Liberating Religion From Ego: Science & Interfaith Light Expose Root Of Conflict

By Joaquim Huang

Religion has fallen into the trap of ego, with rival believers thrust into confrontation by false notions that other faiths have minimal value. Joaquim Huang marshals evidence from the sciences and interfaith learning to demonstrate that the clash of religions is caused by a dominance of ego players who fuel conflicts with their claims to doctrinal supremacy.
An elitist desire to stigmatize non-believers as holding principles incompatible with one’s one religious truths is stoking a killer meme, and this hostile competitiveness prevents society from recognizing that in their fundamentals, all religions are one.
Using striking examples of scriptural misinterpretations, Joaquim Huang demonstrates that supposedly irreconcilable teachings between Christianity and Islam can be harmonized in the light of science and interfaith wisdom drawing upon treasured insights from Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist scriptures.
Readers will find his 5-point Ego Slay Guide an indispensable tool for developing an inclusive mindset.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joaquim Huang
• Release date: Jan 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310543234

Joaquim Huang

Joaquim Huang has acquired more than 45 years of research knowledge and experience in studying the world’s scriptures. With a heartfelt conviction that these scriptures are a limitless treasure-house for all humanity, he has ventured beyond the confines of any single religion to accept truth in a broadly inclusivist manner.His exploration of the world’s scriptures began in the 1960s as a teenager, and he soon discussed with conservative religious teachers the discovery that all religions teach an identical fundamental truth. As his insights and heartfelt convictions deepened, he penned a Sunday newspaper interfaith column in the 1980s that won him a Promotion of Unity award.Joaquim Huang has also delivered papers at international religious conferences held in New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Assisi near Rome. A Master’s degree holder from the University of Hull, UK, he is also the recipient of an Ambassador For Peace award conferred by the Universal Peace Federation.

Book preview

LIBERATING RELIGION

FROM EGO

Science & Interfaith Light

Expose Compelling Truth

Joaquim Huang

Copyright 2015 Joaquim Huang


Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Human Bestiality — Where Does It Arise From

Chapter 2: Unmasking Satan — The Crafty Illusionist

Chapter 3: Slay The Ego Before It Destroys You

Chapter 4: Jesus And Myths Of Divine Resurrection

Chapter 5: Game Change For Christians

Chapter 6: Heartwash Therapy To Heal Wounds of Conflict

Bibliography

About The Author

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PREFACE

UNIVERSAL Faith Beyond Sect! These stirring words came together and formed an electrifying thought running through my head as I closed the Bhagavad Gita and left the public library, feeling deeply that I had been exposed to a compelling truth.

No longer would my mind continue hearing the baritone voice of old Brother Phil as he intoned: Outside the Church there is no salvation. Nor would I cherish the memory of the plumpish catechism ma’am who painted a vivid picture in my mind of a ship riding a storm with Christians safely on board and everybody else struggling in the water. The game change had begun in my life.

I was brought up as a devout Christian, regularly attending Bible classes, Saturday Novena prayers, daily masses at dawn, and Sunday worship services. Then one day at the age of 18, while cycling round the old parts of Ipoh town in Malaysia’s picturesque Kinta Valley, I dropped into the public library. Running my fingers through a shelf, one book caught my eye — the Bhagavad Gita. It was totally alien, and I had been forewarned against wandering beyond the safety of my faith. But as a cat would explore the unknown, so would human curiosity.

To this day, it is still a mystery to me why I picked up a scripture that was totally out of my universe of certainty. Reading its pages slowly and dwelling on a few key verses, the Bhagavad Gita was to open a new door of exploration for me. It was a bold leap to a supposition that if Krishna – the Lord in Bhagavad Gita — expounded some fundamental truths as Jesus did, then this must also be the case with the founders of other religions. Subsequently, year upon year, as my life grew richer with the Vedas and Puranas, the Tripitaka, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the Qur’an and Hadith collections, the Confucian classics, and the Tao Te Ching, I knew that I had found a compelling truth.

Ever since that day in the library, I have lived with a conviction that the Christian faith should be transformed into a Christian interfaith. So too should it be with every other religion. All our places of worship should be emblazoned with the motto: Universal Faith Beyond Sect.

This book dispels the exclusivist claims that amongst so many religions in the world you must believe that there is only one right way, for the other paths lie outside the circle of salvation, or at best they straddle truth and falsehood, like persons who stand with one leg in the light and one leg in the dark. Old-school faith leaders proclaim that scripture has ordained an exclusive way: you can only find it here, and not there. But why let the old school push us into such tight corners of egocentrism and warfare?

Any religion, to be true, must be inclusive rather than exclusive. Every faith has to become interfaith in our globalized environment, or else it risks being marginalized as science marshals up increasingly powerful and irrefutable evidence in support of verifiable certainties. The frank truth is that religion needs to be liberated from the intolerant power of King Ego. Only when religion is thus set free can it fulfill its role to liberate humanity.

