? Pride perhaps?

Also note that at one time ALL spoke a single language, thus We All called God by the same name. God, changes the language, and now the name of God sounds different in that language. It’s the same God folks, just a different translation of that name. Yet we Religiously ( and I really don’t care of what religion one wishes to follow) we try to annihilate one another both mentally and physically for that very reason,

As a Christian myself, (Not a very good one really if you know me), I believe that there will be a new heaven and a new earth as mentioned in Revelations 21:1 My question to our world religious and political leaders worldwide is this, if we can’t get along now in this world as we know it, what makes you think EITHER GOD OR NATURE for that matter, will want all this havoc that we created between us in the next? Whether place there by God or as survivors of the many catastrophes that we see heading our way.

We as a Human Race, must do really only one thing, Religiously put our eyes back on God and prepare ourselves ,forget this devilish foolishness of hating one another due to our religion, how we worship, or by what name we may call God.

As for other schools of thought on this matter politically, and scientifically prepare ourselves to survive the onslaught of disasters we will face as our dear earth goes through it metamorphose, reshaping itself as it occasionally does.

Because truthfully it can’t be done, if we don’t do it as one.

Many see me as a long haired,tug boat footed, big eared throwback to when Noahs Ark was just a canoe. But am I? Others see me, as just a crazy old man spouting off about things in the Gods Word, that if we look at the world around us, we can see the path that many religions do not want to tread down, there are many similarities between what God has in store for us if things don’t change and what our world scientist claim will happen if things don’t change. What can we do to change the world? Well the answer to that is really simple. We change us.