The Words of Hyung Jin Moon From 2010
|
|
The Words of Hyung Jin Moon From 2010 |
Guten Morgen! I hope, I said that right? It's actually quite freezing in Germany. So maybe we can open some windows and really get cold, to stay awake. (Laughter) I am heading to Great Britain today and then back to Korea. So, we have some Brits here? (Cheers) All right, all right! We are very grateful to be able to come to Europe at this time.
Actually we never planned to come to Europe, at this time, because I feel that I haven't finished all my work that I have to do in Korea first. From the very beginning people requested, "Please do a world tour". But I felt from the beginning, it is not appropriate for me to do a world tour. I felt that I have to first make real results that I can show. So we worked in Korea and we are able to turn around the media. We are now able to be fully self-sufficient as a church, which means that we don't receive any support from our brothers and sisters in Japan. We are actually at a stage now where we can support them. Just a little bit, but it is so much different from the situation that was before. So, we are very proud of that.
As you know, the church in Korea in 1970, as in many countries, had nationwide about 16,000 members. That was a lot of members. There were no real big mega churches at that time, so that was a huge congregation that Father had. But then by 2005 we had about 11,000 members attending Sunday service. So as you see, we did not even get one new member as a movement. We didn't grow. We didn't just stagnate, we grew negatively. So we've lost members. This is, of course, not good. We had to address this problem. There were very serious changes that had to be done.
I am very happy to say that after about a year and a half of making systematic changes, we are becoming transparent as a church and strengthening the organization. I am very grateful for my brother Kook Jin hyung who helped me greatly in that task. We went from 11,000 members all the way up to 23,000 in about a year and a half. We are very proud that the Unification Church is now a growing church in Korea. It's now a much more popular church than what it was in the past. The media has very kindly helped us. You can see that they were honest and they were moving in a trustworthy direction. There is a lot of exciting things going on in Korea, but we are still not anywhere near where we have to be.
So honestly speaking, I did not feel I was prepared or even worthy to go around and talk to our brothers and sisters around the world simply because I have not yet fulfilled what Father asked me to do, which was to increase the membership to 21,000 even in Seoul city. We have not yet done that, we are only around 3,000 members. Therefore we have to go through many different stages. When you know the Korean situation, the witnessing has really subsided over the last 30 years. The Korean church really started to collapse ever since Father went and focused on the world providence. So we had to address some of these problems. I am very happy and very proud to see the Korean brothers and sisters stepping up witnessing everyday on the street just like in Japan. They also work jobs and have children, but they make time to witness everyday. This is really remarkable, because we never had this in Korea for about 30 years. We didn't have this kind of situation. I am very proud of them. I love going to the frontline with them and visit their homes. This is really one of the things I find great hope in. Particularly with the Korean church, it is now broadminded.
You are all basically in college, right, or at the age to attend college? (Addressing workshop participants) When I entered into college, I went to a Catholic Jesuit school that was in Fairfield, Connecticut. There I met Catholic Priests and I didn't know what I was going to study. In America you have a core curriculum, so it's not like, I guess, in many other places, where you can just focus in on a major. You cannot first focus on a major; you have to do your core curriculum first. Then when you're a Junior, you can choose your major. So I was doing my courses of philosophy and religion during the time that I lost my brother [Young Jin Moon]. I really struggled with that. I had a big time of struggle with that because he was just a year older than me. He was such an excellent person. He was such a mature individual for his age. I was not, on the other hand. I was arrogant at this time. He was so humble, he was so smart. He was really the exact opposite of me. I never did well in school from a young age. I always ran away from class. I hated reading. I don't think I read one book in High School. I hated school.
When I met the Dalai Lama I told him that when I was young I couldn't relate to Jesus because Jesus was from a carpenters family etc. etc. We grew up in the Training Center East Garden. It is nineteen acres but we were not allowed to leave. Normal kids can ride their bike and go visit their neighbor but we can't leave the property. If we went to school, a friend's house or even McDonald's, there was always a security man following us around. They were great guys and I love them. But you know, it's very, very strange when you go to a friend's house and the security man is sitting there. They had to watch us. This was not just because they wanted to be intrusive, but because there were real threats made towards True Parents and our family. We received death threats, not personally, but on the property. This security system was made during the hot times in America in the 1980s when there was a lot of persecution. When I grew up it was much less. It was not like what my elder brothers and sisters had to go through. But still we had that system and we couldn't leave the property.
