What is Religious Tolerance?

D.A. Carson points out (at around 16:00) that the notion of "tolerance" was once defined in popular culture by what Voltaire said, if not directly, to the effect of:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

This illustrates a great American value, the freedom of speech.  But Carson makes the observation that this definition has changed and today it is in fact considered wrong to even suggest that someone is wrong in their beliefs, religious or otherwise.  Despite the self-contradicatory nature of saying this, most people we know would agree.  I find it interesting the evolution, or rather devolution, of the freedom of speech or what we could call "tolerance" as Voltaire once defined it.

In fact, this so-called tolerance (as currently held) is not tolerance at all, since you have to disagree with someone's beliefs before you can actually be tolerant of their right to believe them (if this is in fact what the big idea of freedom of speech is about, isn't it?), and what you don't have to agree with to be tolerant is the notion that it is wrong to say those beliefs are wrong, indeed this is something very different than what it means, as Voltaire defined it, to be tolerant of someone's beliefs!  Is it not?

Now, to be tolerant as a good Westerner means that you have to agree with the set of beliefs that asserts that it is wrong to say someone else is wrong in their set of beliefs.  But what if I say my particular set of beliefs asserts that this notion of tolerance, being that which states that it is wrong to say someone's beliefs are wrong, is wrong?  What then?  Am I accepted with open arms in the society of tolerance?  Probably not.  I think I would be socially shunned by the broad culture and maybe labelled as one lacking an enlightened mind, as has the population of these "narrow-minded" folk, which includes these freaks called Christians.  

I really wish someone would try to answer this accusation.

My answer as a religious relativist to people forcing birth control on cultures with large families that are "overpopulating the world" and "not being green"

How dare they impose their religious worldview on other people!!!

Religion and Revelation

I was thinking about my statements on religion, and I had a couple more things I wanted to say. More broadly, if you think about mankind in its context in the universe purely from a naturalistic, relativistic, man-centered point of view (as the culture would have us believe), then religion and anything abstract simply becomes comical in its absurdity. That is, if you take a cue from postmodern culture today and believe that all religions, worldviews, and truth claims from the perspective of mankind are in effect the same (or they are all viewed as parts of the whole truth, much as in the popular blind men/elephant parable**), then you are really left with a ridiculous notion. This notion being that religiosity does not extend past the minds of humans; or, more accurately, that religion (or anything abstract that mankind comes up with) is imposing meaning and purpose on the universe that is not warranted whatsoever.

If the universe is just material, having a beginning in time with a “Big Bang”, and extending on until all the matter is sucked back into the singularity from which it began, then there really is nothing else to the universe. It simply is what it is. There is no reason for religion if this is all the universe is; humans are nothing but exceedingly complicated conglomerations of chemical reactions and electrical impulses that arose from highly intricate evolutionary changes, initiated from the inception of life that originated in intensely fine-tuned cosmological, geological, climatal, and chemical circumstances. Now I do not claim to be a biology expert and I do not know the extent to which parts of the theory of evolution may be true, but I do know that if what hard-core evolutionists teach about the nature of life and reality is true, then there is absolutely no purpose or reason that humans, and the universe exist. According to this theory, it all began with a bang, and it will all end with a bang; with silence in between the end of this universe and the beginning of the next one. There will be no life, no love, no religion, no meaning whatsoever; just elements, planets, rocks, collisions, fire, explosions, and eventually more life-forms that will be annihilated when the next sun burns out. How could there possibly be meaning in this? And how dare anyone claim meaning and religion that claims this naturalistic theory?

Meaning is something that must be infused into something. An engineer designing a machine must begin with a purpose for the machine. If purpose is not defined, then the machine will never come to be; or if it is made with an unknown purpose, the purpose will never be discovered unless the engineer explains it. If the universe (like a machine in many ways) made itself, as the aforementioned atheistic scientists will claim, then there is no knowing anything as to the purpose of it, except that it has no purpose because no mind, no designer, created it to have one. If this is believed, then anything that is thought about the nature of reality is absolute bunk. You have no basis for claiming how something ought to be, and you certainly have no basis for being religious, since the foundation of all religion (indeed all rational human thinking) is inconveniently plagued with purpose and morality.

The best any atheist (or anyone for that matter) has done to explain religion is to claim that the mind’s sense of religiosity and pursuit of meaning is merely an evolutionary strategy that has arisen to help us survive (this belongs I believe to Richard Dawkins). The problem with this statement, as Tim Keller has pointed out recently, is that if this is true, if all human thinking and beliefs are merely vehicles for human survival as a species, then doesn’t the act of believing in evolution fall into this category as well? Isn’t the scientist’s cerebral act of believing purpose arose from chance merely an evolutionary trick played on the scientist’s mind to help him survive?

What we are left with if this premise is taken to its logical conclusion is the absolute destruction of all human achievement. If there is no purpose in anything (and we can’t avoid this), then that is all there is to say. All creations of man are in the end are just whimsical and nonsensical ingenuity. We are highly decorated and complicated sticks of dynamite, waiting to explode into nothing and into nowhere. Yippee.

