We have heard a lot of heated commentary in the course of discussing the Ann Coulter / Donny Deutsch exchange, from all sides and many perspectives. It sure has been emotional. But one of the most interesting parts of the debate is that, if you can strip the emotions out of the various positions, several of the opposing positions make sense from the standpoints of their internal logic. It would be useful to examine this, particularly in today’s world, where the implications of unexamined belief are often deadly.

Much turns on whether yours is the older or younger religion. It would appear that many adherents of younger religions, like Christianity or Islam, absolutely take for granted — indeed, this is what many of those faithful have been taught from youth — that their religion and their God subsume the former doctrine and the former deity in their entirety. Thus many Christians sincerely believe that their religion subsumes Judaism, and many Muslims sincerely believe that Islam subsumes and replaces Judaism and Christianity in their entirely. This often seems quite natural to the adherent of the younger religion, who has often been taught that this is so, and never in his life has given two seconds of thought to the matter. It is an assumption that the believer has never, ever examined. The younger religion appears to think of itself as the perfection of the older religion.

This is, in the ordinary course of things, no big deal to the adherent of the younger religion. He believes that he has the real truth, and that previous versions of God and doctrine need to be updated from version 1.0 to 2.0 or to 3.0 — and he never gives it a second thought. In his own congregation there is no reason to, since everybody else in the group also believes in the correctness of the belief. Of course they believe in their own religion, which they have been taught is the exclusive and absolute truth about the most important things in life — the meaning of life and their destiny after death. So of course they think they are right. Everything important is at stake.

So there are often several shocking moments in store. The first of these is when the adherent of the younger religion exposes his underlying belief that version 2.0 or 3.0 is absolute truth and the last word on the matter. The second shocking moment comes when the adherent of the older religion says to the younger, in absolute befuddlement and perhaps outrage, what on earth are you talking about? The older religion never thinks of itself as outmoded or in need of revision. Indeed, the older religion often thinks of the newer version of God and doctrine as something ranging from (a) interesting but irrelevant to (b) a crackpot scheme of no value whatsoever.

It is understandable too that the adherent of the younger religion now experiences his own shock. He has invested his life and his ultimate destiny in the notion that he is following the right path, and not an interesting irrelevancy or crackpot scheme. So there is plenty of room for shock and outrage on all sides of the issue, particularly among those who have not spent a lot of time making conscious to themselves the implications of their belief that they possess a universal and perfect truth — whether version 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0. (Saying that Allah and the New Testament God are one and the same may sound nice, but has very different implications when looked at from the standpoint and agenda of a Christian or a Muslim, for example.)

It remains to be seen if if any of these religions (1.0, 2.0, or 3.0) are right in any of their claims, or if perhaps they are all kind of right, as some have said. But it is surely of note that those religions that have made claims about the completeness and universality of their truth have to deal with some significant demographic issues.

At the time of Jesus, and Mohammed as well, world population was about 150 million. Now world population is 6 billion, and is heading for 9 billion by 2050. The vast majority of these billions of souls do not belong to 1.0 or 2.0 or 3.0, and some belong to even larger religions or no religion at all. Do these billions of souls all need to be “perfected”, or are they just fine the way they are? How do you react to the notion that some large number of these billions may want to “perfect” you? We do not mean to try to answer these questions, and we are not taking pot shots at anyone’s belief. But it certainly appears true, given the vast numbers of humans, that many people are going to be quite surprised on that day they see themselves floating above the hospital bed, and hear someone telling them to “step into the light,” or perhaps hear nothing at all.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 9:52 am and is filed under art, culture, General, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.