In response to my conversion piece, V wrote:
Having authored a book [on the subject], I naturally paid close attention to your argument.
As a minor point, I do not think that the issue is whether there is truth, or there is no truth. Rather, it is whether we can, or cannot, know what that truth is. I hope you appreciate the fact that those are two altogether different questions, the answer to the first one being "yes" and to the second being either a "yes" or a "no," depending on what kind of truth we are talking about. For the religious truth, the answer at the present is, unfortunately, a "no."
As to whether the "non-religious" (like the Communists) are any less prone to violence, I think you are right. But the reason for that is, that both the religious who are violent, and the non-religious who are violent, are motivated by the exact same thing -- the "truth." In my book, I examine 5 such truths -- in chronological order, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Communism and Nazism. The West became a much nicer place than the Moslem world not because it adopded a nicer religion, but because it essentially abandoned the notion of True Faith, substituting it with individual faith.
And I was curious to see how you would treat the subject of prayer for someone else to see the light. I could never clearly understand why people do that. Do they expect God to suddenly see the light after their supplication, and say "oh shoot, I clean forgot to enlighten that very nice and deserving person Joe that Jim is praying for; let me do it now!"? Doesn't He know without our prayers? I understand the motivation -- which you described in very clear terms; but I cannot understand people's ideas of God that could lead them into such a mindset.
All this said, it was a very good article -- very thought provoking. (Else, why would I write to you???)
Based on what you've written, it appears that you're expressing relativist sentiments. Truth is not synonymous with opinion; thus, there cannot be Jewish "truth," Christian "truth," Nazi "truth," etc. (In fact, I cannot think of a more flamboyant oxymoron than the last.) There is only the Truth, and other things either accord with it or do not.
Then, I could not disagree with the following line more:
"The West became a much nicer place than the Moslem world not because it adopded a nicer religion, but because it essentially abandoned the notion of True Faith, substituting it with individual faith."
The Truth is exactly the opposite: It is the concept of individual faith -- which is usually synonymous with moral relativism -- that is causing us to become meaner all the time. Moreover, what would you rather have, a society with bad individual faith, or one with a good faith that it considers true? The point is that individual faith isn't by definition good; it's just by definition individual. (However, "True Faith" is by definition good; if it's not, it isn't true faith.) In other words, what good is individual faith, if many individuals decide to embrace one prescribing human sacrifice, slavery and a whole basketful of vices?
You see, when we discuss things nowadays, we always avoid a very uncomfortable but important question: What is good? If a faith, ideology, or philosophy has a basis in Truth, if it is good, we should want everyone to embrace it and view it as the true one; if it is not good, it should be our sincerest hope that no one will embrace it. It is only by ascertaining what is good and living it that the world becomes a better place.
As for the matter of moral relativism, I don't have the time to do it justice here. If interested, though, you can read my essay on the topic titled "The Nature of Right and Wrong." It can be found here.
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