While I do not want to give the impression that I am anti-scientific (because I am not), I do want to maintain the utter ridiculousness of believing that the material is all there is and simultaneously claiming purpose for one’s own life. In fact, if the material is all there is, one can make all kinds of unprovable statements about the nature of reality and there is no objective way to denounce them since there is no outside or universal standard of which to view them. For example, I can say that the only purpose in the universe is for me to eat corn everyday, or to learn how to juggle, or for you to learn how to juggle, or to care for the needy, or to always wear a 3-cornered hat. You cannot prove that these are true or false, just like I cannot prove that they are true or false. But we are both left with the fact that neither of us can prove anything, so there is no reason to judge behavior or truth claims since all there is material.

The same can be said about morality. If there is no universal set of morals, then I am just as pleased to kill, maim, rape, and steal as you are to love, give, care, and thank. There is no reason why killing is worse than loving, since we’re all just bunches of arbitrary chemical and electrical reactions. Who’s to say that one is better than another?

But of course no one who has ever claimed relativism will take it this far, to where it logically demands to be taken. This is because everyone has the knowledge and restraint of morality built into their natures and into their consciences. We are all made in the image of God, and as much as we try to escape it, it never escapes us.

The end of my claim is that God, revealed in the man Jesus, is the only possible source of ultimate truth and reality. Since he is the only one ever to have claimed to “come down from heaven”, and historically proven it to be true in the resurrection of his dead body, he is the only one with the credentials to establish himself as such. Man’s search for truth, redemption, and the promised-land on his own merit is useless. All our attempts to get beyond ourselves and get into heaven are futile in comparison with God’s attempt to come to us, and bring us to heaven. Religion is useless. We need Revelation.

** There are literally dozens of different versions of this story that I have seen briefly by searching the internet, but all are essentially the same. Quoting it in the way it is most commonly done is fatally flawed, as pointed out by Lesslie Newbigin in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society:

In the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, so often quoted in the interests of religious agnosticism, the real point of the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of the king and his courtiers, who are not blind but can see that the blind men are unable to grasp the full reality of the elephant and are only able to get hold of part of the truth. The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmation of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind there would be no story. The story is told by the king, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth which all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality which relativizes all the claims of the religions and philosophies.

(pg. 9-10)

Religious Nuts

I recently met a Buddhist lady. But she was not a Buddhist simply because she was drawn to the particular teachings of this religion, but (as I assessed it) more as a rebound from some bad experiences she had in “Christian” churches (I use the term loosely). She was subject to some serious abuse from what sounded like preachers of the “prosperity gospel”, meaning that members of the church should give all their money to the preacher and in turn they will be blessed all the more. Meanwhile, the pastor is driving a Ferrari and living in a mansion, while those givers are left with nothing but desperate faith in the preacher’s rotten character. She was very hurt from these experiences and ended up leaving the church and Christianity as well.

But she took it too far and denounced all of Christianity as evil, based on her few experiences in a small, hick Texas town. Surely the perspective of the cultural transcendence of the Gospel from the backwoods of Texas can be blurred a bit. She said she liked Jesus (even loved him), but “couldn’t stand his crazy-ass friends.” I would be very prone to agree with her that there are plenty of people who claim to follow Jesus that are nuts, and sometimes even wolves in sheep’s clothing. But to dismiss them all by a blanket generalization is just plain reckless. I think there’s a lot of people that are nuts from other religions and worldviews, but I can’t judge the truthfulness and value of their substances based on the character of their proponents. I can look at atheists I would say seem nuts, as well as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, etc. Really, the only common denominator in the nuts of all these groups is that of humanness. People are nuts! And sinful. People do terrible things, regardless of their religious affiliations. This is just one way of expressing the Christian doctrine of total depravity, which says that no one is righteous (Psalm 14:3) and we all do evil, as it is the nature of our unregenerate hearts.

She became Buddhist when she was invited to a temple and felt a feeling of great peace when she prayed there, contrasted to the spiritual chaos that she had experienced in church. While she admittedly had no idea what Buddhism teaches, her affinity for it developed from what she perceived as possessing value, as giving her peace and a sense of acceptance and non-judgment.

But the thing is, like all humanistic religions, that her religion is essentially her preconceived preferences, not particularly Buddhism or Christianity. In effect, she is not appealing to Buddhism and rejecting Christianity as if they are absolutely mutually exclusive (at least in some moral principles). She is merely appealing to what she already believes, indeed knows, is true. She has already formulated her beliefs prior to investigating Christianity or Buddhism, or whatever. It is whatever gives her peace, acceptance, warm feelings, etc. And this is sort of the prevailing wind of this world pertaining to spirituality. In effect, it is just paganism—a certain breed of selfishness that props up its own religion, worldview, and preferences above what is revealed from God. What characterizes man-made religion is that it always originates from the person. It is always man looking up to heaven speculating about what God (or whatever) is like. If this is, in fact, all that religion is (including Christianity), then it is logical that the tenets of relativism are true: there is no religion better than another; in fact, they are all useless in the end since none of them can knowingly make contact with reality. But humans don’t behave this way. Religion is built into us, even when we want to claim relativism. Take these three common sayings claiming relativism from our religious culture:

• “I don’t like this religion; I like THIS one”: This saying essentially appeals not specifically to the religion of the speaker’s liking because it’s superior, but to himself and his own beliefs. This is the opposite of Christianity which says truth comes from God and not from religion or from our perspectives and preferences.
  
