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understanding religious texts and religion on several levels: surface, resonances, stories and explanations about the religion, and through all of these, glimpses of a deeper meaning to our lives. Gnostics, Buddhists, Christian mystics, Sufis, plus many more groups that have delved into religious meaning, all have similar understandings of religious texts and religion.

Ken Wilber has researched the mystical traditions of the major world religions, as well as fields such as psychology, physics, and philosophy. He finds that these areas, at their hearts, have more in common than they have differences. (See his A Brief History of Everything, for example.) He suggests that social science, science, philosophy, mysticism, art, and literature provide different perspectives on the same truths. He actually goes further, suggesting that at their core, their "truths" are more similar than different, despite their different perspectives, methods, and languages for speaking of "truth."

Truth is often found in fiction and fiction in truth. Why do we worry so much about the "truth" of religion? Religion holds truths that don't depend on facts. Facts often don't reveal truth in and of themselves without interpretation. All the world is subjective, given that we can only know it through our own analysis and interpretation. There are many systems for learning about the world around us and for learning about each other. The more we combine these systems to discover the nature of their core "truths," and the similarities that suggest "truth," the better.

Religion: truth or fiction? Yes, both. So what?

Learn more about this author, Michael Deqel.
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