Essays

Religion

A lot of people hate religion, and I get it. With religion, it's often easy for notions of doctrine and Truth to replace common sense. However, in my opinion, to pretend we are not spiritual beings is also a mistake.

So, what to do?

First, don't deny a belief that you have in the supernatural. Doing that won't help you any more than denying any other part of your psychological makeup.

Second, don't demand consistency from your religion (or anyone else's). Yes, I know, if it's inconsistent, it can't be true. The problem is, with spirituality, we can only have partial truth and we may not know which parts are true and which aren't.

Also, at the risk of being cliche, I'm going to bring up the parable of the elephant. I copy the text below from wikipedia. For details, see see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant.

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. In the case of the first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

None of the blind men were wrong, but none were right either. One key to spirituality is to recognize that we are all blind and working off the incomplete information our sense of spiritual touch gives.

Science sometimes has the same trouble. Currently, for example, general relativity and quantum mechanics don't mix, and the attempts to reconcile them have problems as well. That doesn't mean general relativity and quantum mechanics aren't true, just that the truth they tell us is incomplete.

Every religion can't be one hundred percent right, but they might all be partially right.