About this website

Our Statement of Beliefs

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The importance of faith/belief statements:

We feel that every denomination, para-church organization, religious group, and religious web site should consider creating a statement of belief or faith and displaying it prominently. This is particularly important among Christian groups who may use the term "Christian" to refer to only the Roman Catholic Church, or only to Evangelical Protestantism, or to the full range of Christian denominations and beliefs, or to some other subset of the religion. Quite often, when we visit a Christian web site for the first time, we have to search around among its articles to find out exactly what Christian belief system they follow and promote on their web site.

That said, the following is our attempt at a statement of belief. Please be sure to read the footnotes at the bottom of the essay because they include some important qualifications and exceptions.

OCRT Statement of Belief:

We are a multi-faith group. As of 2009-NOV, we consist of one Atheist, Agnostic, Christian, Wiccan and Zen Buddhist. Thus, the OCRT staff lack agreement on almost all theological matters, such as belief in a supreme being, the nature of God, interpretation of the Bible and other holy texts, whether life after death exists, what form the afterlife may take, etc.

We do believe:

	In the inherent worth of every person. People are worthy of respect, support, and caring simply because they are human. Unfortunately, we have not reached a consensus on when human life, in the form of an ovum and spermatozoon, becomes a human person. On this matter, our lack of agreement mirrors that of society at large.
	In working towards a culture that is relatively free of discrimination on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, physical disability, age, body shape, etc.
	In the sanctity of the human person. We oppose the use of torture and cruel or unusual punishment including the death penalty. 1
	In the importance of democracy within religious, political and other structures.
	In the separation of religion and state; and the freedoms of speech, association, and expression. 2
	That the systems of truth that we have studied on the topics of morals, ethics, and religious belief are often considered absolute within various religions and secular belief systems. However, they are obviously relative because they vary greatly by culture, by religion, and over time. 3
	In the generally positive influence that most religions have had on their followers and on society. 4
	In the importance of individual believers determining evil influences and policies that currently exist within their chosen faith group, and strongly advocate for their correction. If change is impossible, they should consider withholding financial support or leaving the group.
	In the importance of education. We believe that people are not truly educated unless they have studied the world's major religions and ethical systems. They need to learn of both the good and evil impacts that each has had on society. 5

About accuracy in our essays:

We will attempt to overcome our biases on each topic that we describe, by explaining each point of view carefully, respectfully and objectively. To this end, we have many of our essays reviewed by persons familiar with the issues who represent all sides of each topic. We encourage readers to Email us about any errors that they find. We do not regard any essay as fixed or complete.

We believe that our website is unique among religious websites in that it contains an errata page where we record errors that have been detected and corrected from among our 5,078 essays and menus (as of 2009-NOV-17).

About our use of the BCE/CE date notation:

We abandoned use of the traditional AD/BC notation for identifying years. After a long debate, we made the decision to use the religiously neutral CE/BCE notation which we feel is less offensive to non-Christians.

Related essay on this web site:

	OCRT purposes, history, etc.
	Who we are; our funding sources; etc.

Footnotes, mainly about exceptions:

1. However, like the rest of North American society, we have not been able to reach a consensus about when human life, in the form of a spermatozoon and an ovum, becomes a human person deserving civil rights.
    
2. However we have not been able to reach a consensus about the age at which an individual should fully enjoy these freedoms. We also recognize that some of these freedoms should have limits. For example, we do not feel that, in most cases, parents should be allowed to let their children die if medical treatment will give a sick child a chance to live. We do not feel that individuals should be free to advocate genocide or falsely yell "fire" in a crowded theatre.
    
3. We have been frequently criticized for our lack of belief in absolute morality.
    
4. Exceptions are:
    

   A handful of destructive cults which have endangered the lives of their members.   Those faith groups who actively promote discrimination and oppression on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and similar grounds.

5. They need to obtain a balanced understand of the positive and negative contributions of religion: the religious sources that inspired Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and Mother Teresa to commit their life to serving a hurting humanity. They need to learn of the impressive contributions that religions have made to the pursuit of philosophical and scientific truth, the alleviation of human suffering, the improvement of political systems, the provision of educational opportunities -- the list is almost endless. But they also need to learn the shadow side of religion: how religious beliefs have contributed to hatred, intolerance, unjustified discrimination, and suffering as well as:
    

   Mass murders and genocides in such places as Nazi Germany, Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Sudan and countless other countries.   Historical support for human slavery, oppression of women, oppression of sexual minorities, female genital mutilation, etc.   Historical opposition to medical advances.

Copyright © 2006 to 2009 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Originally posted: 2006-JAN-21
Latest update: 2009-NOV-15
Author: B.A. Robinson

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