How to deal with "Every religion thinks it's the right one"

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Peter_Plato said:
A concept cannot explain anything, it is only sufficient reality that can.
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But we are detached from reality. All we have to explain the subject matter is a set of concepts when it comes to reality. I don’t think we have any direct access to pure facts that can explain reality as there is no guarantee that our mathematical mind based on fact could exhaustively set up a set of counterfactuals in which they could explain the absolute reality to its fullness because, I don’t think that what we experience is the edge of reality but its surface so we have extreme difficulty to understand the reality.
Peter_Plato said:
It is only the reality of God that can sufficiently explain the facts, so the need for God as real remains.
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Yes, assuming that God does know the absolute reality and there is no problem with translation. One cannot prove that our language which deeply connected to our cognition is able to comprehend the absolute reality hence there could be the problem of translation.

Moreover I think that is the lack of knowledge that makes consciousness and changes in mind necessary. Consciousness is needed to understand state of subject matter most importantly provide awareness that something is lacking hence changes become necessary. The knowledge of absolute truth is exhaustive hence there is neither need for consciousness nor for changes hence God in your framework is neither has consciousness nor can change or cause any change.
 
Bahman said:
Yes, assuming that God does know the absolute reality and there is no problem with translation. One cannot prove that our language which deeply connected to our cognition is able to comprehend the absolute reality hence there could be the problem of translation.
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Why would God knowing absolute reality be necessary? If God is absolute reality and is the ground of it, then he both is and intimately knows (is one with) absolute reality. Being absolute reality would make God much more intimate with it than mere knowing ever would accomplish.

You are also assuming that our contact with absolute reality is only a conceptual contact. I have no need or compulsion to make that presumption. As you have insisted previously, we are to doubt everything. I doubt that your assumption that “knowing” is necessarily mediated is true. Knowing, in the true sense, is apprehending reality - the intellect “knows” by becoming a part of reality. We don’t merely know reality, we participate in it. Aquinas, for one, was quite clear about that. Thomists, generally, see knowing in that way.
 
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BTW this was the opening post:
NextElement said:
This comes up SO often for me when discussing religion with non-believers. They always eventually go to the “Well every religion thinks it’s right and all the others are wrong!”… For me it’s hard to keep the conversation going after that. It’s like, yeah they do, but why does that stop you from finding your own truth?

Any advice for how to deal with it when this is brought up? How can I kind of elevate Christianity/Catholicism above all of the “other” religions that would swear they are the truth?
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The fundamental error in this kind of thinking is that man has the power to create God, and he does this by dreaming up in his own mind what God is.

This is the essential crux of Modernism, whereby man dares to re-create God in man’s own image. It is the inversion of all creation, essentially, and as such it is the work of the devil, because the devil is all about turning reality upside-down.

Anyone who thinks that their own religion is “the true one” and all others are wrong, is very possibly falling into this trap of Modernism. The only way to NOT fall into it, is to subscribe to the one religion that relies entirely on divine revelation, which has been given to us by God, infallibly. Then, it is not a figment of our own imagination or a fantasy of our own making that we rely on, but rather, it is the objective truth of God that gives us our confidence.

We would properly rely on that which we are reliably given by God, not that which we choose to believe from whatever other source (usually the other source is one or more of the fallen angels).

We test everything, and despise not the spirit ("Extinguish not the spirit. Despise not prophesies. But prove all things: hold fast that which is good" I Thes. 5:19-21).
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NextElement said:
This comes up SO often for me when discussing religion with non-believers. They always eventually go to the “Well every religion thinks it’s right and all the others are wrong!”… For me it’s hard to keep the conversation going after that. It’s like, yeah they do, but why does that stop you from finding your own truth?

Any advice for how to deal with it when this is brought up? How can I kind of elevate Christianity/Catholicism above all of the “other” religions that would swear they are the truth?
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Different faiths are based on cultural differences, but while truth remains truth, there exists a lack of respect for other cultures that are not ones own.

