Not sure if I haven't already answered a similar question on another thread? But this question is always worthwhile, since it compels anyone responding to reflect honestly on what seems especially important to the writer. Having grown up an agnostic, I later arrived at my chosen belief in middle age through a process of sifting through various traditions and uncanny historical patterns "on the ground". There were thus relatively few cultural influences from my youth (well, few that I am viscerally aware of
) involved in my ultimate choice.
I start with an assumption that may simply be viewed as a sort of faith and no more by others reading this, but anyway: I believe that the patterns uncovered by evolution researchers like Stephen Jay Gould and others inheriting from Darwin's and Wallace's discoveries are entirely valid and that evolution can now be accepted as a fact. Tied to that, the number of cases in which a pride of a certain species will (usually) flourish better when there is a visible habit of getting along peacefully as a group and moreover looking after each other tenderly, including the weaker and more vulnerable, seems telling.
So, by analogy, the successful evolution of humanity seems similarly tied, to me, to the incremental steps that different human cultures have taken through the eons toward "inclusiveness" for the "outsider", the vulnerable, the erstwhile abused. These steps aren't merely advances in "civilization", to me, but clear instances in which "nature" is working well.
Now, whether one is looking at the earliest Sumerian formulations mandating care for the "widow and orphan" -- a phrase first introduced by Urukagina ca. 2300 B.C.E. -- or the Declaration of Independence from a bare 200+ years ago, the most significant such breakthroughs always seem tied to similarly pathbreaking "spins" on worship/the metaphysical. This double pattern involving ethical altruism and the metaphysical together seems so consistent through so many millennia that it's hard for me to view it as coincidence. From that, I (provisionally) conclude that there may be a symbiotic connection between increased sensitivity to the "outsider"/vulnerable/erstwhile abused on the one hand and progressive insights into deity on the other.
In choosing which tradition(s) to follow, I tend to go with those pathbreakers who give the impression of being the most independent of all. That is -- although nothing in history emerges from a total vacuum, of course -- I gravitate to those figures who seem to buck most the general trends of those around them in the process of arriving at their conclusions concerning altruism and the divine. This is because, in their virtual counter-culturalism, they seem the ones most likely to reflect first-hand insights into the nature of things rather than assimilation through a second-hand peer-pressure process.
With due acknowledgement for the wisdom and generosity of many a religious founder through the ages (every religion is worthwhile to an extent, IMO), the figures I ultimately find myself trusting most are those who seem to combine overt counter-culturalism with overt inclusiveness and overt peacefulness. The ones who seem to encompass these three attributes the most staunchly -- IMHO, of course -- are Buddha and Christ. This is not to discount the evident wisdom of other figures like Krishna, Moses, Confucius and Mohammed. It's just that Buddha and Christ give (to me, anyway) a particularly overwhelming impression of blamelessness and "apartness".
So my "religion" is now a synthesis of those insights that both Buddha and Christ are in harmony on: unconditional love for all, the obligation to care for all and act with charity, a yearning for peace, and the idea that deity represents above all the highest possible standard for ethical action. No, I don't pretend to follow this with any perfection at all, but it's what I strive for.
Cheers,
Operacast
