Is It Possible to Believe in any Religion as the Literal Truth?

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One of the great mysteries for me is how people are intellectually able to believe in a particular religious doctrine as the literal truth. Religious doctrine often defies logic and has little or no basis in our objective experience of the world and of life. For instance, how could one believe that Moses actually parted the Red Sea or that Noah could fit all those animals on the Ark? A great percentage of people in the world do believe in their religion literally, though.

I think it is easier for me to answer “no” to this big question of whether any religion is factually accurate because I was not raised in a religious home. I think it is often more difficult for people who were raised with a religion and for whom religion was presented as the factual truth to question the validity of their religious upbringing because if they were to do this, this questioning could introduce cracks into their cultural and familial foundation.

What do those of us who have no foundation in religion do? In other words, how do we respond to the deep questions of life when we don’t have a go-to source of answers? I believe we construct our own often loosely defined ideas about how life works. Then again, I think everyone, believers, agnostics, and atheists, must do that for themselves—as least to some degree. By what myth do you live?

by Sukanto Debnath

Passage from Joseph Campbell that Addresses this Question

The peoples of all the great civilizations everywhere have been prone to interpret their own symbolic figures literally, and so to regard themselves as favored in a special way, in direct contact with the Absolute. Even the polytheistic Greeks and Romans, Hindus and Chinese, all of whom were able to view the gods and customs of other sympathetically, thought of their own as supreme or, at the very least, superior; and among the monotheistic Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, of course, the gods of others are regarded as no gods at all, but devils, and their worshipers as godless. Mecca, Rome, Jerusalem, and (less emphatically) Benares and Peking have been for centuries, therefore, each in its own way, the navel of the universe, connected directly—as by a hot line—with the Kingdom of Light or of God.

However, today such claims can no longer be taken seriously by anyone with even a kindergarten education. And in this there is serious danger. For not only has it always been the way of the multitudes to interpret their own symbols literally, but such literally read symbolic forms have always been—and still are, in fact—the supports of their civilizations, the support of their moral orders, their cohesion, vitality, and creative powers. With the loss of them there follows uncertainty, and with uncertainty, disequilibrium, since life . . . requires life-supporting illusions; and where these have been dispelled, there is nothing secure to hold on to, no moral law, nothing firm.

Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By (New York: Arkana, 1993), 10.

by Tom T

Take a Look at My Other Similar Articles that Ask Hard Questions

What Is the Purpose of Suffering?

Why Is There Anything But Nothing?

My Search for God and Judaism

About Me

Books are my “church” in that they help to satisfy my need to explore the mystery of life. At their best, words keep pace with the questions of life, honoring their depth and sincerity, without giving pat, flat answers.

I consider myself a mystical agnostic. This is a term that I am borrowing from Karen Armstrong’s fascinating book A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I have struggled with the hard questions and come to the conclusion that agnosticism is the only truly authentic position I can claim. I do not “know” the answers to the grand mysteries of life. The mystical component describes my intense interest in religions, spirituality, and mysticism as a path to experience the spirituality latent in the self.

by austinevan