So I told Dalai Lama, I could never relate to Jesus. But when I studied Buddhism, I could sort of relate with Buddha, because he wasn't allowed to leave his house either. Then when he finally went out and saw sickness and death, this was a turning point for him in his life. When my brother passed away, this was also a turning point for me in my life. I never imagined that when he was 21 years old, he would pass away, I never thought that. I thought we would live forever, we would live together, be happy etc. So when he passed, I really started struggling. I had many questions especially about what is the purpose of life, worldwide issues etc. That's when I really started studying religion. Like I mentioned before, I had the chance to study philosophy, at Fairfield (College Preparatory School, in Connecticut), but because they didn't have an East Asian department, I transferred to Harvard. That's where I started studying East Asian Studies compared with Western Studies. I really focused on Christianity and Buddhism, but of course you have to study other things as well, like Confucianism and other religions.
Even though I studied those things, there always was a question: "Is it really plausible?" I know we hear it many times, all the time, but "Is it really plausible, is it rational and is it intelligent to believe that there is a God?" This was the real question. For example, in some forms of Buddhism, particularly in Western Buddhism, a lot of them really do not think of God or have questions about God. I felt this kind of thinking in the community, also notions about different types of Cosmologies, Metaphysics, and Reincarnation. How should one deal with all these kinds of Cosmologies, etc.? So the question is, "Is there a God, is it actually plausible, that there is a God?" This question was very important for me because if you can have any meaning derive from the Principle, the first question is, "Is there a God?", right? If there is no God, then nothing in the Principle has meaning. From Adam and Eve, to the prophets, to the Messiah, to Jesus, to the Purpose of Creation; none of this actually has any purpose, if there is no God.
This was a very big struggle for me and I didn't find the answer when I studied Christianity or Buddhism. But I started studying philosophy, as well. What we have to understand about a certain philosophy, is that in the 1900s, particularly in the Western academies, all universities across the country and most of the professors of those great universities were all atheists or agnostics. They were and are influenced by the great works of Nietzsche, Hegel, Feuerbach and Kant. The Divinity School of Harvard was very Kantian about ten or twenty years ago. But there is a big shift now in philosophy, which is amazing because ever since the 90s and the 2000s, now there are incredible minds, who are professors and theistic philosophers in some of the best universities in the world.
For example, in Notre Dame, as well as, the Talbot School of Theology in California has William Lane Craig, an excellent theistic philosopher. You have people now that are not satisfied with the atheistic view of philosophy and they've offered a kind of opposing view in a theistic manner. This kind of philosophy is extremely helpful for me to study as a Unificationist. In order for us to be proud of our teaching, Divine Principle, and our community; it is God and the True Parents, whom he has sent that binds us all together. This question was so important for me.
Do you know the basic starting point of philosophy, the basic and first question? It is very simple: "Why is there anything at all? Why is there something? Why isn't there nothing? Why is there something in the universe? Why am I here? Why is the universe here? Why is anything here?" That's the basic question of philosophy. All philosophy starts from this studying point. There are many people we hear in the modern world who say, "Oh you are a fool, when you believe in God. That's old stuff, you gotta be more modern. Believing in God is very irrational, it's unscientific, and it is unintelligent. Your church says, 'God, God, God!' and Christianity says, 'God!' We are in the modern world now; we have to graduate from that! We know science; we've been to the moon and back, etc. We have plenty of reasons to believe that God is not there."
Studying and understanding theistic philosophy helped me to come to the realization that actually believing in how God is quite intelligent, extremely rational and very scientific. When we look at the basic starting point of philosophy, "Why is there something?"; we know that from nothing, can only come nothing. Something cannot come from nothing. From nothing comes nothing. So if something exists, then we know that it can exist in really two ways. It can exist necessarily like a number, which is what mathematicians believe. That is without any necessary condition. Even abstract numbers or abstract concepts can exist necessarily.
The second way something can come into existence is by an external cause like a mountain, a human being or a house because these come into existence by external causes. We all know that the most plausible reason for the universe's existence or the existence of anything is not because of its internal nature. Something like a number cannot create a house. A number cannot create a tree or the universe. We know the most plausible reason for the existence of the universe has to be an external cause. It has to have some type of an external cause.