  
• “All religions are the same”: This statement says so in an attempt to be accepting and tolerant, but this is actually just another statement of belief/doctrine and immediately defeats the point it tries to make if applied to itself. The insistence that all religions are the same is, in effect, itself a religion, and the chosen one of secularism.
  
  
• “Doctrine isn’t important, let’s all just love each other”: This statement of the unimportance of doctrine is actually making a doctrinal statement, since I could make the opposing unprovable statement that rather we should hate everyone. Love (the real type of love Jesus demonstrates by dying for his people, and for his enemies) is very much a Christian doctrine, and not to be confused with the emotional type of love that an American “Christian” may purport.
  
  

All this is in effect simply pride in oneself instead of in God. It’s all elevating the human ability to discover truth, instead of in God’s ability to reveal it. Surely it’s an arrogant view that props up the religious musings of the fallen sinner’s depraved mind over the mystery-revealing, all-knowing mind of God who created all.

Jediism Among Other Religions: The Height of Absurdity

There is apparently a new religion in England about being a Jedi, the hailed light-saber-wielding warrior-monks from Star Wars, called Jediism. It appears to be a group of uber-nerds who have for some reason formed a church based on the teachings of the fictional Jedi character from the George Lucas movies. They have religiously embodied the philosophical theme put forth in the movies called “The Force”, and have sought to abide by it, learning how to channel the Force to do good (as is part of the Jedi code). (This can be seen in the movie as Luke moving something with his mind i.e. using the Force.)

On the whole, in my opinion, this is one of the stupidest and most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard of, and reflects partly the decay of Western thinking and our world’s religiously secular futility of relativism. It appears to be the religion mostly of white guys that can’t get dates and spend their days and nights watching Star Wars and playing video games in their parents’ basements, instead of growing up, getting a job, and realizing that Star Wars is a story written by another nerd in the 20^th Century and there is completely no value in allowing it to affect your life in the way it has for these geeks since no one cared in the 10,000 years before now, and no one will care in 50 years or less.

I can think of few things more absurd than what I’ve just briefly looked at about this Jedi religion. I can’t believe people have taken a movie and created a religion from it. I didn’t think idolatry was possible in the vivid way it is in “primitive” cultures, such as in ancient Babylon or in India where gods are formed from wood and metal. But I think this qualifies as a sort of modern-day idolatry of art, in this case a film. The funny thing is, if you read their little “Jedi Code” of what they believe, it’s exactly the same as the spirit of this age. They teach human rights, dignity, equality, tolerance, secularism (separation of church and state), democracy, and—most definitively—relativism. Go here to read their “code” of what Jedis believe. Also, I think one of the main “teachers” is this guy, who is not super inspiring but I think would be a good candidate for mega nerd of the century. I wish it weren’t the right thing to do to mock them, but I see no other choice when something this ridiculous arises.

But if you think about it, any old religion can be seen in this way. If you break Jediism down, it’s basically just rehashed eastern philosophy presented as something “new”. If you look at any man-centered religion, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Voodoo, or any other religion from the grab-bag, it will inevitably involve some sort of speculation created by someone or some culture that offers ideas about what reality is like, exactly in the same way that Jediism does with the Force. The thing that is in common with all these is that none of them really offers anything in the end. They are all just products of the Zeitgeist, or the “wisdom of the age,” as Scripture calls it (1 Cor. 2:6), and are “doomed to pass away”. All of these religions, with perhaps the exception of radical Islam¹, promise precisely nothing if they are taken to their logical conclusions. The best they can do is offer some sort of moral code that may help you feel better as a person, all the while ignoring that there really is no standard that we are expected to uphold and we still stand condemned at the end of the day since there is no real and tangible eternality to them. Or they may offer some sort of “enlightenment” when we die, where we empty our minds and become one with nothing (literally). None of these offers a shred of hope. But Christ offers the “wisdom” and “power” of God (1 Cor. 2), which is the gospel that Jesus has done what no man can do: overcome death and sin and given us life in him.

I wonder how the Jedis (or any religious people) would respond to me inventing a religion that's main tenet is that specifically their religion is wrong. I wonder if they would be tolerant…

Note 1: I think fundamental Islam would teach a salvation acquired by radical sacrifice involving the killing of the “infidel.” This is, in a contrasting way to most religions, a different sort of thing. This sort of Islam promises the fulfillment of all sorts of base human pleasures and desire, since I hear they get a bunch of virgins in heaven to do with what they please. In the end then, this religion teaches that a bunch of murderers and perverts will inherit the kingdom of heaven. This doesn’t seem like the best path to go with either.