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Sacred Books or Holy Books are purported to be inspired by outside influences with reference to divine sources.

Sacred Books. How are we going to decide which is the ONE--if there is one--to plunge into for answers?

There are many Sacred Books. How are we going to decide which is the ONE–if there is one–to plunge into for answers?

Sacred Books are where we turn to pursue a study of Theology (the words relating to god or God). If you have happened upon this post, I suggest you read the short theology post first to see why we’re even broaching this subject.
(Origin of the Universe chapter 2.1)

Sacred Books are historic writings generally penned by men or women to whom their content was revealed. Often the source of the works is worshipped as god or God. These writings represent the foundation of knowledge, wisdom, and revelation from this divine source regarding the past, present, and future. These books prone and teach a way of thought and actions and are often the basis for a society of followers applying principles to organize their daily lives individually and collectively.

Frequently, a single such Sacred Book is interpreted in various ways giving rise to different groups sometimes called religions, or sects—meaning a section of (the whole). The term sect can have a negative and even hostile connotation.

The key to sacred books is that their inspiration comes from an outside source—something beyond human capacity and human reason. The idea is that, whatever the origin, their knowledge, and wisdom are SUPERIOR to that of man. Hence, these sacred writings contain information that is more useful to humankind than what humanity itself can develop, investigate, or imagine.

As we know, there is much controversy concerning not only these books but also their authors. Who and what are these higher powers. There are dozens of these purported sacred books.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of sacred books with their respective followers

  • Apocrypha: Gospel of Thomas
  • Ayyavazhi: The Akilattirattu Ammanai and Arul Nool
  • Buddhism: The Tripiṭaka and the Dhammapada
  • Christianity: The Christian Bible, especially the New Testament and the Gospels, Sacred Tradition
  • Confucianism: The Analects of Confucius, also the I Ching
  • Epicureanism, Principal Doctrines
  • Hinduism: Shruti (Vedas, including the Rigveda; also Aranyakas, Brahmanas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Mahābhārata, Ramayana); Panchatantra
  • Islam: The Qur’an, also Hadith and the Sunnah
  • Judaism: The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh = Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim), the Talmud, which includes Pirkei Avot
  • Mormonism: Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants
  • Satanism: The Satanic Bible
  • Sikhism: The Guru Granth Sahib and the Dasam Granth Sahib
  • Taoism: The Dao De Jing, also Chuang Tzu, and the I Ching

So, how are we going to decide which is the ONE Sacred Book—if there is one—to plunge into for answers?

I initially thought I’d do a comparative revealing what various sacred books said about the same subject like soul, death, war, salvation, heaven …’ I ended up deciding against this because it would be my interpretation of what these books revealed about these subjects. Another aspect is that there are so many conflicting approaches to the same texts that it’s impossible to be impartial. I’m not an expert on religions and certainly not on comparative religion. If this approach interests you, you can dive into some significant concepts from this base.

Identifying the Sacred Book

Well, if you had a group of 100 people, how would you determine which one is the person you’re trying to find?

You’d be looking for evidence, proof, you’d be looking for identifying signs. For instance, if you know the person you’re looking for is male, you’re down to 50 people, has brown eyes, then you’ve eliminated another 20 people. If the person is between 1.60m and 1.70m, you’re down to 10 people. And so forth: mustache, blond, teeth, DNA—until you’ve identified the one and only.

In other words, knowing identifying signs and using elimination–you can reduce the group of people to that unique person and then even verify your findings by all sorts of other tests and identifying signs.

By knowing identifying signs and using elimination, you can reduce the group of people to that unique person Click To Tweet

To get right to the point. That’s the fundamental reason I wrote Inventory of the Universe and Audit of the Universe–because they contain the identifying signs. Every single query asked in those books that is a why question needs an answer and the sacred text that answers ALL of those why queries with COHERENT WORDS in a SYSTEMATIC WAY is the ONE that we want to use.

We can kill two birds with one stone (not sure that’s an appropriate analogy). Firstly we will receive understanding as to what’s happening here on Earth, probably with instructions as to how we can have more peace and prosperity. Secondly, if a book can provide us with such information, it will tell us something about the nature of the author. After all, if you read a how-to book and it helps you do what it sets out to do, not only will you have a solution to your problem, but you’ll have great respect for the author of this valuable information.

Let’s reduce a group of sacred books to the holy book by elimination:

  1. You must know what evidence you’re searching out. As one sage once wrote: Teach me that which I see not.We must know what evidence we want to garner. It’s not one proof or even seven proofs (the sensational heading of a booklet I sent off for many years ago) that represent evidence. It is also not a majority or a mass of information that is convincing. Look at religions today. Each of them has masses of data, and conviction that their abundance is the right mass–and the result is confusion.One of the reasons for this turmoil is the search for ‘facts‘–irrefutable truths that can be physically touched, demonstrated, and witnessed. Various phenomena fit into this category: paranormal experiences like anything that can be considered to be a miracle: visions, apparitions, after-death experiences, talking in tongues. I could lump in ghosts, flying objects, and psychic powers.Some—perhaps many—consider all such experiences to be spiritual and hence godly or Godly or at least pointing to something more substantial than humankind. And indeed, this could very well be the case; I’m not denying any of these phenomena. However—and this is the key—does anyone or even the totality of these phenomena prove the truth? Display evidence and give answers to fundamental questions? I believe not.

    They are individual, independent, isolated, unrelated events that reveal ‘special and spectacular circumstances,’ but they don’t leave us with anything concrete. These phenomena don’t guide us in eliminating the unessential and finding the essential.

    A group of 'sacred books' can be reduced to identify 'the sacred book' by elimination. Click To Tweet

  2. A lot of mystery marks the 21st century—in films, literature, TV and real-life. Those involved in probing and investigating such mysteries are continually searching for the motivation of people. Why did such-and-such do this? Act this way? What were they thinking? What’s behind such behavior? Answers range from: I did it because such-and-such, this is why, this is the ultimate evidence, this represents the invisible facts, this is the real motivation behind the visible evidence.
  3.  The questions we’re going to ask and that seek answers are WHY QUESTIONS. They are interrogations that don’t have physical proof to offer. For instance, ask the why question of all the above phenomena:
    • Why paranormal experiences?
    • Why miracles?
    • Why visions?
    • Why apparitions?
    • Why after-death experiences?
    • Why talking in tongues?
    • Why ghosts, flying objects, psychic powers?

It is much, much more challenging to answer the why questions, correct? Yes!
Can the sacred books answer these questions?
Can the holy books answer ALL the why questions about the universe, Earth, life, death, past, present, future?
Is there even ONE sacred book that gives us answers to such fundamental–but tough to answer–motivations?

To begin the process of elimination and find the one sacred book–if there is one–we first have to ask the right questions: The why questions. Don’t miss the upcoming blog posts that will point us in the right direction.

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 2.1 of Origin of the Universe.

 

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