May 28, 2007

Religious Eclecticism?

Posted at 12:20 am by Richard and tagged eclecticism, logic, philosophy. Popularity: 6% [?]

Assume, for a moment, that there is in fact a God. If we follow a “correct” religion, then we will be able to “know god”, “reach nirvana” or otherwise know some ultimate truth. If we follow a “wrong” religion, then, well, we put ourselves at the mercy of the “correct” God. Since every religion has different rules and beliefs about the nature of God and how to reach “heaven”, we immediately have a problem. Either:

1. The teachings of all religions are wrong
2. The teachings of some religions are wrong
3. The teachings of all but one religion are wrong
   or
4. All religions are right

If “all religions are wrong” (but there still is a God), then we have a serious problem. It could be that there is a correct religion, but we just don’t know what it is yet (or, we’ve long since abandoned it), or that religious teaching is inherently incapable of allowing us to reach God. If these is indeed a God (which we’ve assumed, for now) and God has provided no way of “reaching heaven”, or at least, seems uninterested in educating us. Given the vast number of religious beliefs we have, if God actually played any part in inspiring these beliefs, we’re either incapable of being inspired in this way (which would be God’s fault, if we are his creations), or God’s doing a bad job of inspiring us. A powerless or incompetent God seems worse than no god at all!

If we assume that “some religions are wrong”, and therefore some are “right”, then there must be one or more religions (the “right” ones) which are similar on some fundamental level, and it is only at this level that matters. For example, we have two “correct” religions - Religion A and Religion B.
If both state that “there is only one true God”, but Religion A says God likes to be worshipped on a Friday, but Religion B states that all worshipping should be performed on a Tuesday, then it must not matter if you worship God on a Friday or a Tuesday. If this were the case, then religions are more complicated than they need to be - to reach heaven, we don’t need to follow all the rules, only the ones that matter.

The “all but one” option is, I suppose, an extension of the previous idea. For one religion to be right, and all others wrong - there must be some point at which two religions differ on a fundamental principle. In other words, if my religious views were exactly the same as the “right” religion except for one detail, and I am “wrong”, but the other religion is “right” then that detail must be fundamental to the “correctness” of religion. This seems to be the view that many religions take - every religion but this one is wrong. Of course, given that all religions make this claim, how do we know who’s telling the truth?

Finally, if “all religions are right”, perhaps the fundamental concepts of religion which must exist before a religion can be considered “right” are so broad, that every religion agrees on the points that matter. Eating pork, getting circumcised, abortion & contraception, wearing a hijab, etc. are trivial and God doesn’t care (or, is willing to allow us to make up our own minds on these issues). This could mean that every religion simply looks at the “truth” from a different perspective adding their own “flourishes”, but each is equally correct. Or, as far as God’s concerned, all that matters is that you have religion (whatever that may mean).

This last option is also the one I find most compelling, and in my next post, I’ll attempt to justify this choice using a variation of Pascal’s Wager.

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