Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 6:23 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 6:17 pm
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 5:59 pm
What I'm telling you IC is that I believe that you think Christianity is the one true religion. I'm trying to tell you that I do not agree with what I perceive to be necessarily YOUR belief if you are indeed a Christian. Otherwise I'm an agnostic and don't pretend to know the one true religion--if there is one or isn't.
You're ducking the problem, Gary. "I don't pretend to know" does not change the Law of Non-Contradiction: it just makes it one step worse, because it means there's still going to be falsehoods out there, but you will lack the discernment even to recognize one when you see it. Surely you don't want to sit at that point, do you?
So slow down and follow me, if you want to get anywhere in thinking about this:
the claim, "all religions are true" will be false, if any contain a genuine contradiction with any other.
That's just the first step. but it sure is an important one.
Do you see it?
I am familiar with the "law" of non contradiction. If you have some insight into the issue of religious truth that I am not aware of or haven't thought of, then I will listen to what you have to say.
Fair enough. Well, then, we are caught between two hypotheses:
1. The world's religions and ideologies contain statements about God that directly contradict one another... or....
2. The world's religions and ideologies about God do not contradict one another.
But if 2 were true, then we'd have to say to Muslims, "Ultimately, your beliefs are the same as those of Jews and Hindus, even though you don't know it," and to Jews, "Ultimately, your beliefs are the same as those of Atheists and Gnostics, though you don't know it." To which the Muslim or Jew might reply, "What gives you the right to dismiss the particularity and specific claims of my religion, and to reduce them to your bland pablum of sameness?" to which we would have no reply, I think. We do not possess some master-code of all religions by which we can decode and geld them all; and if we had such a code, then we would hold it in defiance of the claims of specialness and particularity that all religions and ideology have, and we would have to tell them they were all mistaken about what they ultimately, truly are believing.
In any case, we can see very easily that 1 is true. We can see it even in the simplest and most basic cases. If God is the Supreme Being and good, then He is not a gnostic demiurge; or if he were a demiurge, He would not be good or the Supreme Being. If there are many gods, then by definition, monotheism is false; if monotheism is true, then there are not many gods. If there is any God or gods, then Atheism is false; if there are no god or Gods, then all the religions that say there are are teaching a false precept...
The cases can be multiplied. And once we understand that, we can overcome our naive belief that all religions and ideologies can be the same thing. With that, we can also realize that to claim that one religion is "right" about a particular matter is not arrogant or bigotted -- it's a plain fact that the Law of Non-Contradiction requires us to know to be true. And we realize that failing to discern the differences among religions and ideologies is not only deeply insulting to all of them, but also is 100% bound to be erroneous.
So let's now get past the worry that anybody who says "My belief is right" is acting in any strange or prejudicial way. That is exactly what we should expect of a rational belief system, if such exists: that it would aim to be true.
That's step 2. With me, still?