This was the starting point for me. This is known in philosophy as the Argument of Existence. When we look at this point, then we can see that the most plausible explanation for our universe here is an external immaterial cause. It must be beyond time, beyond the temporal world, which is also called an eternal cause; which is also a powerful cause and a personal agent.
The Universe started with the Big Bang and it will come to an End The question will be, "How do we arrive at these points. How do we get to a personal agent?" We can understand that there is an external cause to the universe; that it comes into existence, and all the main stream science shows us that it does. The Big Bang occurred approximately 13.7 billion years ago -- then we can concur or agree that all of the space came into existence at the time of the Big Bang. If it is an external cause, then it has to be greater than all the matter in the universe, because at the Big Bang all the matter of the universe was in a singularity, which then expanded very quickly into the universe. Therefore, if there is an external cause of the Big Bang, which has to be, because from nothing cannot come something; and it has to be immaterial, because it is beyond all the matter of the universe, it created all of that. It also has to be beyond all time, because it started time. Time began at that point. Beyond time is another way to say "eternal". It also has to be incredibly powerful, because if you created something like the universe, you have to be quite powerful. We know that it's a personal agent because something appeared out of absolutely nothing.
What we see is also a personal agent because there is a choice in life. Something can't appear out of nothing without something that is an external, immaterial, eternal and powerful cause or without it choosing to create this entire thing within the dimension of time and space. We know that it has personal choice or agency, which then can also be seen as personal. In many types of belief systems views God or Heaven as an impersonal reality. But we can logically say or rationally say that this would be less plausible. It's more plausible that it's a personal agent which has made the choice to create within the dimension of time and space.
If you can understand this, then you can start getting a hint, why many or most people, who believe in God say: 'God is!'. You believe God is the external cause of the universe, you believe God is immaterial or beyond all matter. We believe that He is eternal; we believe that He is great and powerful and we also believe that He is a personal agent.
There are, of course, other models in the modern world that atheists have been developing, for example, the Multiverse Model, first mentioned in 1895 by William James. The Vilenkin Model from Alexander Vilekin showed in 2003 that the Multiverse Model cannot go on forever. It has to have a starting point.
Many atheists also believe that the universe is eternal, because that is one way, to say, that there is no cause. This is one attempt to try and say that there is no beginning point. The Universe has always existed. Some cosmologists also believe this. Some Indian philosophical traditions and also some Buddhist traditions believe that the universe has what is known as a beginningless end and an endless beginning. That means that you have been reborn constantly, you've been infinitely reborn and you've been all things, all types of species, all types of beings. Therefore you have had an infinite number of lives. It also means that there is no end to the universe. But we know that there is a starting point scientifically, which is called the Big Bang. We also know that there will be an end to this universe. It's called the heat death of the universe. Trillions and trillions of years from now all the suns energies of all the galaxies will burn out and the universe will suffer a heat death. So we know that the universe, from a scientific view, began and it will die. That's a very big challenge towards systems of cosmology that believe in reincarnation.
Another logical challenge comes from the moment which we can experience right now. Can we experience this moment right now? [Yes] Are you sure? [Yes] Okay, we are experiencing this moment right now, right? Think about it. Before this moment what was there? A previous moment, right? Before the previous moment, what was there? A previous moment. And what was there then? A previous moment, right? And this goes on. If this went on for infinity -- previous moment, previous moment, previous moment, previous moment, previous, previous, previous, … all the way into infinity; I could never arrive at the present moment. Do you understand that? If there are infinite previous moments, I cannot arrive at the present moment. You cannot come to the present moment because time is temporal. Time moves as a sequence. Therefore, if there are infinite past moments and infinite life times, then you would never be able to live now or even come to this moment. These are very logical, philosophical and also scientific challenges towards systems of thought or belief that the universe is eternal. We can see that the most plausible explanation for the universe is that there is an external cause; that it's immaterial, eternal, powerful and it must come from a personal agent.
Who has a computer in the room? Who has a car? Oh, he's a lucky man, over there. So you have cars and computers. Did one person design your computer? [Yeah] Are you sure? Did just one person design your computer? Wait a moment, think about it. One person did not make your computer. You have the designer, the programmer and the person that makes the chip, right? You have a whole team. Okay, let's say, that the universe was created by an external, eternal, powerful and personal cause. How do you know it's just one, why can't it be many? Why can't it be a design team? How come it can't be a whole bunch of Gods who made the entire universe, which some traditions believe?
