You might think that people must avoid religious disagreements for there to be peace and tolerance. Let me describe how serious religious disagreements should help promote lasting peace, tolerance, and even spiritual development. When disagreeing with cognitive peers (that is, people equivalently knowledgeable about the issue and equivalently capable of evaluating the details of the issue) the other brings up considerations one hasn’t adequately taken into account; otherwise the other isn’t a cognitive peer. Evidence of cognitive peer disagreement is evidence one has made a mistake (Richard Feldman and David Christensen famously say this.).
Perhaps one should just trust that the process producing the religious belief is functioning properly (as does Alvin Plantinga, arguably the most famous Christian philosopher alive today) or is reliable (John Greco). But the more one sees the other as having similar skills for thinking well and as having similar honesty and sincerity trying to get a correct understanding, the more the trust just mentioned is undermined. After all, why should I think I got it right if the other uses similar skills and similar command of the details of the issue to come up with the alternative? As one learns more about the other with such similarities surfacing this should lead to humility even with respect to the most deeply held religious views, and this humility in turn promotes tolerance. It isn’t that one necessarily loses one’s religious belief, rather one has at least slightly less confidence. (If you want the think more about this issue, you could read my book on the topic: The Epistemology of Religious Disagreement, Palgrave/Macmillan).
Besides tolerance-producing humility, serious religious disagreements have four other desirable byproducts. They build skills for living with others who hold radically different views. In the year 2050 there will be some 9 billion people, and such skills will be even more crucial for producing tolerance.
A third byproduct of serious religious disagreements: They force us to learn about the other at the deepest level. It is one thing to read in a book that Hindus believe in reincarnation. It is quite another thing to listen to your intelligent neighbor explain why she has organized her entire life around such a belief.
A fourth byproduct follows from everything mentioned: Tools for reducing racism and xenophobia. One thing characteristic of racists or xenophobes is that they mostly don’t care about what the other thinks. As described serious religious disagreement involves an openness at the deepest level to what the other is thinking, an openness that seeks the deepest level of understanding of the other’s view and that, at the very same time, challenges one’s own confidence in religious beliefs.
Serious religious disagreement also helps foster spiritual development. The mission statement of my wonderful school, Huston-Tillotson University, says we foster “an emphasis on … spiritual and ethical development.” We don’t just have to think about spirituality as something ethereal and ultra-religious. Just think spirituality has to do with whatever motivates the person at the deepest level. Something a colleague (Dr. Katherine Oldmixon) said to me inspired me to develop this way of thinking about spirituality. When in a serious disagreement a person naturally reflects on her beliefs about religion. And in this process one can’t help but develop one’s own understanding of spiritual development. For example, in two classes that I teach, “Comparative Religion and “Philosophy and Ethics,” students often have religious disagreements with their peers. When they listen to their peers talk about alternative religious views they can’t help but reflect on their own spiritual commitments, and this reflection encourages spiritual development.
Keep Austin … seriously disagreeing!
