From: mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: religion in general
Keywords: atheism is more than just anti-Christian
Date: 25 Jan 93 07:18:42 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA

In article <1993Jan22.085959.22309@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> darice@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Fred Rice) writes:
>In <77122@apple.apple.COM> mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins) writes:
>>I am aware of the popularity of this viewpoint among mystics,
>>but I disagree with it. In my opinion, the unification
>>alleged by adherents of this view is generally accomplished
>>at the expense of the essential characters of one or more of 
>>the religions being considered. It looks to me as though
>
>It depends upon what you consider to be the "essential" characteristics
>of the religion.

To be terse about it, of course it does, and that's a matter of opinion, 
and that's why I prefaced my remark with the phrase 'in my opinion.'

>The Perennial Philosophy viewpoint I am most familiar
>with -- that espoused by Frithjof Schuon -- holds that the essence of
>a religion is its esoteric, or mystic, dimension.
[etc., etc.]

Yes, yes, I know. What I'm saying is that I am aware of the argument,
and I don't buy it. In fact, my opinion is that such arguments do
violence to the religions typically subsumed by them. I am not
religious in a way that most religious people I know would recognize 
(and am usually categorized with atheists by both atheists and theists),
but I have a lifelong interest in and appreciation for that world's
religions, and not only the 'major' (i.e. currently popular) ones.
I think that the mystic synthesis of religions is an interesting
phenomenon in itself, but not particularly true to the religions
that it typically tries to subsume. 

For one thing, I think this argument gives insufficient credit to
the variety of human ecstatic experience. 

>I don't know about Zen Buddhism in particular, but regarding Buddhism
>generally it seems to me that the Buddhist concept of Nirvana is
>essentially the same as the Sufi concept of "fana", which can be
>interpreted as "annihilation in God".  In Buddhism and Sufism, in this
>stage the mystic loses his sense of individuality and merges with "God"
>(in Sufism) or ? in Buddhism.

In Zen Buddhism that '?' would be the void, though there is no
loss of an identity that is not present in the first place, and
no merging between things that are not separate in the first place.
The concept of Nirvana varies somewhat from Buddhist sect to
Buddhist sect, though my understanding of the mainstream view is
that it is the loss of the tendency to cling to phenomena in
a mistaken attempt to resist the ubiquitous tide of dissolution.

>However, I admit that you cannot say that _all_ religions are
>essentially the same, for then you would have to include all manner of
>weird suicidal cults etc., which would just turn the whole idea into a
>joke.

Here you arrive at the heart of my argument: that only by drawing
arbitrary lines around what is to be considered 'religion' can
one succeed in 'uniting' (really, I think, misrepresenting) them.
Some religions have one or more gods; some don't. Some are concerned
with an afterlife; some aren't. Some make moral prescriptions, some
don't. Some have gods that are paragons of virtue, and some have gods that
are capricious or downright nasty. In some the gods are immortal,
in some they die. 

There are common motifs, as Campbell says, but (also as Campbell says)
these motifs serve to carry different messages in different cultures.
He argues, for example, that the Garden of Eden story is essentially
a direct copy of a Babylonian myth, but with the sense of the story
exactly reversed: in the original, the snake was a hero and the
escape from the garden a triumph. Other examples of this sort of thing
abound: consider the stories of the Fall of Lucifer and the Punishment
of Prometheus. Both rebelled against the Lord of Creation; one was
vilified for it, the other revered.

>I personally do not consider certain laws, for example, as constituting
>a religion's essence (such as Judaic or Islamic law).  The reason for
>this is because Jewish and Islamic faith both recognize that there was a
>period (before Moses) when there was no explicit religious law, at least
>not in the sense of highly developed Jewish or Islamic law as exists at
>present.  These laws are therefore not, in my opinion, the essences of
>these religions.

I would argue that, in picking and choosing the elements of religions
thusly, you are engaged in an act of synthesis, while not without
interest, does not show me how all religions are one. Rather, it
shows me how a human being may assimilate palatable ideas from
a cultural tradition and create a new cultural artifact.
Xref: sparky alt.atheism:26708 talk.religion.misc:27134