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Allan Kurzberg And The Paradox Of Organized Religion, Part 2.

“I stepped into the abyss and felt something in my chest.  Stars were on the left and right, above and below.  I was among the stars, and I understood that I was a small part of this giant world, where the human was just a grain of sand.”–Alexei Leonov, Russian cosmonaut 

In the last post, we proved the Paradox of Organized Religion by using certain parts of Allan Kurzberg’s system.  In this post, we will try to define religion as opposed to organized religion.  However, before we do that, we might examine a more vivid example of the Paradox of Organized Religion, the Example of the Knife.    Briefly, it states that a visitor has come into our home brandishing a knife.  S/he then tells us we have nothing to fear since s/he is a member of a specific OR.  Does that statement ensure our safety?  Of course, the person could be lying, but we will assume the person is telling the truth.  Does the stranger’s belonging to an OR give us definite assurance that no harm will come to us?  And the answer is: certainly not.  The proof lies in the definition of an OR and the application of a few of Allan’s postulates.  I leave the proof to the reader.

As we have stated in previous posts, Kurzberg was quite disturbed by misleading or, as in the case of a human being, downright false definitions.  He attributed the falseness of definition to P 2, that lying is a major part of a human’s existence.  And this is not surprising, because wherever we look, we see the perpetuation of lies.  And with new technology, lies can spread at a faster rate than ever before.  They not only come from the mouths of demagogues, but often from scientists and mathematicians, supposedly paradigms of rational thought.  Indeed, Allan reminded us that a mathematician and mathematics are two different entities.  A mathematician, according to our new definition of human being is an irrational being that is mostly capable of rational thought, while mathematics is a purely rational creation, constructed of precise definitions, postulates, theorems, corollaries, and lemmas.  And with each discovery brought on by the above, mathematics moves forward along a rational axis, using pure reason to achieve truths.  In a similar manner, Kurzberg felt there was an essential difference between organized religion, steeped in the human world of unpredictable motivational forces, creating “Others”, steeped in complex, misleading symbols, and manifesting hierarchy by P 4, often resulting in the torturing and wholesale slaughter of human beings. ORs, according to Allan, have perpetrated meaningless distinctions such as “secularity” and “religious fanaticism”.  Allan would insist that all ORs are secular, and that it is this fact that is the most disturbing.  If God exists and is pure reason, it should be the function of all ORs to strive for pure reason.  In that way, they would be a more accurate reflection of the grandeur of God, rather than holding on to outmoded and sometimes completely wrong ideas of the universe.  “Religious fanaticism” would then be a contradiction in terms, because religion would be an emanation of pure reason and fanaticism is just the opposite.

Allan Kurzberg often said that what bothered him was not that a human being was made in God’s image(whatever importance that has, because all things in the universe have been made by God.  Although, Allan admitted that such a concept needed explanation).  But what disturbed him was the idea that God is being made in a human being’s image.  That is, God is a projection of all of the human being’s failings listed above.  Kurzberg sought to clarify the difference between an OR and pure religion or just religion.  He said that first you need to know that all ORs are fundamentally unstable and this led him to the Bifurcation Principle of Organized Religion:  At some point in time, any organized religion will split up into at least one other branch of the original OR.  Kurzberg thought this was not surprising since by P 3, humans are “Other” creating beings and by P 4, create inclusive and exclusive relationships.  But, he said, a pure religion is a manifestation or reflection of a permanent system of order that does not accept any fragmentation or rupture.  Therefore, an OR is the more true the more it minimizes OE-, and, in particular, the creation of the “Other”, and seeks for an all-inclusive relationship, eliminating the barrier created by P 4.

Allan felt he needed to elucidate the differences between organized religion and religion further through the stories of The Three Children : Laura, Robert, and Bill.  Subsequent posts will contain excerpts from these three stories, followed by a discussion of the principles they represent.