Tôn Giáo, Chân Lý, và Lẽ Sống

1. Tôi xin có nhận xét sau:

a. Bàn về tôn giáo mà không có căn bản về Triết, logic, history, meditation, neuroscience (especially the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty), và cognitive science thì chả đi đến đâu.

b. Ngược lại lời dạy dỗ của nhiều tôn giáo, Con Người tạo ra Thượng Đế để giải thích sự việc chớ không phải là Thượng Đế tạo ra Con Người.

c. Tôn giáo (trong đó bao gồm kinh kệ) là sản phẩm của Con Người. Con Người không hoàn hảo, thì sản phẩm của con người không hoàn hảo. Nếu tự cho một tôn giáo nào đó là hoàn hảo và phản ảnh chân lý bất di bất dịch là chưa biết tí gì về lý luận và sử và đã bị nhồi sọ tẩy não mà không biết.

2. Tôi xin kèm theo đây bài "tiểu luận" có gián tiếp liên quan đến sự bàn bạc.

Certain Meditations on the First Day of Lunar New Year

Ego is a double-edged knife. It can cut through ignorance or it can be used to kill ourselves because we are too weak to change for the better even though we think we have pride.

True pride means the ability to face realities, not the propensity to get mad at those who hurt our feelings because they dare to speak the truths as they see them.

It's funny to realize how we often deceive ourselves into thinking that if something happens or does not happen, we won’t be able to live with ourselves. The truth is that we do have a choice. Choice means options and that's where the danger comes in. We, as humans contrary to lower forms of life, do love have choices and options and freedoms. It does not matter what happens or does not happen to us. What matters is how we react to it. We must find a way to accept it and move on. By doing so we learn to live with ourselves first. The hell with the notion if we can live with others. That comes much later.

There are two steps and they are intertwined. It does not matter which step comes first.

First, we must like and love ourselves enough to live with ourselves.
Second, we must also find the situation in which we find ourselves tolerable enough so we won't kill ourselves. Life, at least for humans anyway, is the process to find meaning of our own existence. That is to say, we must find the purpose of why we live: there are goals to live for and ways to get there.

Have you ever wondered why certain, if not most, lepers and beggars and horribly deformed human individuals don't kill themselves while seemingly healthy and even well-off individuals decided to either kill themselves outright or kill themselves slowly by having self-destructive behavior? The answer is that the former group manages to find meaning in their seemingly pointless existence while the latter only finds meaninglessness.

I think most humans don't really think about these existential issues too much because they go through life by default. They rely on religious injunctions or exhortations as guideposts. They cannot or won't think for themselves because thinking is hard work and dangerous. They rely on feeling. Feeling acts a guide in their decision to live or die. Thinking means there is a drive towards truths and real, logical, and scientific answers. It also means there is an insatiable curiosity about the future and a desire to meet challenges.

Wissai
February 10, 2013