Fundamentalism, in and of itself, is benign and can be personally beneficial, but the anger and prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain.
Ricky RayGod is not a person; God is manifestation itself. We think that God is a superhuman person, but God is not a person. He is not a subject. We can never experience God in a subject/object experience. God is what makes a subject/object experience possible. We can never see God or experience God as separate from ourselves. God is a being but there is no division.
Ricky RayThe difficulty in today's world is our technology and science has outrun our theological advances. The reason for that is in technology and science, we have had the courage to ask the single question that theology has been afraid to ask: "Is it possible that there's something I don't know about this, the knowing of which would change everything?"
Ricky RayDarwinian evolution is slow and gradual, step by step. Such an evolution can explain micro-evolution but not macro-evolution. For example, how did the eye evolve? The idea behind Darwinism is that organisms adapt, and that nature selects only those genetic changes which are the mutations that serve a good purpose for adaptation. So taken this way, the eye cannot develop gradually because one-thousandth or one-millionth of an eye would be of no value for survival. So generally this question rules out Darwinism as an adequate theory for macro-evolution.
Ricky RayHow do you get out of a belief system? First you have to destruct the belief system. Traditionally, the teacher is supposed to remove your ignorance. But when you remove ignorance, you start with removing what is causing the ignorance, which is your belief system. So the teacher's job indeed is to first deconstruct your belief system. And then to give you inspiration so you'll go out to create a path to discover what is spirit, what is beauty, what is love, because these things nobody can teach you. So teaching really should be a demolition job.
Ricky Ray