Saturday, February 25, 2023

I'm right, and everyone else is wrong. Awfully arrogant of me to say that????

 Presumably you should try to pick a religion where there is good reason to believe that its claims are true. If you think you religion is true, then you think that, to the extent that others differ from you, they are mistaken. But you don't get away from that by rejecting religion. If you think religious nonbelief is true, then you think that, say, atheism is true and that theists are wrong, and so with that you can use that as a basis for thinking yourself better than others. So everyone, believer and unbeliever, thinks that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

1 comment:

David Brightly said...

Are 'belief' and 'truth' the right terms here? Religions are so much more than bodies of propositions. They are practices, communities, loyalties, buildings, art and music, ways of life. Being brought up within the Church of England I can accept that Christianity has moulded me to a great extent even if I have trouble with the Creed. I love the language of the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer, but have little affection for Anglicanism's contemporary language.

In so far as these aspects are not propositional they are not objects of belief or disbelief, of being right about or being wrong about. They are simply 'there' to be engaged with or not. So I am not looking to choose a religion---I am happy with the one that chose me, even if I have struggled all my life to find a meaning to its central tenets.