Throwing away the Good with the Bad

Are all religions equally good? Beyond improvement? What constitutes improvement of a religion? Should religions advocate improvement of themselves? Should they share/communicate with each other?
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wvanfleet
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Throwing away the Good with the Bad

Post by wvanfleet »

My observation is that there are many, many religions, and that many, if not most, people regard the religion that they are a member of as being the best.  Therefore, it seems to me, everyone agrees that religions can vary with regard to how optimal they are, and that there is the possibility that there are non-optimal aspects in any given religion.

If we were to ask whether religion X is the best religion, it seems to me that the probability of that being so would be 1/N, N being the total number of religions.  Thus, it would seem to me that we could make the assumption that any specific religion was not optimal, and a good generalization would therefore be that all religions can probably improve.

But what would constitute improvement?  As a Humanian, I would use the REUEP to evaluate them.  I would ask of a religion whether it fostered joy, contentment, and appreciation (JCA) and reduced pain, suffering, disability, and/or early death (PSDED), and whether there were indeed parts of the religion that actually fostered PSDED.

I know that many are convinced that religions produce much PSDED, and some of those convinced of that would have us get rid of religion.  But they overlook, I believe, the enormous JCA that those religions provide, and I, for one, have difficulty throwing away things that have good in them.  To me, getting rid of the bad parts and keeping the good parts seems the right way, rather than throwing away the good with the bad.

Bill Van Fleet
Humanian

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