Critical Reflection Paper

CRP #2
Tierra Hernandez
Dr. TwoTrees
Phil 1.5
October 29, 2014 A lot of people ask the question of whether or not certain religions are true and that question has definitely crossed my mind before this class, but after reading our assigned chapters revolving around this topic I realized something that was so much more important and beneficial. Whether God, Jesus or Allah exists will forever be a debate. Religions will clash and dispute one another for various reasons and the important thing isn’t to discover which one is the truth. The only way you would be able to fully know the truth would be to discover what happens once you die. You will only be able to experience whether the truth you had believed for so long was true or not. The problem with trying to get this ultimate truth is that it will never satisfy all and there will always be faults in the explanation you’ve found. Since there will never be a definite answer for everyone than there must be a greater issue to address in the present. What’s so much more important is discovering how to live together with people of different faiths. The more and more I read around this topic, the more I realized that it doesn’t matter to me to find this definite answer of whether Catholicism is correct or Judaism or Hinduism. It’s irrelevant for the present because all of the different religions will always claim different things. When reading the Dalia Lama and Stephen Prothero, I found myself connecting with both of them on many aspects. To an extent we can say that all religions are the same because they are all etiological and explain how things are. They are all lifestyles, beliefs, and to an extent, representations of a culture. They all have fundamental similarities such that Dalai Lama expresses such as love, compassion, fairness, etc. However, they don’t similarities in the aspect of how to apply those ideas. Not all religions express love in the same way as others and the same goes for all of the other aspects. However, Prothero brought up something that was very evident to me that is so vastly important which is that these religions are different too. They are all different in many aspects and in order to live amongst others who have these different religions than you, you have to have an understanding of the differences they all have. You have to concern yourself with these differences because it is necessary in order to fully grasp an understanding of the other religion. When a person doesn’t know much about an issue it’s easy to disregard it and deem it as “wrong”.. However, when people don’t put themselves in a box they are able to be enlightened by different ways of thinking and living that may even show as a positive influence for them. If someone else is happy with their religion and choices than there should be no need for someone else to cause conflict with them based strictly on their beliefs and that they clash with yours This led me to a belief that is almost a “hybrid” of both positions. If you can acknowledge and understand each religion on a fundamental level in a sense that it is just trying to understand and make sense of a world that is so infinite in itself then you can grow a new found respect towards that religion. The Dalai

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