I believe that all religions have a fundamental purpose in common. That they all have the same objective. I believe that if each and every Religion was to have a single sentence purpose as a precursor to the religion, as I have proposed for the Laws of each and every country, then all Religions would suddenly find that they all have the same objective in mind. Ooops! What on earth have all the Religious wars been about anyway? Put very simply, because people are a.) not prepared to Respect the opinions of others and b.) GREED.
All the religious books-of-guidance, for want of a better term, therefore all have the same PURPOSE in mind and are all subject to the same errors of interpretation. Let me try to explain my viewpoint by using the Ten Commandments as an example. The reference used here takes great care to interpret THE WORDS THAT WERE HANDED DOWN TO BE TREATED AS LAW. Many subtle differences are detailed and the Jewish and Hebrew Ten Commandments, as listed, keep the laws as simple and unambiguous as possible. Let us consider the 6th commandment. The Christian set defines the 6th as: You shall not kill. The Jewish and Hebrew defines the 6th as: You shall not murder. Not a big difference but the first definition is used as the main reason why a person should be a vegetarian or even more extreme, a vegan. If we accept the second definition as being “correct” then the consideration that we are “murdering” cows is not really a consideration. It does, however, apply to people!
To my understanding, the most blatant and inhumane misinterpretation of the religious books-of-guidance is the justification that the terrorists use to “kill the infidels” as allegedly “dictated” in the Koran. There is no religion on this planet that justifies murder and definitely not genocide. And to top off this blight on the planet the Do-Gooders maintain that these people should not be put to death!!
The next issue which creates misinterpretation of the religious books-of-guidance is the fact that we do not take into account THE AUDIENCE that these books were written for or the environmental conditions that applied at the time or the level of education and understanding that prevailed at the time and consequently how these laws would be PERCEIVED at the time. What were these laws intended to achieve AT THAT TIME?
All the Religious Tomes are very similar in concept to our Law Books and have the same fundamental error. The thing that is missing is the KISS principle. This document is based on the KISS principle. All that is important is TheCode. Acceptance, understanding and application of TheCode is all we are trying to achieve.
It is in this area of the purpose behind religions that I seek help from people who belong to other religions to see if we can align ALL RELIGIONS to agree that they have a common PURPOSE and therefore can co-existent AND co-operate. This can be achieved by means of TheCode. We need to establish TheCode as a means of achieving peace. I believe that if we can agree to use TheCode as a basis for resolving errors of interpretation then we will be able to reach an amicable compromise for most (if not all?) of our differences.
PLEASE let me have your understanding and interpretations,
Jude