What is the One True Faith?

One of my coworkers asked this question, and gave the answer "The one that promotes absolute Love, Respect and Care for all of My creations, and by all I am referring to Omni-ALL not just humans."

I find this too simplistic. Not only does this ignore the biblical perspective that man is of more worth than plants and animals (see What is the Purpose of Life), one important word is missing from the above sentence : TRUTH. One of my favorite aphorisms is such:

Love without truth is sentimentality
Truth without love is brutality.

The question then becomes, if we are to implement truth with love (justice and mercy, as some sayings go), whose truth?

Not all systems are of equal value, and some must be classified as bad or evil.

Some systems of belief run counter to natural law, sometimes called "self-evident truths." For example, any faith system that classifies certain races as morally superior to others, or some humans as of lesser value than others, probably runs counter to natural law. Hence the phrase "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

As a further example, some relgious systems regard the weak, usually women, children, the elderly and the sick, as inferior, perhaps not even worthy to partake in the spiritual life of our communities. Such a system, again, is in my view, bad, evil, wrong, and counter to natural law.

There are other criteria by which one may evaluate a faith, which may include:

• Life, Health, and Peace: Do their principles lead to health and vitality in living things, or to death and destruction? (Note that there may be spiritual justifications for war, including establishing justice, freedom, or limiting future suffering by destroying evil men and organizations).
• Societal Justice, Order and Freedom: Do their principles translate well into societal structures and public policy?
• Internal Transformation: Do they follow the principles of free will, and transformation from the inside out rather than the external rule of law and conformance to outer tradition without the creation of the inner qualities of spirituality?
• Trustworthy Canon: Does the faith's authoritative documentation stand up believably against science, history, archeology, as well as the laws of internal logic and hermeneutical principle?

So, is there one true faith? My answer is, there could be. While all enduring faiths share some common, self-evident truths, when it comes to revealed truths (what happens after we die? What is god like?), they certainly do disagree, and can not all be correct, except in the anti-reasonal mind of the person who believes that logical opposites can both exist in some ethereal plane of existence, which has little to do with reality or truth. So either all are wrong, or some, or ONE may be correct about these revealed truths. How to determine which is believable or true is what epistemology (how we know what is true) is all about.