Religious Tolerance: Lack of Conviction, or World’s Only Hope?

Last updated on: February 18, 2010 at 9:48 am by John Shore

Religious Tolerance: Lack of Conviction, or World’s Only Hope? 2010-02-18T09:48:55-08:00 John Shore

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In the course of the (really interesting) reader responses to yesterday’s Does God REALLY Answer My Questions? came this comment, from self-proclaimed “model agnostic” Brian Shields (whose website is here, and whose splendid photographs of my old stomping grounds, San Francisco, are here):

“While God talking to John Shore seems benign to me (or even hilarious in [John’s book] “Penguins, Pain …”) there are some people who KNOW God is talking to them and telling them to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. It seems to me the world would be a better, safer, and dare I say it, more godly place if fewer people KNEW God was talking to them and more were unsure about the source of the message and the necessity to act upon it.”

Now, isn’t that special? It so is! Because it perfectly articulates the evident absurdity of anyone saying that the God of their truth is the God of all truth. I’ve written about this more often than I care to remember ( in Zealous: Good; Zealot: Bad, Why Must Others Be Like Us?, What Non-Christians Want Christians to Hear, and There’s No Arguing It: We Can’t KNOW If There’s a God or Not, to recall just those four), because we all better be interested in the point at which benevolent religion becomes problematic dogma.

I’ve got a friend who’s a Muslim. He is just as certain that Allah is the one true God as I am that the Christian God is the one true God.

Between us only three things are possible. Either one of us is wrong; we’re both wrong; or we’re both right.

What is a matter of ever-increasing urgency for all of us is that the only hope for enduring, world-wide peace lies in the only one of those three choice that is a logical impossibility.

Until everyone who believes in one religion or another adheres to their belief the idea that just because something is right for them doesn’t mean it must be right for everyone else, we’re all doomed. We must expand our understanding of the relationship between “logic” and truth. “Religious tolerance” isn’t just a mamby-pamby term for lack of conviction. It’s our only way out.

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