Confronting religious disagreement

This was not good news. I definitely enjoy going out to the Street on the weekends, and, if what he said was true, then I’d dug myself a pretty big hole. But the more I thought, the more I realized that I didn’t agree with my friend’s perspective. If the rules were that strict, then the millions of people who remain unaware of them, perhaps who live in rural villages in South America, are going to hell through no fault of their own. In my opinion, God wouldn’t create a system like that. Though I wanted to voice these concerns, I found myself confronting a problem: What if I offended him?

This raises an important question: To what extent should we subject religious views to critique and analysis? On the one hand, religion is a private and personal matter. It seems wrong to tell someone his or her beliefs are misguided. But on the other hand, religion plays a huge role in the day-to-day existence of people and communities. With so much impact, it seems important to ask why a person believes something.

At Princeton, I’ve noticed that we don’t usually talk about ethics or religious beliefs. The reason, I think, is because unlike in many of the classes we take, there is no straightforward truth or answer to find. Moreover, in this world of political hypersensitivity, we’ve been preached to about the importance of accepting and not highlighting differences. The constitutional right to practice any faith adds to our reticence in examining these differences. Of course we should have the right to practice our particular religions, but in this political environment we don’t question or challenge what a dogma suggests.

Like many people, I have my own ideas about basic religious questions. But we need to accept that there is a lot of uncertainty as well. We should welcome — and initiate — challenges to our beliefs as an opportunity to refine them. If someone asks you a question about your faith, and you find yourself unable to explain it, then you need to reexamine the core of your beliefs. We should all understand why our faiths ask us to do certain things.

Understandably, we are a little nervous. Religion is the thing you don’t want to get wrong in life. Unlike the essay for that class you’re taking pass/D/fail, or the distance between that cup and this ping pong ball, there is a lot more at stake. At least in the Abrahamic faiths, it is a question of where you spend eternity. And because the stakes are apparently so high, we tend to follow whatever our religion dictates for fear of getting things wrong. If I have to go to church every Sunday, pray, repent and believe the Nicene Creed in order to avoid going to hell, then you can be sure I will.

But if eternity truly hangs in the balance, then this fact seems like a good reason to subject our beliefs to rigorous critique. After all, don’t we want to be sure? Don’t we want to have some justification for our beliefs? Ultimately, then, we must put aside our fear of error in order to be rational. For in the past, religion has led its followers to believe certain things that many of us now see as mistaken. For example, consider how the Catholic Church used to allow the system of indulgences, where one could pay money to have a family member moved from purgatory to heaven. Or the Crusades that were marketed as a purely religious cause when, in truth, the motivations were far more complicated. We need to discuss religions because they tend to have a “get out of jail free” card when it comes to intellectual critique.

In his recent article “Islam in America,” Brendan Carroll '11 wrote, “There is a difference between making remarks that are anti-Muslim and making remarks that are anti-Islam.” The same idea can be applied to debating religious ideas more broadly. It is not an attack on the person, but an attempt to critique a religion. As intelligent students who can think for ourselves, we must evaluate all spheres of our lives. Dialogue helps create understanding for both parties. If one part of our life is without it, we risk accepting everything without question.

Doug Stuart is a freshman from Lake Forest, Ill. He can be reached at rdstuart@princeton.edu.