Sunday, June 9, 2019

Opinion Disguised as Truth

Many of you have a strong opinion that the things that you believe are truth, while what everyone else believes is a lie. My opinion is that having that opinion is perfectly okay, as long as you make no attempt to coerce me into arranging my life to conform to your opinion. Now some of you may assert that your opinion isn't simply opinion, but it what the deity of your choice has ordained as "the way it is". You may, of course, accept that premise without evidence, but if you are going to require me to accept your premise, and structure my life accordingly, you're going to have to come up with some objective evidence. 

What is objective evidence? What form might that evidence take? For starters, it would have to be something that isn't dependent upon already believing. Much of the "evidence" takes the form of personal stories and anecdotes. Getting that prime parking spot is not proof that there is a God. Praying that your incurable disease is cured and then having no signs of the disease isn't even evidence of the power of prayer. The vision that you saw or the voice that you heard certainly isn't objective evidence. Any of those things might be sufficient for you to believe in your favorite version of your deity, but aren't enough to be actual evidence

In the last paragraph I used the term "favorite version of your deity". What I'm referring to with that phrase is the phenomenon whereby people who ostensibly follow the same religion hold completely different views of how that religion's deity works. To use Christianity, the dominant religion in the United States, as an example, there are distinct differences among the major denominational traditions, and sometimes even within a given denomination. Christians famously brand other Christians as "not true (or real) Christians", judging by a standard that they may or may not fully understand. This tendency isn't limited to Christians; the sectarian violence in the predominately Muslim Middle East testifies to that. 

Even stipulating that certain phenomena "proves" that the supernatural exists, how would one prove that anyone's favorite deity was behind said supernatural occurrence?  Spiritually-minded people tend to interpret the unexplained in the context of what they already believe. I don't know how many times I have heard the assertion that someone "miraculously" surviving a car wreck, plane crash, tornado etc somehow validates an entire theology. Even if divine intervention kept your car from going through the rail and into the ravine, how do you know it was the god that you previously believed in and not a god from some unknown pantheon, or angels, or aliens? Spoiler alert: you don't. 

Since you can't, or won't, provide evidence that your religious beliefs are objectively true (I once had someone argue that religious beliefs weren't subjective, since they came from God, and were in fact objective, for that same reason. No.) you can have no expectation that anyone else should be compelled to adhere to them, or live in a society that mandates them.