Do collaborations across religious boundaries exclude those whose belief systems value religious or philosophical certainty?
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Wednesday, April 27, 2011
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2 comments:
At first blush it seems like epistemic humility should be easy - at least for me, the concept that I should not tell others what to believe is natural. But when I start thinking about how I feel as a person of a religion, and how that differentiates from a more general person of faith, I falter. Surely, I stay in my religion because I think it is the best, don't I? So maybe I'm not so humble (yet).
I think it's easy, or easier anyway, to tolerate someone else's beliefs and simply not (actively) push them out than it is to truly accept their beliefs as potentially equal to yours and welcome them in. In an ideal community, we should be doing better than tolerating one another, although it's certainly a step up from some things.
I think I belong to the first camp you cited, but in order to be welcoming to the second camp, humility is certainly possible. I can say that faith motivates me, and at the same time accept that it is not necessarily the best way for everyone (and, though this is harder, perhaps myself) to be motivated. But it needs to work both ways - both sides have to honestly accept that the other person's motivation can be legitimate to really work together.
Thanks for your comment! You make an important distinction between tolerating and welcoming. What do others think? What challenges do you and your community face in, as Anonymous says, "doing better than tolerating one another?"
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