Punctum Saliens

I’m starting a series of posts motivated by the book Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell (1957). I’ll tell you up front that I agree with some of what he says and disagree with some of what he says. I think some of his opinions are right on and others are ill-conceived, illogical, and totally ridiculous.

First from the Preface, written by Russell himself:

I think all the great religions of the world — Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism — both untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true.

A classic argument. Interestingly enough, some Christians make the same claim and use it in their “proof” that Christianity is the only true religion. One oft used “proof” is the Blind Men and the Elephant analogy (also here). The claim is that everyone is totally wrong. Everyone, that is, except for the Christian citing the example and those in his camp who have the ability to somehow see the “real” truth. The problem is that he doesn’t place himself anywhere near the blind men or the elephant. He, apparently, has super powers that let him step out of the scenario, shed his blind fold, see the elephant as an elephant, and allow him to condemn all those poor, poor blind souls to hell for all of eternity. Sort of reminds me of Captain Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn when he admits to reprogramming the computers during the simulation test and, thereby, wins the unwinnable scenario. All too convenient, if you ask me.

Let me remind the gentle reader what we are discussing here. We are talking about God, Allah, Brahman, Atman, etc., etc., etc. We are talking about a being that creates entire universes by speaking. We are talking about a being that knows our innermost thoughts and feelings. We are talking about a being that is totally beyond our comprehension, our imagination. And yet one religion gets it right?

Let me use a contrived example to illustrate. You, me, and Bob are sitting around drinking some really, really good bourbon. Bob says, “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and a gazillion. Guess what it is.” You immediately shout out “42.” I immediately start screaming at you “You’re wrong! It’s not 42. How could it be 42? It’s 7427466391!” and begin flicking lit matches into your hair to simulate the eternal torment you will endure in hell because you are wrong.

That pretty much describes the situation. I can no more know what number Bob is really thinking of than can our elephant-seeing Christian really, truly, completely know God. And if he cannot really, truly, completely know God how can he say that someone else’s understanding of God is wrong?

Paul even backs me up in I Corinthians 13

9. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

This is Paul talking. You know, St. Paul. The guy who spoke to Jesus — and Jesus spoke back! The guy who wrote a fair amount of the New Testament. He, St. Paul, said that “now I know in part.” Even St. Paul didn’t have all the answers; even he didn’t know what number Bob was thinking of. Is Zacharias really claiming that he knows more than St. Paul? If Paul only knew “in part,” then we, not having spoken with Jesus directly, can only know a fraction of an “in part” and that’s probably not a whole hell of a lot.

But what does this have to do with ol’ Bert? Russell seems to undervalue religion when he claims that conflicting religious ideas cannot both be right because he assumes that man can know god (in whatever form you want to picture god) completely enough that he is able to pass judgement on another idea of god. He also seems to overvalue man’s ability to “know”; if I don’t have the full picture and you don’t have the full picture then who’s to say that both our ideas are not two different aspects of the same, full picture?

For example, let’s assume that god is a cylinder and you and I, in our imperfect, limited, all-to-human knowledge can only see projections of god. I look at god and see a rectangle. You look at god from a different angle and see a circle. Are our two viewpoints necessarily mutually exclusive? Well, obviously not because god is neither a rectangle nor a circle — god is something beyond both our ideas.

In fact, the real answer is to combine our apparently-disjoint knowledge which would allow us all to refine our ideas of god. It’s like those SAT questions where you are given three projections of a three-dimensional object and have to pick the right shape. If you only have a single projection, there is no way you can get the right answer because you don’t see all the details of the object’s surface.

It seems to me that what we really need to do is take the most disparate religious ideas and try to fit them together for it is the disparity itself that tells us we are looking at very different parts of God or we are looking at God from very different angles. It also seems to me that the mystic religious traditions do exactly this. Mystic Christianity has a lot more in common with mystic Islam and mystic Judaism than the main-stream religions have in common with each other.