Gospel & Universe 🪐 Preface

A Positive-Sum Philosophy

The Problem with Superlatives - Plusses & Zeros - Liberty & Religion - Intolerance of Intolerance

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On this page and the next, I look at 1. why saying “My religion is the best” is unhelpful, 2. why a positive-sum attitude towards religion is constructive, 3. how politics, dogma, and free expression figure into agnosticism, and 4. one way Christianity could be improved.

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The Problem with Superlatives

If you say My country is great, no one's likely to say that you're wrong. People's opinions differ, and almost everything in the realm of preference is relative. Except of course that context plays a role here: if you're in the West in 2024 and you say Russia is great, others are likely to set you straight, especially if they’re Ukrainian. They may even urge you to be more specific, after which they might back off. Russia used to be great might be easier for them to swallow, depending of course on what they think about Leninism, the czars, and European colonialism in general. The same would be true if you said that Germany or the British Empire used to be great.

Yet anywhere and anytime someone says My country is the greatest, there'll be an instant debate, often heated. By saying it's the greatest you're saying something like it has the best people, the best culture, the best approach to life, the best nature, the best cities, etc. The same relativity that let you get away with My country is great now works against you, for people can easily show you why other countries may be just as great or even greater. You get into specifics, and specifics can be debated endlessly.

Likewise with religion. Apart from the New Atheists (who reject all religions), few would find it offensive if you say Christianity is great, Hinduism is great, or Islam is great. Of course, the context is important here. If you're shouting this while burning a library in Alexandria, taking apart a mosque in Ayodhya, or gunning down concert-goers in Paris or Moscow, people will most forcefully disagree. But if you calmly assert My religion is great, very few people are likely to get upset.

But if you say My religion is the greatest, the same problem occurs as when you assert My country is the greatest. The same problem, yet worse. This is because the view of a country involves pride and culture, yet it isn't also a philosophical or universal judgment about truth.

A statement about the best country is obviously relative, and can be qualified and debated by comparing people's opinions on language, economics, nature, art, etc. A definitive statement about the best religion on the other hand is almost always a judgment about universal truth. It generally signifies most true and in some cases it signifies the only truth. And no reasonable people, whether they have another version of the truth, or whether they reject the notion that there's only one truth, are likely to take such a statement sitting down.

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Plusses & Zeros

As an agnostic I try to look as deeply as I can into the various religious systems that humans have come up with so far. I also try to follow a positive-sum philosophy. That is, I try to see religious differences as diversity rather than as competition — for instance, as in

(Christianity +1) + (Hinduism +1) = 2 great traditions.

The result is a sum of two, rather than the sum of zero we get when we see them as competitors that cancel each other out:

(Christianity +1) + (Hinduism -1) = 0;

(Hinduism +1) + (Christianity -1) = 0.

I also try not to exaggerate the positive or negative things I find in different religions, although I often criticize the claims of exclusivity made by my own Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Christianity surrounded and frustrated me as I grew up, and it still surrounds and frustrates me as I explore its troubled history (of exclusivity, war, and colonialism) and its dogmatic claims to the one Truth, the Elect, the Chosen People, etc. It also amazes and inspires me, especially when I look at ✰ the development of humanism and ecumenicalism, ✰ its allowance for secularism, ✰ writers like Dante and Milton, and ✰ its magnificent art, which takes me back in time to the southern lands of virgin births, ornate columns, and well-dressed angels…

My criticism & praise of Judaeo-Christianity also extends to other major world religions. For instance, I applaud the poetry of the Vedas and the diversity of Hindu myth & philosophy, yet I also critique caste, hierarchies of enlightenment, and claims about the superiority of Bhakti devotion or non-dual Vedanta. I also look at religions such as Buddhism, which borrow from Hinduism the notions of dharma, karma, samsara, & nirvana (duty, action, rebirth, & liberation). While I doubt these notions, I find in Eastern religion & philosophy a great deal to ponder, from the quasi-existential views of some Buddhists to the strange and fascinating visions in their art — as in these pieces from Tibet & Nepal:

