- The Nature of Reality
- God, Nature, and Creation
- The Personification of God
- Witnesses, Prophets, and Saints
- Vanity, Pride, and Arrogance
- Good, Evil, and Standards
- Justice, Heaven, and Hell
- Pleasure, Pain, Hope, and Fear
- Learning and Problem Solving
- Origins of Theology
- The Good Life
- Summaries
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Summaries
Here are all of the summary points from each section shown together.
- Consciousness is the jewel of the Universe.
- Our purpose in life is to protect that jewel.
- God is Mother Nature, who will show us the way.
- The way to learn natural law is with the scientific method.
- Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed.
- We don't need to know about the beginning or end of time.
- That which matters the most to us appears to be enlarged.
- We need to see the world as it is, without selfish distortions.
- Personifying natural law into a conception of God is useful.
- Natural law is absolute, not the personification.
- There is but one Universe, by definition, and
- any person claiming otherwise is a false prophet.
- We are all witnesses, and we can know God directly.
- We are the ones who apply prophecy to daily life.
- Natural law is absolute, and this is useful. Therefore,
- God intervenes only with advice, not by changing rules.
- Without greed, we already have more than we need.
- Pride is good, but arrogance is bad.
- Vanity can turn pride into arrogance.
- Good and bad are relative to the perspective of the observer.
- We can get anything we want, but we can't get everything we want.
- So we pursue the greatest good for the greatest number.
- If there is no force or fraud in human commerce, everybody wins, and
- the greater good is achieved as the sum of all of the individual goods.
- "It's all good" isn't enough — we must define both good and bad.
- Clear definitions of good and bad enhance social trust and interaction.
- Morality is satisfaction, compassion, integrity, and righteousness.
- God personifies good behavior, and Satan does bad behavior.
- God tells us to coordinate, while Satan tells us to be selfish.
- A good society provides love, security, justice, and forgiveness.
- Our spirits live on in the hearts and minds of those we influence.
- All members of society must reinforce morals taught to children.
- Progress gives us hope, the best motivation of all.
- With a sense of purpose, pain & suffering go away.
- It is our nature to focus on success, and to forget failure.
- We are small in comparison to the awesome forces of nature.
- God teaches us to take just what we need and be satisfied.
- We are closest to God when we are satisfied but not to excess.
- God is wise and cannot be fooled, even when we lie to ourselves.
- We mock Satan and then skillfully move along.
- In teaching, we come to truly understand what we have learned.
It's arguable that this system contains no new value, since all of the ideas are as old as the hills. Indeed, no attempt was made to find anything new. Rather, the quest was for eternal truths that could be confirmed by modern science, and this was accomplished. For example, the prophet Confucius taught us that the spirits of our ancestors live on inside us, and this is consistent with modern science (with "spirits" as long term memories). Other ideas were confirmed with qualifications. For example, some religions believe that God intervenes in our daily lives, but the scientific proof of this is lacking, while real intervention does exist in a righteous society. Thus the light of science does not scare away the wisdom of the ages — it accentuates the good parts, and only invalidates the parts that were never real in the first place. This was demonstrated for a wide variety of core issues in philosophy and theology, supporting the conclusion that a fully rational belief system can indeed function happily in the territory once occupied only by ancient religions. Science can be moral, and morality can be rational. The only thing that's new here is the absence of dichotomies in our most essential beliefs, which is good.
God is real, but not in the material sense — God is information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. We know God in our hearts and in our minds, and we see God when we see people skillfully protecting the quality of life for as many people as possible.
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