God: Rational Theology - Prescription for World Peace

By Guro Bert Domingo

Rational Theology
In Search of World Peace
Humanity is One

The greatest single source of human conflict has to do with beliefs or of faith that one holds. The variety of human ideas, most often irreconcilable with one another, has lead to divisions and endless schisms. There is a great need to accommodate and harmonize ideas by convergence at the point where agreement is possible. Rationalization, convergence, and unification at the center is necessary to achieve world peace. However, this is only possible when rational people can discuss openly without fear of each other. The steps to accomplish this enormous task can only start with the individual. This is the goal of this work.

A person needs to have sufficient knowledge to understand the various facets of life. This would include a philosophical base of values with a worldview encompassing and transcending all biases and prejudices inherent in, and inculcated by the culture. No religious, scientific, or traditional views must be sacrosanct to analysis. With adequate knowledge, one gains freedom from ignorance and fear.

This book, Rational Theology, is a guidebook for any individual desiring to discover real freedom. It is a companion of the authors book Freedom Trilogy. Freedom Trilogy is a self-help and how-to-book. It helps develop thinking and reasoning abilities. It challenges the mind to gain new perspectives. It contains the ISA Introspective Self-analysis method of discovering ourselves and gaining freedom from fear and anxieties.

Through Knowledge, Ignorance and Fear are banished, Freedom Attained once we discover and understand ourselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2003
• ISBN: 9781462844883

Guro Bert Domingo

Bert Domingo is a teacher (Guro, in Pilipino), psychologist, researcher, and lecturer in management during his about fifty working years. He also preached in a small congregation of Christians. He has degrees in education (BSE and BA) and psychology (MA), and holds credentials in teaching and counseling in California. He had two fellowships from the United Nations/International Labor Organizations in the Turin, Italy Center. He also had a fellowship with U.S. Department of Education at the University of the Pacific, to pursue doctoral studies, and an Italian government scholarship at the University of Trieste. Bert’s works include, positions as training manager, personnel manager in private corporations and regional director in the Philippine government. He was six years old when the Japanese occupied his country and cause miserable existence for him and his family. The atrocities of war and guerrilla warfare, death and destruction, constant fear and hiding, were endured for more than three years. These were followed by adjustment difficulties in schooling, work and pursuit of life’s goal. One constant for Bert is his insatiable reading, searching for the truth that led him to philosophy and religion. Now he searches for world peace, holds a vision and mission to help free people from ignorance and fear. World peace can only be achieve when humanity will learn to converge in beliefs and eliminate or minimize competition.

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Copyright © 2003, 2008 by Guro Bert Domingo.

2002 Original Copyright by Bert Domingo.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2002096145

ISBN:      Hardcover          978-1-4010-8394-6

               Softcover            978-1-4010-8393-9

               Ebook                978-1-4628-4488-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

Preface To Second Edition

Preface To First Edition

Prologue

Rational Theology For World Peace

Chapter One      Paradigm Shift

Chapter Two      Cosmic God

Chapter Three      Human Destiny

Chapter Four      Humanity and Nature

Chapter Five      Human Societies and Social Issues

Chapter Six      Religion and Faith

Chapter Seven      Basis of Human Knowledge

Chapter Eight      Human Skills and Creativity

Chapter Nine      Transcendence and Spirituality

Chapter Ten      Conquest of Fears

Epilogue

Author

Selected Readings

DEDICATION

To all the people I have met and shared ideas with,

I dedicate this book.

I have learned from you and you have enriched my life that led me

to seek for a higher and nobler truth.

You-are my family, teachers, friends, co-workers, and associates.

My special thanks to Adelaida Taraya Domingo, whose love and care gave me courage to persevere.

Felixberto Joson (Bert) Domingo

Guro

Other Published Works of Bert Domingo

Freedom Trilogy [1st Books Library (AuthorHouse)]-

ISBN: 0-75961-826-7

One Hundred Words to Freedom

The Pleasure of Teaching, and

Journey from Anxiety to Reality

(Available as separate book-

Xlibris Corp. ISBN: 1-4010-6143-5)

Message from God (AuthorHouse) ISBN: 1-4140-4452-6

Poems

Ignorance Bounds-Adrift on the Breeze-ISBN: 1-57553-729-X Faith in Fate-Outstanding Poets of1998 ISBN: 1-57553-978-0

Christ-Blossom in the Dawning ISBN: 1-57553-903-9 Convergence-America at the Millennium ISBN: 1-58235-722-6

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Convergence

Every life a mission to be fulfilled.

More than six billions, for everyone to seek.

No hunger, no misery, no pain or suffering.

If every dream can find solace from someone near.

Voices shouted, unheard;

Pleading eyes, ignored;

Passing by, eyes apart, not meeting.

Ideas lost in the babble.

Reason lost in emotion and ignorance.

Logic shrouded by fear and constraint.

Awaken in stupor of commonness

Unthinking and complacent.

Listen, look, darkness is before us.

When light vanish, there is no more morning.

Join together in tolerance and understanding

and together, bring back the future.

Schism founded in nothing but emptiness

of words of thousand thoughts,

no focus, no horizon to attain.

Ideas lost in verbiage unrelenting.

If we can drop rebuttal, and first listen.

There is something for us to learn.

From any breathing soul

With equal pain and joy we all endure.

Humanity Is One Prayer

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From: synagogue, church, mosque, temple, hall, open sky, and varied places of worship.

Infinite and Eternal God, the Great Spirit and Only Architect of the Cosmos, we pray to you for convergence and World Peace.

God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, we implore you to bring understanding and tolerance to everyone, for unity, to save

humanity from extinction.

