Religious Tolerance (dot) org

"The importance of faith/belief statements:

We feel that every denomination, para-church organization, religious group, and religious web site should consider creating a statement of belief or faith and displaying it prominently. This is particularly important among Christian groups who may use the term "Christian" to refer to only the Roman Catholic Church, or only to Evangelical Protestantism, or to the full range of Christian denominations and beliefs, or to some other subset of the religion. Quite often, when we visit a Christian web site for the first time, we have to search around among its articles to find out exactly what Christian belief system they follow and promote on their web site.

That said, the following is our attempt at a statement of belief. Please be sure to read the footnotes at the bottom of the essay because they include some important qualifications and exceptions.

OCRT Statement of Belief:

We are a multi-faith group. As of late-2012, we consist of one Atheist, Agnostic, Christian, Wiccan and Zen Buddhist. Thus, the OCRT staff lack agreement on almost all theological matters, such as belief in a supreme being, the nature of God, interpretation of the Bible and other holy texts, whether life after death exists, what form the afterlife may take, etc.

We believe in:
 Personal worth: The inherent worth of every person. People are worthy of respect, support, and caring simply because they are human. Unfortunately, our group has not reached a consensus on when human life, in the form of an ovum and spermatozoon, becomes a human person with civil rights including the right to live. On this matter, our group's lack of agreement on when personhood begins mirrors that of society at large.

 Lack of discrimination: Working towards a culture that is relatively free of discrimination on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, physical disability, language, age, body shape, etc.
  
Dignity: The dignity of the human person. We oppose the use of torture and cruel or unusual punishment including the death penalty.

Democracy: The importance of democratic processes within religious, political, and other structures in which the will of the people is implemented, subject to the limits imposed by the constitution.

Religion-state matters: The separation of religion and the state. (This is generally referred to as "separation of church and state." But we prefer the more inclusive term). The government should avoid promoting one faith group within a religion over another, or promote one religion over another, promote religion over secular beliefs, or promote secular beliefs over religion. 1

Personal freedom: The freedoms of religious beliefs, speech, association, and expression at the individual, congregational and denominational level. 1

Freedom of speech: The freedom to compare the beliefs of faith groups with each other, and with the findings of science. It also includes the freedom to criticize faith and other groups when they harm others.

Relative truth: The principle that many moral, ethical, and religious beliefs vary greatly from one culture, religion, and time to another, and are thus relative. We do acknowledge that they are often considered absolute by various religions and secular belief systems. 2

 Impact of religion: The generally positive influence that most religions have had on their followers and on society. 3

A problem with the use of prayer: It is our belief that prayer is an unreliable method to assess the will of God. We were initially divided on this matter, but a pilot study appears to indicate that prayer for this purpose is unreliable.

 Evil in religion: In the importance of individual believers detecting evil influences and policies that currently exist within their chosen faith group, and strongly advocating for their correction. If significant improvement or elimination of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, etc. is impossible, we feel that they should consider withholding financial support and/or leaving the group. 4
  
Education: The principle that people are not truly educated unless they have studied the world's major religions and ethical systems. They need to learn of both the good and evil impacts that each has had on society throughout history. They need to be taught skills at analysis and "baloney detection." 5

Check out Religious Tolerance (dot) org

Check out Esoteric Science (dot) org

"Hello and welcome to the Esoteric Science website, where you can open your mind to a different way of thinking and your heart to a different way of being. The website has been expanded to include psychological healing, personal development and spiritual growth, which coincides with the release of my second book Awakening to Wholeness. I hope the website and books spark your interest and inspire your life.


The Science of Spirituality

The Science of Spirituality is a ground-breaking book that integrates the individual systems of science, psychology, philosophy, spirituality and religion into a unified system that describes the multi-dimensional nature of man and the universe. It provides a more comprehensive description of reality than conventional science can offer and fully explains the mechanisms behind an array of paranormal phenomena that mainstream science chooses to ignore. It explains the science behind religious, spiritual and new-age belief systems, and sheds light on some common misconceptions.

Einstein said: "Religion without science is blind, science without religion is lame", because they are two sides of the same coin. Recent scientific discoveries have unknowingly provided evidence that supports the multi-dimensional nature of reality that Hindus, Buddhists, Gnostics and Kabbalists have known about for thousands of years. By combining modern scientific facts with ancient spiritual knowledge we can begin to uncover the whole truth and bring unity out of the existing duality. There can be only one true reality, but we will never know the whole truth if we only look from one perspective and hold on to our preconceived ideas.

The Science of Spirituality systematically describes the mechanisms behind a diverse range of subject matter including: esoterics, consciousness, sleep and dreams, reincarnation, religion, creation, evolution, space and time, higher dimensions, heaven and hell, ghosts, angels and demons, out of body experiences, near death experiences, clairvoyance, psychic abilities, personal development, meditation and the meaning of life.

With science and religion we have two seemingly opposed views of how life, the universe and everything began:

Scientists generally believe that a perfectly balanced universe spontaneously appeared out of nothingness, and that life, consciousness and intelligence randomly evolved from inert matter.

Christians generally believe that an all-powerful and all-knowing God created the world and its myriad of life-forms (in just six days).

Not only do they both seem pretty unbelievable, they appear to share no common ground. However, recent scientific discoveries have unknowingly provided evidence that supports the multi-dimensional nature of reality that Hindus, Buddhists and Kabbalists have known about for thousands of years:

The latest scientific models state that the universe is multi-dimensional, with six or more hidden spatial dimensions, and is primarily composed of non-physical matter (dark matter and dark energy).

Respected doctors and medical practitioners are now openly investigating near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences and past-life regression, and are beginning to discover the multi-dimensional nature of human beings."

There is a lot more to explain, a lot more than I can fit on one post on blogger.

Check out Esoteric Science (dot) org

The Hermetic Library (dot) com

"The collection

The Hermetic Library was created in 1996, in the early days of the commercial Internet, and is one of the most comprehensive and popular resources on the Internet for the kind of information in its collection. Hermetic.com is justifiably famous, and perhaps a little infamous, as the source for an amazing collection of information useful to every researcher and student of esoteric studies and the modern Western tradition. Many students over the last decade found their start and much information useful to them by perusing the materials of The Hermetic Library and started their own electronic libraries by downloading pages and pages of content for their use and research.

Hermetic.com is justifiably famous, and perhaps a little infamous
The collection is, by and large, of a spiritual focus but not the areas of spirituality that you will generally see within the mainstream of American culture. The collection at the library houses materials related to hermeticism in a broad sense."

Check out The Hermetic Library's official site