I also have to confess a bias toward Daoism, which is the least doctrinaire of major world religions. This is especially true if one focuses (as I do) on the Classical writers Laozi & Zhuangzi, who don’t focus on such things as longevity, alchemy, ghosts, or metaphysical powers. Instead, they stress infinity, ineffability, and exploration. They argue that we don’t know the meaning of life, and that we shouldn’t go on about it even if we did. Zhuangzi is particularly close to agnosticism when he highlights the notions of a destination that has no location and a journey that has no end:

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Liberty & Religion

When it comes to Islam, I try hard to strike a balance, although it would be odd not to notice that Islam is today’s most abused and divided religion. In my chapter 🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt I try to balance the positive and the negative, applauding Rushdie’s use of Islamic mystical motifs, yet also highlighting his critique of extremism and militarism. Often the praise & criticism go hand in hand, as in Midnight’s Children when Saleem uses Hindu and Muslim paradigms of democracy to counter the authoritarianism of the Emergency of 1975-7.

We also see a mix of positive and negative when in Midnight’s Children the pregnant Amina stands her ground against a gang of xenophobic, homicidal zealots, and in Shame when the doomed Pakistani cinema-owner Mahmoud plays a Hindu-Muslim double-bill, which Rushdie calls the double-bill of his destruction. Even in The Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s most explosive work, the notion that the novel only attacks Islam is odd, given it’s narrative postcolonial dream-framework and it’s subtle yet very powerful homage to Sufi and Christian ideals of peace.

In general I take a positive-sum view of religions. The only things I treat negatively are exclusion, dogmatism, and the notion that there is only one true religion and only one way to understand religion. While I focus largely on this problem in Christianity, Islam has more than its share of problems there.

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Intolerance of Intolerance

Some might argue that being intolerant of intolerance is just as illogical as doubting doubt. Yet I’d counter-argue that both are paradoxes, not contradictions. Furthermore, I’d argue that they’re related: the freedom to debate and explore doubt is put in jeopardy by religious intolerance. In a wider sense, all philosophical and political debate is put in jeopardy by those who would mix religion and government in order to silence the types of questioning exercised by agnostics and free-thinkers. The converse is also true: freedom is likewise threatened by those who insist, as many communist governments have done, that religion is an opium that must be banned.

Luckily, we don’t live in the world of Vladimir Putin, where open debate is branded sedition, and where members of the press or opposition are silenced (or worse yet, coaxed to the window…), all within the framework that dissent is disorder, and that order is what the leader says it is.

We get into muddier waters when we deal with situations where intolerant or dogmatic religious parties are voted into power. We can see this, with different results, in Iran, Algeria, and Egypt. We can also foresee it in the (mid-2024) prospect of a MAGA crowd using a free election to take power, after which they proceed to dismantle constitution, free press, and liberal society.

It’s often difficult to predict whether or not an intolerant power will allow itself to be voted out of power. In the case of the U.S. it seems that it would be more than likely, yet in the case of Iran it appears impossible, given the power of the revolutionary guards, the mullahs, and the supreme leader. Likewise, in Russia the Kremlin short-circuits real change by muzzling critical press (like Novoya Gazeta) and even killing press members and opposition leaders (the list of suspected murders is long; the imprisonment and death of Alexei Navalny is perhaps the most clear-cut and well-documented). Perhaps the only option is to revolt when all factions — liberal like Novoya Gazeta or conservative like Navalny — are themselves controlled by the permanent government, that is, the government that talks about free elections and freedom of expression, yet doesn’t allow either.

As I explore in 🇮🇳 The Fiction of Doubt, Rushdie deals with these types of issues, especially in the context of Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. In all cases he creates a fairly clear divide between authoritarianism and the freedom to follow — or not follow — a religious agenda. His thinking in this regard is very much in line with basic democratic and liberal freedoms.

I’ll argue throughout Gospel & Universe — as well as on the next page, Freedom of Thought — that these freedoms are fundamental to the full operation of doubt and open enquiry.

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Next: 🧩 Freedom of Thought

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