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Chapter 1

HUMAN BESTIALITY – WHERE

DOES IT ARISE FROM?

Where does human bestiality come from? Ten big clues in the ‘Adam and Eve’ story tell us that the Fall of Man depicts the breakaway of Homo sapiens from a life ruled by instinct to a life ruled by ego.

OUR riveting journey from exclusivist faith to universal faith starts with a naked couple lost in the mist of time – a handsome guy and his lovely spouse whose classic adventure in a paradisiac garden at the dawn of human history forms the bedrock of our science-based investigation into the violent convulsions that oftentimes engulf societies.

Their poignant story is told in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It is retold in the Qur’an with a few significant differences and, perhaps, much greater intrigue.

Aided by modern science and the revealing light of interfaith research, we take a critical look at this absorbing tale of primordial deception and subterfuge — a tale of how the planet Earth’s supposed first human couple, Adam and Eve, were commanded by God to abstain from eating the fruit of a forbidden tree. But, misled by Satan in the guise of a serpent, they did find the temptation irresistible.

This was humanity’s first transgression, labeled by theologians as the original sin, and accepted in many biblical fraternities as historical fact – an original sin that all humans purportedly inherit at birth unless they are born sinless. Tainted as such by original sin, all humanity requires atonement by a savior from heaven who has to undergo a sacrificial death on earth to redeem us; salvation is granted to those who believe and accept the savior. But, however credible it may seem to the believers, this theological construction has a fatal flaw embedded in it: what is the fate of unbelievers?

These unbelievers abound throughout India and China, as, for all the titanic consequences of Adam and Eve’s monumentally disobedient act, their story is not once mentioned in the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The story as told in Genesis is totally unknown to the East Asian civilizations, despite their vast array of classical tales – many of which center on the formation of human life and the origin of the good versus evil dichotomy.

In similar vein, many fascinating stories of primeval human adventures recorded in the Chinese and Indian classics are totally unknown to the civilizations of West Asia.

Beujee, a one-time acquaintance, when casually asked what she taught would be the fate of unbelievers, answered matter-of-factly: They will go to hell. An otherwise pleasant lady, she trotted out a cool ready-made answer despite working in a multi-religious office environment in Kuala Lumpur.

This seemingly innocuous question – what is the fate of unbelievers – is a litmus test to determine which side of the spiritual revolution you are on: exclusivist faith, or universal faith. Look at it this way: from the viewpoint of the adherents of any particular religion, more than two-thirds of humanity are unbelievers in its doctrines. And as we shift our angle of view from one religion to another, we soon discover that believers in one religion fall into the category of unbelievers when viewed from any exclusivist religious perspective. Invariably we end up with the result that every person can be labeled a believer in one classification and an unbeliever in a different classification.

Some may still insist that God’s intention is for only one true account of humanity’s beginnings to be recorded – and that is the Adam and Eve story, with the theological interpretation of a fall into sin and the absolute need for sacrificial redemption by a uniquely divine savior. But was it the intention of the Genesis author to describe the Fall of Man as a historical event, much as Gibbon would describe the Fall of Rome or Homer describe the Fall of Troy?

Or was the Genesis tale intended to be an allegorical story, i.e. a story that was never meant to be taken literally as a factual account but rather as a literary canvas of word pictures that depict through vivid imagery an innate human condition existing beyond any specific timeframe?

It is in unraveling the meaning of the Adam and Eve story that we begin the journey to discover why acts of bestiality are second nature to us humans. The story begins with a prologue running from Genesis 1:24 to 1:31 and the drama is carefully unfolded from verse 2:7 to verse 3:24. (Quotations throughout the book are from the New Revised Standard Version translation unless stated otherwise).

Within these 26 verses are contained at least 10 clues that point us in the direction of an allegorical meaning to the story far more intricate than the surface meanings that classical theologians have given it. Let’s get into the clues, one by one.

Clue No 1:

Livestock before Man’s advent? (Genesis 1:24-26)

And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

In these three verses, cattle is a big giveaway pointing to the allegorical setting for the tale. By cattle is meant domesticated farm animals, which is why the New International Version and Complete Jewish Bible translate it as livestock while the Wycliffe Bible translates it as work beasts in contrast to the unreasoning beasts of the earth. These domesticated members of the bovine subfamily are raised by humans as livestock for meat, as dairy animals for milk, and as work beasts to pull carts and ploughs.

Livestock began to attain prominence only when humans developed a pastoral lifestyle 10,000 years ago. Amongst the millions of species of living creatures, only cattle is named by the Genesis author and mentioned thrice. The singling out of one bovine species for limelight attention right at the start hints at the storyteller’s preoccupation with creating a social backdrop that would sound familiar to his audience. In other words, it was a civilized society with the occasional marauding band of wild beasts attacking the cattle, and snakes creeping into the barns for a bit of warmth.

As the snake is a chief protagonist in the unfolding drama, doesn’t