There is something called Occam's Razor in philosophy. It says that if you have two or more hypothetical answers to a question, the simpler hypothesis will be the more likely possibility. If you have possible answers or various hypotheses for a particular question at hand, the simpler one is the more economic one. Therefore the simpler one is the more plausible. Then if it is possible that one God, who is all-powerful, can create the universe, it's not necessary for it to be twenty Gods or fifty Gods. It's more plausible, that it is just one God.
When you study science you can understand that the universe is super, super fine tuned. It is unfathomable. This universe is so super fine tuned in its existence. If the universe is fine tuned, there are three possibilities for this occurrence.
1) It is a physical necessity.
2)
It is by chance.
3) It is by design.
The first one is physical necessity, which means that the universe has to be the way it is. Does it have to be this way? Some of the most brilliant physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists in the world will tell you that there is nothing in physics that says that this universe has to be the way it is. It could be many, many other ways. The fact that it can be many other possibilities says that it is not due to physical necessity that the universe is the way it is.
The second one is that it is by chance, which is obviously believed by a lot of atheists. As you know, there are a lot of atheists these days and they are very popular. There are the cultural relativists, religious relativists, atheists, and moral relativists. It is very popular and I am sure that many of you hear their philosophies on TV or in the internet. You can find them everywhere. So, the second one is that the universe just popped up by chance into existence. It is a very small probability, but things happen. Unlikely things happen, you know? Some guy gets hit on the head by a falling brick. That's very unlikely, but it happens, right? But we should understand the likelihood of this.
All of you have probably heard of Stephen Hawking. He talks about the first second after the Big Bang. He says that the universe has a certain speed that it is moving at. The fact is that if the speed of the universe is slowed down by even as much as a hundred thousand millionth of a second; it would collapse into a fire ball. Nothing would exist. If it is even a little bit faster, the speed of the universe would be too fast for anything to form. If you want to create planets that human beings can live on, you first have to create stars. The planetary formation comes from the star formation.
The likelihood of the formation of a star in the universe is one over one followed by one hundred zeroes, followed by another billion zeroes, followed by another billion zeroes. That's the likelihood of stars forming in the universe. That is real mathematics. It is literally impossible that stars and planets should form. So the universe has constants, it has things that don't change. These constants are, for example, the gravitational force, the weak force, the mass of the electron, the proton, the neutron. These things don't change. If they change by a little bit, you couldn't create molecules. There are constants in the universe. It is highly unlikely that you will hit someone on the head with something very small that you throw from a tall building. The universe popping up from nothing is next to impossible. Some people will claim that we are just putting our own meaning into that -- interpreting it in our own way.
Let's give another example. If I have a deck of cards and I deal you a Royal Flush. Is getting a royal flush the same mathematical probability, as getting any other set of cards? It's the exact same probability. It is no different. But when we get a Royal Flush, we think it's fantastic. Right? But it is actually the same probability, as getting any other set of cards. Many atheistic scientists will say, we got the royal flush, we got the universe. But don't try to pretend that it is special. It's a royal flush and that probability is the same as any other set. Do you see what I mean?
But this is also problematic. William Dembski, who is a philosopher and a scientist, wrote something called 'The Design Inference'. He showed that when you look at something of design, you have to look at both probability and pattern. This is what the atheists always forget. They only look at the probability and then they say, "Oh, it may be likely." They forget to look at the pattern, as well. For example, I am playing cards with this gentleman here. What's your name? (Alex) Okay, I am playing cards with Alex. Every time I give Alex a set of cards he gets a whole random set of cards. But every time I give myself cards, I get Royal Flushes.
Every time! If that was happening, wouldn't you think that's a little strange, Alex? Every time I give you cards, you get a whole messed up bunch of cards. Every time I give myself cards, I get Royal Flushes, every time. Now, wouldn't you assume, that maybe something is fishy about this? You would. Why would you do that, because the probability is the same? The probability of him getting a mixed set, and me getting royal flushes is actually the same. It's the pattern that tips you. The pattern shows you: "Wait a minute! This guy is deciding this to happen!" Do you see what I mean? It's the combination of the pattern plus the probability.
