doctrines

• philosophy struggles for emancipation from dogma

12:9.5Your re­li­gion is be­com­ing real be­cause it is emerg­ing from the slav­ery of fear and the bond­age of su­per­sti­tion. Your phi­los­o­phy strug­gles for eman­ci­pa­tion from dogma and tra­di­tion. Your sci­ence is en­gaged in the age­long con­test be­tween truth and er­ror while it fights for de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of ab­strac­tion, the slav­ery of math­e­mat­ics, and the rel­a­tive blind­ness of mech­a­nis­tic ma­te­ri­al­ism.

• cosmic mind response negates a priori assumptions

16:6.4There ex­ists in all per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tions of the cos­mic mind a qual­ity which might be de­nom­i­nated the “re­al­ity re­sponse.” It is this uni­ver­sal cos­mic en­dow­ment of will crea­tures which saves them from be­com­ing help­less vic­tims of the im­plied a pri­ori as­sump­tions of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion. This re­al­ity sen­si­tiv­ity of the cos­mic mind re­sponds to cer­tain phases of re­al­ity just as en­ergy-ma­te­rial re­sponds to grav­ity. It would be still more cor­rect to say that these super­ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties so re­spond to the mind of the cos­mos.

• powerless to transform human character

34:6.6The dead the­ory of even the high­est re­li­gious doc­trines is pow­er­less to trans­form hu­man char­ac­ter or to con­trol mor­tal be­hav­ior. What the world of to­day needs is the truth which your teacher of old de­clared: “Not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.” The seed of the­o­ret­i­cal truth is dead, the high­est moral con­cepts with­out ef­fect, un­less and un­til the di­vine Spirit breathes upon the forms of truth and quick­ens the for­mu­las of righ­teous­ness.

• doctrinal fetish betrays man into cruelty
• most terrible tyrant which enslaves man

88:2.7In olden times the fe­tish word of au­thor­ity was a fear-in­spir­ing doc­trine, the most ter­ri­ble of all tyrants which en­slave men. A doc­tri­nal fe­tish will lead mor­tal man to be­tray him­self into the clutches of big­otry, fa­nati­cism, su­per­sti­tion, in­tol­er­ance, and the most atro­cious of bar­barous cru­el­ties. Mod­ern re­spect for wis­dom and truth is but the re­cent es­cape from the fe­tish-mak­ing ten­dency up to the higher lev­els of think­ing and rea­son­ing. Con­cern­ing the ac­cu­mu­lated fe­tish writ­ings which var­i­ous re­li­gion­ists hold as sa­cred books, it is not only be­lieved that what is in the book is true, but also that ev­ery truth is con­tained in the book. If one of these sa­cred books hap­pens to speak of the earth as be­ing flat, then, for long gen­er­a­tions, oth­er­wise sane men and women will refuse to ac­cept pos­i­tive ev­i­dence that the planet is round.

• uniformity unattainable in creeds

92:7.4All these re­li­gions have arisen as a re­sult of man’s vari­able in­tel­lec­tual re­sponse to his iden­ti­cal spir­i­tual lead­ing. They can never hope to at­tain a uni­for­mity of creeds, dog­mas, and rit­u­als—these are in­tel­lec­tual; but they can, and some day will, re­al­ize a unity in true wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all, for this is spir­i­tual, and it is for­ever true, in the spirit all men are equal.

• dogmatism enslaves spiritual nature

99:6.1Sec­tar­i­an­ism is a dis­ease of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion, and dog­ma­tism is an en­slave­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture. It is far bet­ter to have a re­li­gion with­out a church than a church with­out re­li­gion. The re­li­gious tur­moil of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury does not, in and of it­self, be­to­ken spir­i­tual deca­dence. Con­fu­sion goes be­fore growth as well as be­fore de­struc­tion.

• indolent resort to false shelter of stereotyped

102:2.7Evo­lu­tion­ary man does not nat­u­rally rel­ish hard work. To keep pace in his life ex­pe­ri­ence with the im­pelling de­mands and the com­pelling urges of a grow­ing re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence means in­ces­sant ac­tiv­ity in spir­i­tual growth, in­tel­lec­tual ex­pan­sion, fac­tual en­large­ment, and so­cial ser­vice. There is no real re­li­gion apart from a highly ac­tive per­son­al­ity. There­fore do the more in­do­lent of men of­ten seek to es­cape the rig­ors of truly re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties by a species of in­ge­nious self-de­cep­tion through re­sort­ing to a re­treat to the false shel­ter of stereo­typed re­li­gious doc­trines and dog­mas. But true re­li­gion is alive. In­tel­lec­tual crys­tal­liza­tion of re­li­gious con­cepts is the equiv­a­lent of spir­i­tual death. You can­not con­ceive of re­li­gion with­out ideas, but when re­li­gion once be­comes re­duced only to an idea, it is no longer re­li­gion; it has be­come merely a species of hu­man phi­los­o­phy.

