Religious Tolerance vs. Multiple Truths

The Boston Globe made a recent summary of the Pew Forum's study on Americans' religious beliefs and practices.

Among some highlights:

The United States is a nation of believers: most Americans say they believe in God, they pray, and they attend worship services regularly; they also believe in angels and demons, in heaven and hell, and in miracles.

But they also say, contradicting the teachings of many faiths, that truth comes in many forms. Large majorities of Americans say that many religions - not just their own - can lead to eternal life.

I find this to be really fascinating. I'm going to try to make a pitch here, and I hope you'll stick with me. It's not going to be on a particular flavor of faith, but trying to make a rational argument for absolute truth.

Something that is absolutely true is always correct, in all places, at all moments, under any condition.

Take for example, I reach into my pocket and pull out a dime. I close my hand around the dime and you can't see what the coin is anymore. If a friend of ours walks into the room and I tell him I have a penny in my closed hand, which he believes, it doesn't affect the fact that a dime, not a penny, is still in my hand. Our friend can sincerely believe it's a penny, but he would be sincerely wrong. Beliefs about things we can or can't see do not affect reality.

Take the theory that the sun and planets in our solar system rotate around the Earth. Until Copernicus came around, everyone sincerely believed this, but it didn't affect the fact that what everyone believed was wrong and it didn't change when people changed their mind about it. The paths of planets can't both be rotating around the earth and rotating around the sun at the same time, (unless of course the Earth and Sun were in the exact same location, which they are clearly not).

Now when it comes to faith, I think that it's critically important to realize that absolute truth still applies. Let's take Henry and Andy. Henry believes in Hinduism and Andy is an atheist. Henry believes in many gods, while Andy believes there is no such thing!

1 of 3 possibilities must exist here:

1. Henry is right and Andy is wrong.
2. Andy is right and Henry is wrong.
3. Andy and Henry are both wrong. (If there is only a single God, for instance, they would be both wrong.)

What is important for both Andy and Henry to acknowledge is that they can tolerate one another while acknowledging that their combined beliefs must fall into one of the above 3 categories. This shouldn't offend anyone, this is just reasoning 101.

When I see people believing in multiple truths, like the article alludes to, one just needs to shake their head. Not everyone can be right!

I'm going to leave this post like this for now. More to come later.