Dogma?

Recently I came across a political thread in which there were many of one group of political activists putting down another group of political activists by claiming that their views are dogmatic and only based on the faith.  I wont go into which groups but I pointed out something that seemed to quiet the discussion further.  Views are only dogmatic when they belong to the other person. I was surprised when that worked because honestly its a variation on the Yogic Yama of Satya or truthfulness that I have stated here several times.  Truth is always subjective.  However wording it in this manner seemed to get the point across in a language they were accustomed to.  But what is Dogma?

Dogma is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. It serves as part of the primary basis of an ideology or belief system, and it cannot be changed or discarded without affecting the very system’s paradigm, or the ideology itself. The term can refer to acceptable opinions of philosophers or philosophical schools, public decrees, religion, or issued decisions of political authorities.

The term derives from Greek δόγμα “that which seems to one; opinion or belief” and that from δοκέω (dokeo), “to think, to suppose, to imagine”. In the first century CE, dogma came to signify laws or ordinances adjudged and imposed upon others.The plural is either dogmas or dogmata, from Greek δόγματα. The term “dogmatics” is used as a synonym for systematic theology, as in Karl Barth’s defining textbook of neo-orthodoxy, the 14-volume Church Dogmatics.

“Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”
― Joseph Campbell

 

Remember, seek not what divides us this year, instead find what it is that unites us.  We are all individuals who are interdependent on one another and we need each other.  From an American political point of view;  We need Conservatives to remind us not to give away the store, and we need Liberals to remind us not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Compassion is key!

A final note: Science is not a religion. Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.  There is always data from the experiments to back it up, however when you cherry pick your data you can interpet things to be however you want and people often find it easy to manipulate with this pseudo-science.  Take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt.