World Peace

The Taugh Masters course in Inter-Faith studies that I hope to complete in September 2009 is one that aims to inspire students to think and act on inter-religious relations: communication and conflict. The world has not yet seen a day without human/human conflict. These conflicts are, unfortunately, frequently based on religious differences. The study of texts and social phenomena could help us gain insight into these conflicts and may even help us find an answer to the problems we encounter in dealing with the human desire of overpowering one another spiritually.

In the four years I've been studying religion here in Leiden these questions have always struck me:

Why do people always want to impose their 'universal truths' on those who are not interested in them?

Why not accept that your 'truth' works for you and someone elses might work for them?

Religion (to me) is nothing more than an invented structure of beliefs constructed to help people deal with unexplainable things. How to deal with death, dreaming and sickness?

Don't get me wrong, I am not an atheist, or someone that puts infinite value on modern technology (you might say:all that was unexplainable before can now be explained by science, so who needs religion?), no. I do think religion is very valueable and for one thing, I think the concept will never 'disappear' or will no longer be needed.

Religion, as science, is something people count on to help them in daily life. To help them move on when something is not directly clear to them. Which of these belief systems you used is a choice that can be taken either consciously, or as a result of years of 'indoctrination' or culture.

Whatever works for you might not work for me. Your ideas might make no sense to me.

Why would you think that your way of dealing with difficult things is superior over mine?

Why would you fight me to try to convince me your system is better than mine?

As you can see: Next year I expect to be able to bring peace to the world.

If not, I'll demand a refund of my tuition fees

:D