God of Arjuna, Siddharta, and all other peoples on Earth, we entreat you to open everyone’s mind to the tranquil and serene acceptance

of reality and the forces and laws of nature you have endowed

upon us.

In your Omnipresence in everything, let us see the truth.

In your Omnipotence, help us comprehend your powers.

In your Omniscience, open our mind and spirit to seek for the noble purpose of our existence.

Help us learn to Cooperate and stop our Competitive urges.

Make each of us the instrument of Thy Will.

Guro Bert Domingo, author

GOD: Rational Theology. ISBN: 1-4010-8393-5

MESSAGE from GOD: ISBN: 1-4140-4452-6

Preface

To Second Edition

GOD from Ancient Times to 21st Century

This second edition of GOD: Rational Theology is re-published with two major additions: this Preface and the Selected Readings. The Author gained his ideas and concepts about the subject from his many readings, foremost are those contained in this list. The books are grouped into four topics: Nature of God, God and Healing, God and Secret Societies, and God and Science.

At the outset, I would like to mention the thoughts of Moses Maimonides, a great Jewish theologian, who warned readers of the Torah. He wrote that the difficulty in understanding the book is that the original is written in Hebrew, which could be metaphorical, allegorical, symbolical, figurative, simile, or the words may just be homonymous. Also, Hebrew has no vowels, that the writers of the original may not have the same idea as the translators see from the combinations of consonants. A good example is that of Moses’ God’s name. From the four consonants (HVHI-read from right to left, Yod, He, Vau, He), translators expressed this as Jehovah or Yahweh. The Kabbala just mention this name as Tetragrammaton, meaning four sacred letters. Granted that the Torah is direct words of God, what is God really telling us? All are subject to the perspective of the translators.

Be wary of anyone who claims to know or to literally interpret any of the translations of the ancient writings. Likewise, the New Testament written in Greek Aramaic also would have the same problem as Hebrew. Furthermore, the Christian Bible, which to me is a great book about God, must be viewed not in isolation. The Naj Hammadi Library discovered in Egypt (1945), the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947) from the Qumran caves, and other scholarly works of the Kaballah, the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Sufis and other ancient works can give light to better understanding. Furthermore, for me the One True God is not limited to a few groups, but, to all of humanity, thus, further readings of the Vedas, especially the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishad, and the Tripitaka will give a fuller knowledge about God. Since all ofhumanity is part of the totality of God, we can also view all other beliefs: deism, theism, pantheism in an inclusive way rather than separate from other human knowledge. This will give us a whole picture of what we call God. Even science and some scientists have ideas about God that will enlighten us to a greater meaning of God.

The ideas in Quantum Physics about the need for an observer consciousness for matter to be real or to exist, lead us to a Creator. Is this God, the Intelligent Designer who created the Universe and everything in it? The Probability for matter to appear ex nihilo or something from nothing is illogical, leading to the Anthropic Principle of some Physicist. Foremost in scientific terms is the impossibility of life to exist, without any intervention. Even the way Earth is located in the solar system and our galaxy can not be a mere product of random chance. Nature and its forces, matter, space, and time need a cause to start or begin. I wrote this book to bring together people to a convergence, a rational way to view God, and stop the bickering where lives are sacrificed for the mistaken belief that they are the only one that is right.

NATURE of GOD

Anthropologists have discovered among the prehistoric remains of humans, evidence of religious rituals and beliefs in the afterlife. This could be interpreted as an indication of belief in god. Similarly,

Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Nordics, believe in gods, according to what we now term as mere mythology. All great religions, scattered all over the world believe in the presence of spirits, god’s manifestations. The main differences among these religions may be termed as semantics, for they have different names or terms to refer to god. Cultural egocentricity is a great divider for a common understanding of what we call god. Consider the great divide among the three great religions of the modern world, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While they have common origin and tradition, in the Patriarchs, Abraham and Moses, they have massacred millions for centuries, and up to this days. For me, this is an evidence that humans believe in God, in many forms and according to their understanding. These should include the beliefs of natives from various countries with their Shamans and Medicine Men.

What then is God? Genesis account, as one view, states that we (humans) are created in His image and likeness. Therefore, we have a model to begin with, in having a picture of God. In the Vedas, Brahman is defined in abstract terms as Self, the totality of our individual selves. To understand God is to understand Humanity.

A Cosmic (universal) God must transcend the human limitations of temporality and perception at human scale. This means that we should view God in terms of all human experiences and not from just a limited group of believers. Guided by human reason and logic, we can view God in infinite terms rather than mere anthropocentric way, where we attribute human behavior, emotions, and characteristics to our Creator, God. Although we recognize many beliefs and knowledge that are dangerous and detrimental to human life, we have to focus on the constructive ideas that elevate humanity. The way our world, nature, and our life are designed, include the law of opposite (Yin and Yang) as a given, that highlights the positive in the presence of the negative aspect of life. A perfect world includes every facet of life and existence: the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the simple and the profound, etc. Then we can have a totality, One, Unity, God for all of humanity, for all time and dimensions.

This is a challenge for us to learn to choose what is relevant to a meaningful life, not only for us, but for all of humanity. Never ignore what history can teach us about what some religious intolerance caused-millions of lives. The present terrorist acts of religious groups and political regimes are also the result of intolerance with a desire for power to suppress opposite ideology. Their actions are the result of their belief that their god gives them such task of eliminating unbelievers. This is the greatest reason why we need to have a better definition of God for all of humanity rather that what a group perceives as their chosen position in life.

We can only deduce from what various religions in different parts of the world have come to believe. The people from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Samaria,