Let's pretend that this piece of tissue paper is very fine Chinese silk, okay? Very fine Chinese silk. I am trying to sell you this in the market place. "Only thlee dalla…" [With a Chinese accent] I love Chinese. I can even speak Chinese. Let's now say, there is a little problem with that piece of silk. [Ripping a part off] You can't see at the moment that there is a little piece that's missing because my thumb is conveniently covering the hole. I know it's not the perfect tissue but I am showing it to you and telling you that it's great, fantastic. It's only three dollars, okay? The probability of my thumb or my hand being on this part of the silk is the same as it is being on any part of the silk. You see? But the fact that it is over the part that is ripped will tip you off to the fact, that maybe I am trying to cheat you. Or maybe I am "designing" my hand to be over that piece. You see what I mean? You will be suspicious.
It's the same thing when we look at the universe from a mathematical standpoint. The probability is unfathomably small and literally impossible for the universe to just pop into existence; like we described with all the super billions of zeroes. Even if that was possible, it's not only the high probability; it's also the pattern of the constants that exists in the universe that you have to combine.
We went to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp yesterday. We saw one of the real horrors of the 20th century. We saw that 56,000 people died in that one little tiny camp. 56,000 people were killed. The next real argument is a moral argument and whether or not there is a moral objective truth. Objective truths are good or evil whether or not people believe in it or not, there is still right or wrong. If moral objective truth exists, God exists. That's number one. Number two: moral objective truths do exist. So number three: God must exist. This is called a deductive argument. This is an argument, where if one and two are correct, the third one must be correct as well. That is called a deductive argument. It leads directly to number three.
Many evolutionists and atheists believe that morality is the product of evolution. It's a tool for surviving. For example, when we were out in the savannah competing with lions and leopards, we learned as a human species, after we separated ourselves from the chimps and the apes, "Hey, wait a minute, maybe it is more advantageous, to not kill each other. We have plenty of lions and tigers around here. Let's not kill each other. Let's not steal from each other and let's not rape each other. Let's not do these things to each other. Let's work together. Let's make social contracts, so we can survive as a species and can be stronger and win over other types of predators."
You probably heard something like this or at least some kind of formulation close to this, right? This is the belief that evolution creates morality. There are very grave dangers with this kind of thinking. Extremely dangerous things come through this type of thinking. The problem with this type of thinking is that if you believe that morality is a product of evolution, then something like rape is not necessarily bad. It is just socially taboo but it cannot considered to be an evil act. It's just socially looked down upon. You see what I mean? If you believe that human beings have created morality out of a process to survive in evolution, then you cannot say rape is wrong. You have no philosophical starting point to say, rape is wrong. You cannot say that sending children into prostitution is wrong. Maybe you can say that it's not advantages behavior or that it's taboo, but you cannot say that it is fundamentally wrong.
This is exactly the problem that we see in the 20th century. I have debated this with many people. There was one kid that said, "You people who believe in God, you create all the wars. You did the crusades, you did the inquisitions and you burned the witches. That's all you people who believe in God do, you crazy people. Don't you want to be modern? What's wrong with you, believing this kind of thing?" You have probably heard something like this in your life.
However this logic is problematic. During the Spanish inquisition 350 years ago about 2,000 people died. That's bad. Over the course of the centuries, during the Crusades, thousands of people lost their lives in the name of God. That's a fact. Jihadists also lose their life, in the name of God. During the Salem Witch Trials in America 18 people were burnt to death because they were seen as witches. This also happened in Europe, right?
Let's look at the modern day period in the 20th century. Look at the atheistic regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Take a look at Cambodia and Pol Pot, as well as, Castro and Kim Jung Il. This is not about 18 people dying. This is not 2,000 people, over 350 years. Just in Europe alone, within 20 years, over 40 million dead. That's a body of corpses higher than the Himalaya Mountains in twenty years. In Pol Pot alone, during three years, 2.5 million people died. Did you know this? This is reality. This is the modern period.
Therefore, if you, as somebody who believes in God, must be made responsible for all the deaths of all the crusades, the Jihadists and etc., then by the same logic, atheists must be made responsible for the tens of millions that died in the modern period. It is the same logic. Can you understand? The problem with a lot of atheists is that they don't think so much about what they are saying. A very famous atheist, Christopher Hitchens, said: 'But, ya, ya, ya, you people who believe in God, you kill in God's name.' I am sorry, but he doesn't know history very well.
