The Universal Religion, Sourate 3, Community and Religion

The Universal Religion
Sourate 3, Community and Religion
Toronto, April 15, 2016. Slightly edited on May 1, 2020.

THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION III. COMMUNITY AND RELIGION (7) I am asked: Agreed (that religion does not necessarily mean the worship of God or gods). Just curious as to why you decided on 'religion' (with so many people being opposed to the term) over 'community' per say'. (8) Answer: Community is a concept close to religion but different. It refers to ''a unified body of individuals'', people with common interests or characteristics living in a common area. (9) Religion is the spirit of the community. It specifically refers to their spiritual interaction. Community refers to the physical as Religion refers to the spiritual. (10) A community can aim to short term interest, but their long term unlimited interest is their religious ''communion''.(11) Community refers to individuals and their existence while they are alive, religion refers to humanity and humanity's godly or divine essence. It refers to those who are (alive), those who were, and those who will be. (12) The universal equivalent meaning of ''god'' and ''divine'' is ''supreme''. The Universal religion is that universal tendency that we can detect, even in all our archaic religions, toward supreme truth, supreme goodness, and supreme knowledge, supreme power. (13) Individuals might kill each other, communities might go to war against each other, but a -universal- religion wants humanity to survive as a whole. (14) In the new universal religion, humanity is recognized as the holy, as the sacred (15) it recognizes that the concept of god and divinity as the creator was itself created by men and women (16) Jesus son-of-god was son-of-men (17) Humanity consists of all the ancestors from the time the animal started 'thinking' and 'reasoning' and all of those who aren't born yet. (18) Religion is the set of values and principles that rules over humanity. Laws rule over communities. (20) For example, a community might decide, by law, for its short interest, to drill and extract oil from under the oceans, to do fracking to extract gas, but religion shall prohibit the consumption and dilapidation by a couple of generations of natural resources that took millions of years to be formed and created. (21) A community might want to take the risk for its livelihood, but religion shall prohibit the community from taking such risk because it is the spirit of humanity and includes future generations. (23) Over fourteen hundred years before a United Nations was organized, a school principal asked Bozorgmehr, prime-minister of king Anoushirvan, a question for which he couldn't provide the answer. She (the school principal) was astonished, but the minister responded: 'the answer to all questions is not known by me but by humanity as a whole, and humanity as a whole hasn't yet been born. ( 24) That was a religious (not political for a community) answer, that was an answer typical of the (New) Universal Religion. And it is an example of why 'new' can be put in brackets. (25) The New Universal Religion is a way of life, a new cosmology based on the level of our science and conscience, the level of our knowledge. It is not a ''delusional'' ''belief''.

Solution to another big conflict: Israel, the Hebrew State

Is Judaism an ethnicity or a (political) religion?

The State of Israel's problem is its schizophrenic confusion when commonly called the Jewish State. Because  Jewish refers both to a religion (Judaism) and to an ethnicity (Jewish-hood).

You might call yourself Jewish by referring to your ancestry, even if you do not practice Judaism. Or, reciprocally, you might convert to Judaism - for whatever reason, without having any Jewish ancestor.

Solution is to stop calling Israel a Jewish State. To stop promoting either racism or religious bigotry. As a religion, Judaism should be enjoyed solely as a folklore, and not taken more seriously, not taken politically. It is too old and too weird to be promoted or even be politically acceptable in a civilized peace-loving post-modern society.

The Hebrew State is what we should call Israel in order to protect its people, most of them with Jewish ancestry but not bigots, to protect its singularity and its language-culture, positively. What is important is to preserve the language, not to take seriously that obsolete religious mythology, which instigates, encourages, and values conflicts and war.

In a TV program, Chanel 3, in mid May, Thursday (? date I failed to register), 10:30-11 am, the person talking was promoting the idea of Jerusalem belonging to the Jews, and only to the Jews, ignoring the fact that Christian and Muslims are also considering the city as sacred to them in their own religions perspective (Muslims call it Ghods). In support, he would give reference to the Torah: I Kings, 9:3:5, Joel, 3:3:2, and Zaccharia 3:12:1-2. Obviously, that doesn't help peace. The Program's name: The Prophetic Connection.

In the same program and discourse, the broadcaster ended in promoting the selling of DVDs on the topic: 3DVD, 13 episodes, for $75. To help Israeli children. One out of 3 children in Israel live in poverty, he said. Really? Perhaps change  is needed.