Welcome to Piercing the Shadows, my attempt to understand the meaning of life and the universe through philosophy and theology.
A single thought, for now: does belief in existence equate to existence?
What I mean is this:
"Do I have to believe in your existence in order to make you exist? Or do you exist independent of my belief in you?"
This question came to me approximately 3 or 4 years ago, when I was visiting a highschool religion class.
We were discussing the account of the creation of the world from Genesis in the Bible.
We were divided into three groups: a group that thought that science was more important than religion, a group that thought they were both equal, and a group that thought religion was more important than science.
A kid, in defense of his viewpoint that science was more important, said this: "Well, since humans weren't made until the sixth day, on the first five days God didn't exist because there was no one to believe in him."
Cue laughter.
My hand shot up a mile high, but I wasn't acknowledged, and his argument seemed to be ignored.
I had an answer for him, though; I would have argued that belief does not equate existence.
I don't have quotes from Aristotle or Plato, or Thomas Aquinas to back up my position (although I'm sure they would agree with me), but here's my argument:
I can believe that you are a frog. I can believe this as hard as I possibly can. But do you believe you are a frog? If not, then we are at odds. Assuming you believe that there is objective truth in the world (we'll talk about that later), you know that both of us cannot be right. If one of us is not right, then belief does not equate existence, for we both have ardent beliefs that are completely at odds with one another.
This comes to another point that I said in a comment on youtube (go on, laugh, I don't mind). A person was complaining that the Catholic Church is sure they are right and refuses to believe that other churches could be right.
After chuckling quietly to myself for a time, I posted a reply that, alas, I cannot find.
I said something like:
"Of course the Catholic Church doesn't say 'Well, we think we're right, but the Mormons could be right, too.' Why not? Because any honest religion has only one thing to say: 'We're right.' If someone else could be right, then the Catholics couldn't believe themselves when they say 'We're right.' They would be hypocrites!
To believe that they are the only right ones (which you have to believe, otherwise you wouldn't be a Catholic in the first place) means believing that everyone else is wrong.
That's why religions aren't "tolerant". Because they're honest.
