Everyone in Religious Debates is Wrong

This question initially intrigued me because it did not even occur to the asker that “none of the above” is actually a distinct possibility.

That said, what are religious debates trying to accomplish? Both of defenders of Islam and defenders of Christianity are arguing from mutually exclusive texts that each claim a monopoly on the truth.

Quote:“First I want to explain that according to the Nobel [sic] Quran , Islam is the only acceptable religion in the sight of Allah .”Quote:“‘If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah (God) never will It be accepted of Him’ (3:85) .”Quote:“It’s disrespectful to say Jesus isn’t God. God is gathering his children. Islam stands between that. My point is that Muslims use this, “Hey look we respect Jesus” to try to relate to Christians but in the next breath you deny we can know anything about him or what he said other than what Muhammed says.”Quote:“We can approach judgement day in confidence that our sins will not be held against us. However to have this we have to accept Jesus.”

It all seems very strange to me that either party can think that she/he can reasonably justify the unreasonable (And this is at least implicitly recognized as incompatibility with reason in depending on revelation and faith).

Statistically it’s pretty safe to predict that both of debaters were raised in each’s respective religion. Both religions, as all religions spread epidemiologically) have spread on the backs of empires, themselves benefiting from the docility that religions of “peace” somewhat instilled in conquered populations, or in more recent era have spread through aggressive proselytization.

Do either of sides of the debate recognize that the benefits and competitive advantage that religion provides to a group by providing greater cohesion comes at the cost of losing common ground with everyone else? Believing without evidence is the most natural thing in the world, but is a legacy of our evolutionary history, and inevitably leads to irreconcilable conflict. In fact the extreme wings of both religions would be willing to kill me for being an infidel. More and more, it is becoming important to realize that nobody has a monopoly on the truth if we are going to be able to come together to form a peaceful global community. Both Muslims and Christians are parts of communities that at the very least harbor a significant minority that desires to see a global community of people of exclusively their own religion; more importantly, for these people it seems no cost is too high and our world is continually bathed in the blood of innocents, killed in the name of the one true god (whichever one it happens to be). And of course religion doesn’t have a monopoly on the death and destruction that has always and everywhere, inevitably directly resulted from claims of a monopoly on truth (Soviet communism is a great example).

I am of the opinion that belief in an absolute truth is one of the remaining great evils along with nationalism. Each in their way tell people that they are special, that there group is special, and therefore in significant ways (what is more important for many than the moral realm) everyone else is less “human” and we have seen the results of thousands of years of this dynamic. It is so convenient that our tribe always just happens to be right and everyone (internally and externally) that disagrees therefore must be wrong.

The greatest force for peace in the world is science (properly understood). It is through the results of scientific discoveries that we can enjoy the technological benefits we do (and seem to always take for granted), and it is technological development that is leading us to a post-scarcity world. Of course there seem to be two sides to every sword, and just as we benefit from the potential for greater individual power, technology enables smaller and smaller groups to kill larger numbers of people (and of course it just turns out that most of these independent groups are “religious” and therefore don’t respect the sanctity of each individual consciousness). The issue of what large centralized power has been doing with this increased power is beyond the scope of this essay.

Some people show an impressive familiarity with religious texts, and that is certainly not something to look down on. I did want to note though that the bible that Christianity depends upon was written over the course of thousands of years by some 300 authors; there is a truly impressive amount of internal contradiction and therefore plenty of material that contradicts and plenty that agrees with Islamic teachings.