Once there was an astronomer speaking on the subject of earth. He described the ways of gravity and centripetal force and how they keep the planet in position in space. Afterwards a little old lady walked up to him.

“You’ve got it all wrong,” she declared. “The earth does not hang in mid-air. It rests on the back of a turtle.”

The astronomer, learned man that he was, calmly pointed out the problem that then there would be nothing for the turtle to rest on.

“Oh, you just don’t understand,” she replied. “It’s turtles all the way down!”

Confucius was not so much a religious leader as a cultural reformer. And as a reformer, he did an incredibly remarkable job. In his time, China was plagued by "Rival baronies left to their own devices, creating a precise parallel to conditions in Palestine in the period of the Judges: 'In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes'" (Smith, 160).

I recently attended a Creation Biology Seminar with speakers Dr. Joe Francis, microbiologist, and Dr. Todd Wood, baraminologist. With the Fall and the Flood as their theme, they covered such extensive topics as the baraminology of Lantana flowers and the possible uses of viruses in a Pre-Fall world. They went into great detail on the various research projects they are conducting within their fields, and it was honestly quite exciting!

“Entering Zen is like stepping through Alice’s looking glass. One finds oneself in a topsy-turvy wonderland where everything seems quite mad – charmingly mad, perhaps, but mad all the same. It is a world of bewildering dialogues, obscure conundrums, and abrupt non sequiters, all carried off in the most urbane, cheerful, innocent style imaginable.” (129)

All major religions have ideas on authority, ritual, metaphysics, tradition, ‘grace’ and mystery. But when Buddha began his religion, he felt that the first step was to dispel these common ideas, especially the Hindu concepts of them.

Are you ready to have all your spiritual questions, goals, hopes and epiphanies realized? All you have to do is answer this question:

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

What, impossible? To reach enlightenment you must break free from the mind’s logical chains and the dichotomies of possible and impossible. This, at least, is what one Buddhist sect teaches. The original Buddha had slightly different ideas – but they still provided an open door to this thought.

The greatest problem for Hinduism is its lack of a moral foundation. Recall that in a Hindu universe, good and evil are equal opposites, created both by the mind of Brahma. In such a worldview, it cannot be said that there is anything wrong with evil.

“That Hinduism has shared her lands for centuries with Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians may help explain a final idea that comes out more clearly through her than through other great religions; namely, her conviction that the various major religions are alternate paths to the same goal. To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like saying God can be found in this room but not the next…” (Smith, 73)

The Hindu worldview is spiritualistic but not especially relativistic. Before entering the realm of the Hindu concept of the universe, there are two important beliefs to be considered: the law of Karma and reincarnation.