Religious Pluralism from the Atheist Perspective
Trying to Make Sense of Many Religions At Once
In attempting to comprehend the religious perspective, I’ve tried hard to see the world through the lens of pure belief in the existence and involvement of a higher power. I try to pull myself from godlessness, to find a place of feigned but complete conviction, to see what beliefs and insights follow from the initial perspective. Indeed, religion is not quite irrationality but reasoning that follows from false premises.
I always end up hitting a mental wall, however, when faced with faiths other than the one I’ve attempted to adopt for my personal thought experiment. Once “convinced” of my religion, it’s hard to imagine how to treat others in contrast. Are they “wrong”? As we both right, somehow?
Society has led is into one perspective: keep a healthy respect for the religions of others. This means no discrimination, no attacking on religious lines, to maintain a spirit of religious freedom in contrast to various periods in history (and modern day societies such as Saudi Arabia’s, where only one religion is permitted).
But religions themselves, surprisingly, often do quite well to accommodate each other. One strategy has been more inclusionary, focusing on the similarities between the religions as evidence of universal truth. Indeed, one peculiar argument for the validity of religion is that disconnected cultures from around the world tend to end up there. While that’s hardly proof, it’s an interesting way to look at it, and relevant in inter-religion relationships today.
The strategy is greatest common denominator, where the focus is on overlapping concepts instead of the details that divide.
A second way to accommodate many religions, is to have one absorb another as part of its history, as Christianity did much of Judaism, and Islam of both of these. Established religions are brought in through the concept of prophetic succession, progressive revelation, suggesting that conversation with God across history are of an intended linearity. At this the atheist eyebrow raises further, while the Bahá’í faith endorses it and the religious systems included therein, placing itself as the most recent, with the next due to arrive in a few hundred years’ time.
While the absorption type is a whole discussion in and of itself, my concern right now is with this finding of common ground between religions. While I understand the spirit behind the unity people like to try and show, does it not marginalize a deeper conviction? If religious people genuinely believe their text is the word of God, so strongly that they live by it at their deepest core, then how can they present other religions as any more than fallacious curiosities? To present them as substantive alternatives is to undercut their position. The irony is that in the social spirit of accommodating all religions, the religious spirit has to die a little.
Occam’s Razor Dulled
My bet is that most of the overlapping bits between the religions, with the exception of claims about God, are common sense good and proper ways of being. From an atheist’s perspective, to say “let’s boil our religions down the the overlapping bare essentials” and focus on how religions “breed good will” doesn’t really leave much in the way of directly religious material. In face, the bare goodness in morality essentials would overlap with and normal atheist mindset.
So, instead of mentally allowing for a variety of at least semi-true religions to get at what really makes sense between them, isn’t it just easier to start at the conclusions we’re trying to make the religions fit, and leave it at that? If the extra details are not as important, then let them disappear. If they are important, then you really should stick to your religion’s guns, and ignore the others.
Interpreting Multiplicity
I am, however, sympathetic to ecumenical strategies, because without a mechanism that explains other religions, you’d otherwise be left with a mathematical kind of doubt that would be hard to shake. I’ve always been struck by the math of it all. Many religions tend to be similar with respect to the real basics: that you are part of a higher plan involving a higher being(s) that somehow affect the world you live in, and you are to act in ritualistic and devotional ways vis-a-vis this plan and this being. Given how many religions there are around the world with their own placeholders for the elements in this list of basics, what are the odds that and particular one is correct? This is a general and fairly abstract point. You don’t have to get into the veracity of any one if you can demonstrate that all competing parties are of a similar type. Since they can’t all be right, it’s more likely that none of them are right.
And again, if you think that they are all potentially incarnations and revelations of the same God and divine process, then, while saluting the creativity and originality in the variety of it all, you might be best off just sticking to what makes sense. Plus, if you are willing to embrace the details and rituals of one particular religion, you should then be prepared to adjust to the rest. Otherwise, the entire process seems dangerously and underminingly a la carte.
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