On Writing a Holy Book, and Proselytizing

If a philosopher, social scientist, or idealist, were to write a "holy" book, they would follow certain precepts:

1) lay out a moral code that people, with a innate sense of "right," could relate to,
2) provide the concept that there is a "higher" purpose to our lives, thus giving us something to strive for,
3) provide stories and examples in the form of parables, and suggest that the book is the inspired word of the Higher Authority as revealed in dreams, visions, or personal conversations with said Authority,
4) provide for a prophet, saviour, or leader and provide him/her with a context with regard to fulfilling prophecy, showing the truth, and, finally,
5) indicate that by following such a person/deity one might hope to achieve Nirvana, go to Heaven, achieve Enlightenment, be removed from the cycle of reincarnation.

We readily see, therefore, that the creators of the holy books have faithfully and globally followed the foregoing criteria. And we must admit that all of the writers have admirably risen to the task.

It has been reported that part of the interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay, prisoners have had their religious beliefs mocked. Denigration of one's strongly held beliefs is one widely-used form of demonisation, or the process of making a person something other than an equal and human person. The facility at Gitmo is a sad and horrific testimonial to how far we have yet to travel to achieve a global and just society. That the world's so-called moral leader and arbiter of morality is operating this heinous facility, and that the rest of the world permits it, is inexcusable.

If you were to walk the streets of some of the cities in which I have lived, and wished to talk to the locals about their religion and learn about it, then you would be welcome. If, however, you went up to them as a Christian proselytiser or evangelist, intent not on learning about their way of life, but on converting or "saving" them, you would only be reinforcing the picture of modern Christianity being simply an extension of the history of forced hardship, conversion, and custom change that evangelical Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, have been imposing upon the "heathen" or "pagans" that has been taking place since the early apostles went forth to preach the gospel.

On the other hand, if you show that you want to learn and discuss, not preach, you would be welcomed to sit with them, drink their coffee, eat their food, share their religious psychotropic drugs, sleep in their hovels, tents, or palaces, and come to better understand the wonderful diverse species that we all are. There are lessons to be learned everywhere and questions to be asked and some to be answered. To sit back and say that it is all the will of God, or that God wants it this way, or Allah wants it that way, or the guru says this must be, or we must do that....is, as we used to say in the 60s, a cop-out. Mankind is not born to blindly accept: we must question and quest.

Okay, nuff said. I still do not feel that the foregoing was very coherent, but I will now return to my centrifuge of a mind, and try to separate a bit more of the wheat from the chaff.