• believers should reply to dogmatism with more farseeing dogmatism

102:7.7If sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, or so­ci­ol­ogy dares to be­come dog­matic in con­tend­ing with the proph­ets of true re­li­gion, then should God-know­ing men re­ply to such un­war­ranted dog­ma­tism with that more farsee­ing dog­ma­tism of the cer­tainty of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, “I know what I have ex­pe­ri­enced be­cause I am a son of I AM.” If the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of a faither is to be chal­lenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the ex­pe­ri­en­ci­ble Fa­ther may re­ply with that un­chal­lenge­able dogma, the state­ment of his ac­tual son­ship with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• only unqualified reality can consistently be dogmatic

102:7.8Only an un­qual­i­fied re­al­ity, an ab­so­lute, could dare con­sis­tently to be dog­matic. Those who as­sume to be dog­matic must, if con­sis­tent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Ab­so­lute of en­ergy, the Uni­ver­sal of truth, and the In­fi­nite of love.

102:7.9If the non­re­li­gious ap­proaches to cos­mic re­al­ity pre­sume to chal­lenge the cer­tainty of faith on the grounds of its un­proved sta­tus, then the spirit ex­pe­ri­encer can like­wise re­sort to the dog­matic chal­lenge of the facts of sci­ence and the be­liefs of phi­los­o­phy on the grounds that they are like­wise un­proved; they are like­wise ex­pe­ri­ences in the con­scious­ness of the sci­en­tist or the philoso­pher.

• religions can agree on values while maintaining belief in conflicting creeds

103:1.4Ra­tio­nal­ism is wrong when it as­sumes that re­li­gion is at first a prim­i­tive be­lief in some­thing which is then fol­lowed by the pur­suit of val­ues. Re­li­gion is pri­mar­ily a pur­suit of val­ues, and then there for­mu­lates a sys­tem of in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs. It is much eas­ier for men to agree on re­li­gious val­ues—goals—than on be­liefs—in­ter­pre­ta­tions. And this ex­plains how re­li­gion can agree on val­ues and goals while ex­hibit­ing the con­fus­ing phe­nom­e­non of main­tain­ing a be­lief in hun­dreds of con­flict­ing be­liefs—creeds. This also ex­plains why a given per­son can main­tain his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in the face of giv­ing up or chang­ing many of his re­li­gious be­liefs. Re­li­gion per­sists in spite of rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in re­li­gious be­liefs. The­ol­ogy does not pro­duce re­li­gion; it is re­li­gion that pro­duces the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy.

• religious groups should remove all creedal pressure

103:5.12When a mem­ber of a so­cial re­li­gious group has com­plied with the re­quire­ments of such a group, he should be en­cour­aged to en­joy re­li­gious lib­erty in the full ex­pres­sion of his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the truths of re­li­gious be­lief and the facts of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The se­cu­rity of a re­li­gious group de­pends on spir­i­tual unity, not on the­o­log­i­cal uni­for­mity. A re­li­gious group should be able to en­joy the lib­erty of free­think­ing with­out hav­ing to be­come “free­thinkers.” There is great hope for any church that wor­ships the liv­ing God, val­i­dates the broth­er­hood of man, and dares to re­move all creedal pres­sure from its mem­bers.

• Jesus deplored dogmatism
• Jesus warned against using creeds to control believers

141:5.4Many times dur­ing the train­ing of the twelve Je­sus re­verted to this theme. Re­peat­edly he told them it was not his de­sire that those who be­lieved in him should be­come dog­ma­tized and stan­dard­ized in ac­cor­dance with the re­li­gious in­ter­pre­ta­tions of even good men. Again and again he warned his apos­tles against the for­mu­la­tion of creeds and the es­tab­lish­ment of tra­di­tions as a means of guid­ing and con­trol­ling be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom.

• lifeless

155:6.9The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity can only di­vide men and set them in con­sci­en­tious ar­ray against each other; the re­li­gion of the spirit will pro­gres­sively draw men to­gether and cause them to be­come un­der­stand­ingly sym­pa­thetic with one an­other. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity re­quire of men uni­for­mity in be­lief, but this is im­pos­si­ble of re­al­iza­tion in the pres­ent state of the world. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only unity of ex­pe­ri­ence—uni­for­mity of des­tiny—mak­ing full al­lowance for di­ver­sity of be­lief. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only uni­for­mity of in­sight, not uni­for­mity of view­point and out­look. The re­li­gion of the spirit does not de­mand uni­for­mity of in­tel­lec­tual views, only unity of spirit feel­ing. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity crys­tal­lize into life­less creeds; the re­li­gion of the spirit grows into the in­creas­ing joy and lib­erty of en­nobling deeds of lov­ing ser­vice and mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tion.

• avoid attitude of finality in

182:1.8Je­sus prayed for unity among his fol­low­ers, but he did not de­sire uni­for­mity. Sin cre­ates a dead level of evil in­er­tia, but righ­teous­ness nour­ishes the cre­ative spirit of in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in the liv­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nal truth and in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nion of the di­vine spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Son. In the spir­i­tual fel­low­ship of the be­liever-son with the di­vine Fa­ther there can never be doc­tri­nal fi­nal­ity and sec­tar­ian su­pe­ri­or­ity of group con­scious­ness.