I disagree with this statement.
Truly believing in one’s religion means trying to understand and gain a knowledge of everything around you, and then being able to justify your belief.
One of the ideas that John Stuart Mill presents in his work On Liberty is that freedom of freedom of thought/speech is necessary in order to keep truth alive. If one cannot disprove false opinions and justify one’s own, that opinion becomes empty, and we forget why we ever even had that opinion in the first place.
A lack of understanding leads to dead truths.
Excellently made points.
My issue lies not with the exception of mindful theists, but with the norm of dogmatic ones; in the idea that faith is an acceptable stand-in for knowledge and understanding; that there exist “truths” which one should blindly accept, rather than question and investigate with scientific rigor.
If an intelligent, mindful individual can hold a theistic system of belief which is logically justifiable in this manner—if they do not accept dogma above individual thought and observation—then they have my respect.
