We're all right. Did your finish your homework?

Maybe I can stay closer to everyday experience and illustrate how it is possible that we can agree and yet disagree. If we imagine humanity sent 3 different scouts to glimpes the sphinx of Egypt, and they came back with 3 "completely different" pictures, as shown here.

We can imagine intense sectarian violence over the issue of whether the pyramid goes "up to the right", or "down to the right" or has a large side that is "completely level".

The problem is that all three pictures show exactly the same physical world, but the observer's camera was held at a different angle when the picture was taken.

The picture is not the reality.

Our pictures seem to disagree, but once you correct for the difference in position of the camera, the pictures agree entirely.

Every human, every time, every culture will have a different "camera position" or "reference frame", and there is no such thing as "a right one" or a "wrong one" - they are all equivalent. We shouldn't argue over that aspect of the picture, but only about the contents of the picture that don't depend on who's holding the camera. These are entirely different levels of "difference".

For petty, earth-based experience, we may have an unstated preference, and could feel that there is a "right" way to view the pyramid and sphinx, that none of those images exactly captures. Actually, they all capture the right way if you bend your neck a little when you look.

But for "heavenly" experience, arguing over which way is "up" may be totally meaningless. Here's a last picture, of our neighboring galaxy in space - a trillion stars. It doesn't even make sense to argue which picture is "right" and which is "upside down". There is no "up", only "outward" in space. Earth-bound meanings of "up" don't apply to that universe.




We need to get over arguing about the camera, so we can focus our attention on the contents of the image. That is the point. We should stop killing each other over details that vary with the camera so we can move on to realizing our common humanity and that we're looking at the same image, regardless. We're killing our own brothers, our own kin, over nothing.

This is something that "science" can teach us about "religion" - or at least about how the limitations of our own experience can cloud our ability to see where we should be agreeing with each other, and moving on with the shared and exciting discussion of what it all means.

At the extreme, I recall one extended discussion in a list-server group about a person who was hung up for over a year, and couldn't proceed with investigating a religion until he had resolved the question of whether the word "satan" should be capitalized or not.

These kind of "hang-ups" are tremendously convenient at avoiding getting to the issues that actually might call your own behavior into question, such as whether you are, or are not, taking the care of your brother or neighbor or employees or the poor that your religion has told you is your duty.

All of the world's major religions agree entirely that it is our personal responsibility to be concerned for and taking care of our family and our neighbors and our community and our educational system and our children. There is no excuse in avoiding that responsibility because we are bickering over what words were used to give us that message and when it came.

First, get that much accomplished. Then, we can come back and get on with killing each other's children over whether the exactly right word was used for our next assignment.

M31 galaxy image by John Lanoue.