If all cultures truly respected each other, they would all unite under one truth.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Why would God knowing absolute reality be necessary? If God is absolute reality and is the ground of it, then he both is and intimately knows (is one with) absolute reality. Being absolute reality would make God much more intimate with it than mere knowing ever would accomplish.
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  1. Will is the mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action toward absolute truth
  2. God is absolute truth
  3. God has no will
  4. Consciousness is the faculty awareness from subject matter
  5. Self-awareness is impossible since a self-reflection is logically impossible
  6. God cannot be absolute truth or is not conscious of it
Peter_Plato said:
You are also assuming that our contact with absolute reality is only a conceptual contact. I have no need or compulsion to make that presumption. As you have insisted previously, we are to doubt everything. I doubt that your assumption that “knowing” is necessarily mediated is true. Knowing, in the true sense, is apprehending reality - the intellect “knows” by becoming a part of reality. We don’t merely know reality, we participate in it. Aquinas, for one, was quite clear about that. Thomists, generally, see knowing in that way.
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I can understand that but I have a argument against it:
  1. The only fully meaningful entity is absolute truth which is anomaly free
  2. Absolute truth is simple
  3. Absolute truth can be explained as set of counterfactuals with size infinite, since it is exhaustive, in which each counterfactual has no meaning separately since absolute truth is simple
  4. Concepts then are not part of absolute truth since they carry meaning but they are not anomaly free
 
TEPO said:
Different faiths are based on cultural differences, but while truth remains truth, there exists a lack of respect for other cultures that are not ones own.

If all cultures truly respected each other, they would all unite under one truth.
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How? How said that there is one truth? Do you have any prove?
 
TEPO said:
Different faiths are based on cultural differences, but while truth remains truth, there exists a lack of respect for other cultures that are not ones own.

If all cultures truly respected each other, they would all unite under one truth.
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Islam and Arianism for example were based on a lack of respect for Jews. Protestantism on a lack of respect for the Roman Empire. Etc.
 
TEPO said:
Islam and Arianism for example were based on a lack of respect for Jews. Protestantism on a lack of respect for the Roman Empire. Etc.
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But you cannot disrespect your faith or you don’t have faith. By the way, how come one God command to disrespect people of older religion.
 
Bahman said:
How? How said that there is one truth? Do you have any prove?
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Yes. Search back to the beginnings of religions and see which religions are based on inclusiveness and exclusiveness, then you will see that Catholicism was based on the inclusion of Gentiles and all cultures universally. There you will find truth.
 
TEPO said:
Yes. Search back to the beginnings of religions and see which religions are based on inclusiveness and exclusiveness, then you will see that Catholicism was based on the inclusion of Gentiles and all cultures universally. There you will find truth.
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But Islam is newer than Christianity.
 
Bahman said:
But you cannot disrespect your faith or you don’t have faith. By the way, how come one God command to disrespect people of older religion.
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God never commanded us to disrespect Jews or Zoroastrians. :cool:
 
Yes. I disrespect Islam. So what?

My point is that there are many false religions because opposite cultures lack respect for other cultures… We’re all bent on unity - that is the problem.
 

  1. Bahman said:
    So Islam is wrong? Either God changed his mind or there different God.
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    Muslims worship the same God we do through a false religion. I respect Arabic culture and the peoples tendencies and racial behaviors. I do not respect Islam -only Muslims. But not because they believe in Islam.

    …it’s complicated.
 
TEPO said:
Yes. I disrespect Islam. So what?

My point is that there are many false religions because opposite cultures lack respect for other cultures… We’re all bent on unity - that is the problem.
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The first problem is that they are holding the exact position you are taking regarding disrespect. The second problem is that they think that they are bending on unity regarding when it comes to the truth.
 
Bahman said:
The first problem is that they are holding the exact position you are taking regarding disrespect. The second problem is that they think that they are bending on unity regarding when it comes to the truth.
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Mohammed was influenced by a Germanic monk. Both probably had a distaste for Jews and Mediterranian people’s in general. It was a cultural union between a strict Arabic man and a spiritual Germanic. It’s no coincidence that Protestantism is an extension of Germanic Anglo Saxons.

…it’s all cultural and racial. Once we realize that unity of race and culture is not greater than diversity, we will then develop a proper balance between unity and diversity. If we could have respected the Eastern Greek culture, we could have also avoided an Orthodox split with Catholicism.

But instead, we became human and chose ‘unity’, which offended.
 
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