In the communist manifest, you can read it, it is pretty clear: "We are here, to make a new man, a new utopia; we are here to destroy and get rid of any remnant of religion." It is very blatantly idealistic. They kill in the name of atheism. If then we have this type of moral relativism or we have this type of idea, then we can look at Hitler from this aspect. I saw his work yesterday. I saw the devastation that he did in the concentration camp. It is absolutely unfathomable. I hope the workshop has a chance to see a concentration camp and see that it really happened. Hitler was influenced by Nietzsche, who was his real power, his key philosophy. He was also influenced by Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest. You can see those two strains of thought in Hitler's thinking. Nietzsche was an amazing poetic philosopher.
There are really three levels of philosophy. There is the theoretical philosophy, where you can debate ideas. There is artistic philosophy, which is an art. Many poets or musicians don't know they are doing philosophy, but they are actually doing philosophy with their music, right? Modern pop artists are doing philosophy. They are promoting a certain type of philosophy with their music. The third level is called practical philosophy or applied philosophy. That is when you start applying the theoretical or even artistic philosophies in reality. What happens? When we see someone like Nietzsche, it was so beautiful on paper and on the level of theoretical philosophy; and written so artistically. The problem is when you start applying it like Hitler did. He applied it in his own way.
Nietzsche believed that there is no God. He proclaimed that God is dead. I heard a nice story once about him. I told this when I was in Jerusalem. I heard that in Nietzsche's office, behind his beautiful big desk, he had a big picture frame on the wall that said "God is Dead". He would look at that and say, "I am great, I am brilliant." When he died and had to meet his maker. He came up to St. Peter, who said, "Can you wait here? You have to wait in this room, just briefly, just wait in this room in the office." He then realized it was God's office. He had a beautiful big table and on the wall behind that table was a beautiful poster that said, "Nietzsche is dead".
Nietzsche believed that morality or religion is for the dumb people; that it is a herd mentality and that basic human beings are ignorant and basically like cows. Therefore, you have to herd them into a general morality. He goes on to explain that here are also some extraordinary people known as the "Übermensch", the super men or the super extraordinary people. He, of course, believed that he was one of them. These super men can discover their own nature. They can go into themselves and discover their own nature and create their own laws. It is this type of philosophy that is so dangerous. What happens? You don't have any objective moral truth. You can start making your own rules.
This was the problem with Hitler. He started making his own rules. "God is dead. I am now God. I determine what will be done." He believed that he was an "Übermensch" and he ended up killing millions and millions of people. This is the problem with not understanding that there is a moral objective truth in the world; that there is clearly a right and wrong. Sending children into prostitution is wrong. Whether or not a world culture believes it, or I believe it; it doesn't matter, it is wrong. Do you see what I mean?
I read an incredible paper called, "Rape on Andromeda". This was a paper that said, "Let's say there is a planet, a fictional planet and there are aliens that live on it. But these aliens, in their culture, in their language, think that rape is fine. You can rape each other, no problem. It's just their culture." If you are a moral or cultural relativist, you will say, "We just have to understand their culture. It's a different culture and morality depends on culture. Different cultures, different moralities. We can understand it." In this paper those aliens came and conquered the earth and started raising human beings as cattle. They started eating them as beef and also started raping them. The aliens came and started raping children, women, men, whatever, because it's fine in their culture. If you are a moral or cultural relativist, you see that different cultures have different morals. "My culture says no rape -- you say rape -- fine, no problem." You see the problem? When they come and start living out their culture, you can't say anything to them. You have no moral or philosophical starting point, to say "You are committing acts of evil! Stop!" You see what I mean?
This is the problem with having the starting point from an atheistic viewpoint. You have no objective moral truth. If objective moral truth exists, God must exist. Why? God is the objective moral truth. He is what is good. Because he is what is good, we don't do what is bad because we have to resemble His nature. So, we don't kill somebody because it's socially taboo, or not because it is evolutionary advantageous to us only. But we don't kill somebody because it's not in the nature of a morally objective truth, a good truth. You see? It's not in that nature. So, we don't do it because we want to resemble Him. There are very real reasons to believe that there is a God.
