世界文化和不可知论的政见——一个致力于跨文化融洽交流的计划

就世界文化课程内容的具体设置,及联合大学与传媒以更好地实现课程积极目标等诸问题进行探讨.通过多层次的论证强调指出人们始终持有相异或相冲突的宗教、哲学以及意识形态,尚没有一种普世真理足以使世间所有人心悦诚服.即便是广泛接受和运用中的科学知识,其发展亦受阻于人类本身的局限而不可确定.尽管科学在前沿问题研究上竞争激烈,也仍然无法回答和消除所有的问题和差异.因此,从全球或泛人类立场观之,人类现有的知识与理解能力具有不确定和不完整的特点,而这样的特点浸透在所有的具体文化信仰之中.认识到共同局限性的人们--尤其是政界的领导人--亟需摒弃极端的文化分离思想,以更宽容理解的心态思考和行动,这样才能避免不同民族及不同国家间的不断冲突和互相伤害.

World Culture and Agnosticism

This paper sets forth in some detail the contents of a proposed set of courses dealing with world cultures, and suggests how these courses might be implemented in common by universities around the world in cooperation with international communication media. One message to e emphasized in these courses is that various groups of humans have held, and continue to hold conflicting religious, philosophical, and ideological beliefs, the validity of none of which can be established on a basis compellingly persuasive to all interested parties. And even scientific knowledge, which is widely persuasive, evolves, remains ever incomplete to an indeterminate degree, is characterized by competing interpretations on its frontiers, and is in any event incapable of resolving religious, philosophical, and ideological differences. Thus from a global, panhuman standpoint there is an inconclusiveness and incompleteness of human knowledge and understanding, and this is the one spiritual and intellectual situation that overarches all particular beliefs. Those individuals-including, importantly, political leaders-who consciously grasp this commonality of the human condition, should, one may suppose, be in a favored position to think and act, not as culturally separatist extremists, but simply as earthlings, and thereby to avoid the kinds of conflict so often productive of mutually destructive activity among the peoples and nations of the world.