Motivation
Every religion treats other religions as ignorant at best or evil at worst. Followers of Open Religion may also be tempted to do the same. What should be the ideal approach of Open Religion towards followers of other religions given its emphasis on allowing every conscious entity to choose its own destiny?
Content
For most complex systems that one is part of, be it your body or a relationship or an organization or the society, it is much easier to identify what is not working compared to what is working well. A simple example is when a body part starts paining, we become aware of it at every moment while in our normal lives we may not spend even a moment to think about it. This physical mechanism seems to be analogous to how the human mind works. Flaws are difficult to un-see and even a few flaws might be enough to take all virtues out of the mind’s visual field.
Religions are complex systems which have their flaws and virtues. The flaws have been explored earlier in this book and in many atheist literature but in summary this list includes propagating false beliefs about the nature of reality, inciting violence against other groups and putting some unjustifiable restrictions on certain members within the religious group. What are the virtues? At the individual level religion may give a person a sense of purpose and a community which has many physical, psychological and economical benefits. At the social level, religions may help regulate individual selfishness, help cooperation among people not of the same family or tribe, punish free-riders and hence make more complex societies possible.
To enable us to not be blinded by the flaws, Open Religion advocates that it’s followers give the most generous interpretation to all religions and their practices and customs and try to see what beneficial role could they have played in the past, what can be learned from them for our present lives and what can be distilled from them for our future.
References