The next reason is that you can know God through experience. You guys are really feeling it at this time, right? You're also experiencing challenges. Atheists will say to you, "You're crazy! You are insane! You people are having experiences but some other people are also having experiences with Jesus and with Krishna. Your experience is relative. You can't trust your experience." You see what I mean? You have probably heard something like this. The only problem with that is that if they want to say that to us, they have to first negate every single one of the arguments that I just gave you. They not only have to disprove them, they have to erect a new set of positive arguments that support atheism. Then you can tell us that when I experience something of God, then you can say to me that I am irrational. If they cannot do that, if they cannot refute and destroy every single one of the things that we just talked about and they cannot in their place erect positive statements, we are perfectly in our rational rights to believe our experience to be true. Because we have plenty of good reasons to believe that God exists.
That's why I am very happy and proudly a Unificationist who believes in God. Let's give it up for God one time (Applause). Don't let anybody tell you or make the hint that because you are a Unificationist or because you believe in God that you are dumb, because this is not true. We are not Unificationists because we are dumb. We are Unificationists because we are quite intelligent. We are Unificationists because we know what we believe and we are proud of what we believe because we know God exists. Then you can understand that as a Unificationist it is our duty to stand up for our faith because it is our human right. We should never let anybody intimidate us in terms of not saying what we believe. It is our human right in a democratic society. It is also our right of religious freedom.
There are many in the academy and other places that will try to intimidate you to not say who you are and not believe in what you do. They will try to scare you into feeling that you can't say anything. But we have to understand that it is because of that situation that, for example, in Japan for the last 30 years, our brothers' and sisters' human rights have been totally stripped away. I'm sure you know about the Japanese issue of 30 years of kidnapping and confinement. This is totally illegal. Charging families 100,000 dollars to kidnap and confine a person in a democratic society is completely against the law. So, we have to be clear that we cannot let people suppress our belief. We cannot. We have to stand up as Unificationists. We have to be proud of what we believe because not only is it our human right, not only is it our religious freedom right, but it also protects the human rights of all Unificationists around the world, in countries where they actually may be oppressed. Do you see what I mean?
So, brothers and sisters, on this day, let's return back and remember how to be proud Unificationists. We are not perfect, nobody expects you to be perfect. I must have had this conversation about 50 times in Europe. I'm going to touch this perfection issue very briefly because I know it's an issue. In the Principle we hear Formation, Growth, and Perfection, right? Do you know that this terminology is a wrong translation? In Korean there are two types of words -- won-seong and won-gyog. There is a huge difference between these two words. Won-gyog is perfection, it is complete perfection. If you are trying to be perfect, you are never going to achieve it because we always have some problem, right? You always have some inadequacy as a human being. We are never going to be perfect as God is perfect. Never.
What we say in English as the perfection stage is not the perfection stage. Perfection stage would be won-gyog. In Korean when we say won-seong, we mean more something like completion or maturity. You are now mature enough to receive the blessing, you see what I mean? Then the Principle makes more sense, right? Its not about complete utter perfection, it's about becoming spiritually mature to receive the blessing. That would be the marriage in Adam and Eve's case. You have to be at a certain stage of maturity, right? If you understand it like that, then you will not get hung up on trying to always be perfect, because you can never be perfect. There is nobody in this whole universe that is flawless like God is flawless. If we understand that won-seong is maturity, then we have a much more obtainable realistic goal to work towards. Does that help a little bit?
That's a very important distinction and I think that is why Father has always told us to "Learn Korean". If you are Muslim, you have to learn Arabic. Father has always told us to learn Korean. The reason is not to just force a language on us, but so we can understand the original meaning of these very important concepts, not only the translation, which can sometimes really turn the meaning in a totally different way.
We are not perfect. That is why we have to pray, pray for forgiveness, we also have to forgive people in our life, to be like God. We work every day to try to become better Unificationists through mind and body training, family training, loving nature, which are basically the three blessings. We train ourselves by doing this and it's a constant process.
Brothers and sisters, we are very happy to be here with you this morning. I hope I didn't put you all to sleep. Be proud of who you are. All right? If you are not proud of yourselves as Unificationists, nobody will be proud in your place. We have to be proud of who we are. We have to tell the people what we believe. Yes, we believe that Rev. Moon is the Messiah, absolutely. We can do that, if we have that confidence, if we have that conviction, if we are perfectly intelligent enough, if we are emotionally mature enough to be able to make a true impact in this world. That's what I believe. If you believe it, let's give it up one time for God. (Applause)