Zach Braff doesn’t always tweet about penises:
RT @UberFacts There are almost 5,000 gods being worshipped by humanity." But don't worry… only yours is right.
— Zach Braff (@zachbraff) October 7, 2012
I get it. The implication with this statistic is that all religious belief systems can’t all be right, but that declaring them all wrong is more tenable.
He has it backwards, though, if that’s what he is implying. Person A who believes Religion X is free to believe that Religion Y has at least some bit of the truth, by dint of religion’s definition.
It’s gradations of truth strength. Not only is Person A free to believe this, he is logically compelled to, no matter what his feelings are toward Religion Y.
Skepticism and atheism shut the door on that completely. It actually suffers from the categorical defect that religion is diagnosed. All claims to metaphysical/supernatural events are false—end of. Religious people are either mistaken or outright lying. If I don’t make tables at all I have no choice but to reject all table-making offers, but if I specialize in creating one type of furniture—tables—I can, though not as competently, create chairs or desks as well.
Not that I care deeply about being tolerant (not of us are, in the end), but which belief system, theistic or non, has more possibility for broad-mindedness, forgiveness of error, or a thin but common bond between strangers?
2 Comments
By any measure of logic, a table is truer than chairs because you can hold yourself up (see: chair pose in yoga), but can a teapot?
I’m confused. Are you saying tables are more truthful because they are more like humans?
I’m probably not interpreting you correctly.