And I have no clue if anybody will be interested in reading this, but what the hey. Anything Goes, right?
This doesn't break any new ground, really, but it makes clear something that I think a lot of tolerant people have thought about for a long time. In this case, I think the tolerant people are right.
Warning: if you're a conservative Christian (or conservative any religion), this is likely to piss you off. Don't read it if you don't like being angry!
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Religious exclusivism is false
A lot of conservative religious people think that their religion is the only path to heaven. Doesn't matter if they're Christian, Jewish, or Muslim; Baptist, Presbyterian, or Catholic; Sunni or Shiite; Orthodox or Conservative; Jehovah's Witness or Mormon or Christian Scientist or Seventh-Day Adventist. Whatever their faith, these people believe that others who don't share their faith are going to hell (or some equivalent).
All these people share a common belief, despite the differences in their religions: the belief that salvation requires having the correct faith, such that anybody not in the right faith is going to hell. Let's call this common belief "religious exclusivism."
Now, obviously, if you don't believe this, this article is not directed at you!! Don't take it so personally!
Religious exclusivism comes in various "sizes." So, for instance, one might claim that salvation is available to Christians only, and that all non-Christians are bound for hell. Or one might limit salvation to born-again Christians. Or perhaps only to born-again Baptists, or even to born-again Baptists who affirm the absolute truth of the Bible. Or even born-again Baptists who affirm the absolute truth of the Bible and understand that Jesus died for your sins and will come again to the land of Israel ushering in the new millenium. You can slice salvation as thin or as thick as you want, but you're still playing the religious exclusivism game if you think that it's necessary to believe the correct religion to get into heaven.
I propose to show that religious exclusivism, in the sense defined above, is false. That is, I propose to prove that all of these people, throughout the world, who hold this shared belief, are flat out wrong.
It's just a religion essay, but it's pretty ambitious, eh?
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The proof is quite straightforward.
It requires just one assumption.
Assumption. God is good. Or at least morally decent.
Religious exclusivists will be able to avoid the impact of my argument only by denying that God is good.
Ready for the argument? Here goes. It's actually pretty short and easy to follow.
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There's a basic principle in ethical thinking. Ought implies can. This principle means that anything that I ought to do, I can do. Put otherwise, no moral obligation can possibly oblige me to do anything that I am unable to do. The inability destroys the obligation.
For instance, in many circumstances, I have an obligation to save a person who is dying. It may even be reasonable to say that my immortal soul depends upon it. "If you don't save that dying person, you are going to hell." That statement may or may not be true, but it's at least possible.
But if I obviously cannot save the person, the obligation disappears. Let us say that a man is suffocating right now for lack of oxygen on the moon, and will be dead in twenty seconds, while I sit here on earth. I have no moral obligation to jump to the moon and save him. Why? Because it is impossible. I can't jump that high.
Where there is no ability to do a thing, there is no moral obligation to do that thing. Think about what you would say to someone who would claim that you were going to go to hell because you didn’t jump to the moon to save a dying man.
The principle holds in general. If you demand of me that I give birth to another human being sometime in my lifetime, I can honestly say that as a man, that's not going to happen. If you think this is a moral failing on my part, I can only say, um, you're wrong. I haven't done anything morally wrong.
Make up your own examples and think about them. If you can't do a thing, it makes no sense to hold you morally responsible for not doing it.
Now, there's a difference between things that are merely difficult and things that are impossible. Religion can ask as many difficult things as it wants. It can demand that we turn the other cheek, love our neighbors as ourselves, love God with all our hearts, forgive our enemies, etc. All are difficult things to accomplish. All are legitimate moral demands. But they're not literally impossible.
How does this apply to our religious exclusivism question? The answer is simple. Just as it is impossible to jump to the moon, so it is impossible to know which is the true religion.
There are no arguments that tend to rationally favor one religion over all the others, or indeed over no religion. I say this, not as an easy agnostic or an atheist who thinks that all religions are obviously false, but on the contrary as someone who has spent years of his life working through the intellectual and existential arguments for various religions. Many of these arguments attain a very high level of sophistication, philosophically and theologically. But none of them convinces anybody who wasn’t already more or less convinced, or prepared to be convinced.
Even the most educated, most rational person in the world, devoting all of his or her hours to studying the arguments, will not be able to come to a clear conclusion on this matter based on reason alone. The problem is not only difficult, it is literally impossible.
So. Let us grant that we want to believe in whichever religion is true. Let us further grant that there is only one true religion in the world. Still, it is not possible for us to come to know that that religion is the true religion. I will be faced with any number of competing religions claims, only one of which is true. And this number is very large -- not just Christian vs. Muslim (etc.), but Baptist vs. Presybeterian (etc.), and Baptist pre-tribulation pre-millenialist vs. Baptist post-tribuation pre-millenialist (etc.). Among all of these, there are no convincing arguments. My best hope, if I want to go to heaven, is to guess randomly and hope to guess right.
But if I guess wrong, I go to hell? No. That makes no sense.
The claims of the religious exclusivist, in short, violate the principle of “ought implies can.” Take even the most intelligent person in the world, doing nothing for his or her entire life except studying religion, all the time with the best faith in the world that there is one true religion. Even this person could never come to know which faith is the true one.
A God who would send me to hell for not believing in the right religion is therefore every bit as much a moral monster as a God who would send me to hell for not jumping to the moon to save a dying man.
But God is good. Therefore, religious exclusivism is false.
And the next time someone comes up to you and says you need to convert to religion X or you're going to hell, you can look at them calmly and say, Nope.
