A problem, in my view, is the assumption of strong mutual exclusivity. I believe that the atheists are somewhat right, and that the evangelists are somewhat right, although they have pretty much exactly opposite positions, and of course the ways that I think they're right are different from the ways that they think that they are right. Part of the problem in my view, is the attitude of exclusivity itself -- that there is one bizarre answer that is entirely right, and that all the others are entirely wrong. So let's pick some sort of probabilistic procedure which gives us a good chance of a good outcome, and whereby we don't really need to understand and appreciate the one bizarre answer that happens to be right, nor account for the resonances of truth that arise from other points of view.
It is thinking of exclusivity in my view that leads one to accept notions, unquestioningly, that others find bizarre and offensive and idiotic, etc., in turns, because it's just a part of the dogma of your camp on this trek, and you're going to stick with your camp, and to discard other positions that may in fact be useful to the better understanding of your own camp.
A better attitude in my mind is the open mind, the selective synthesis of numerous ideas, with a view to tentatively accepting some of them, and with certainty very few of them, until they themselves manage to impress you. By this attitude, I would feel free to discard notions that are unproven, simply on the grounds on the high probability of those notions being misunderstood, both by myself, and also by any of the long chain of interpreters and authors of once ancient texts. But I would also leave them open to potential metaphoric or even literal truth depending on better understanding in the future.
Heaven and hell? How many heavens are there? What are their kinds and nature and purpose? Did the authors of the religious texts have direct view of these heavens and hells? How did they see hells? Why does a loving God create hell for his children? Etc.
We think we know what they mean, but we can't really accept them as such, so we know that they mean something different from what we're led to believe, if they exist at all in Reality.
How many Gods are there? Are there three in Christianity? Are there millions in Hinduism? Is there only one in Islam, so that even its own prophet is only a man, and then Jesus too, although the prophet of Islam says that Jesus was a true prophet of God and Jesus said he was one with God? Is the infinite God of the Abrahamic religions so different from the infinite God of Hinduism and so different from the infinite God of the Deists? I find it more rational to think that God might exist, and then that same God might have appeared to different people at different times and given a different part of what must be a universally coherent message, than to think that just one of these mutually exclusive bizarre positions just happens to be correct and all the others pure fiction.
This thread is not yet blessed with a Rumi quotation. But Rumi liked silence too.
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