I’ve been trying to understand the way religious people come to believe in their religion.
It seems to be traditional for either side of this story to frame the other side in their own side’s terms rather than the other way around, and this appears to be getting nowhere beyond providing entertainment and reinforcing each side’s view that they already hold. Very very occasionally you see a half-baked attempt to represent the other’s side in fairer terms, but it’s usually patronising and only a token gesture before they revert to pushing their own side just as before. I’m trying my best to do it properly here.
Is it fair to say that believers think in terms of types and non-believers in terms of tokens?
Often you hear atheists arguing that specific things in religion when read literally are absurd, could not have occurred, are not scientifically possible etc. and the religious will call a straw man. Is it then the case that the religious are instead looking at the kinds of things you come across in their texts and teachings? That the meaning behind what is being said is relatable and that is the truth that they are finding rather than the literal specifics? That would explain why they respond to the morals behind the events, behaviours and consequences that the religion lays out. The morals, how the stories make you think and feel - that is what is being said to be true to the world and what seems to result in more preferable ways of living, no?
Yes there’s slavery, rapes and tribalistic murder, and of course that’s not what’s being communicated as moral, it’s the lessons behind what merely happens to be the social norms at the time the text was written - I’ve often come across religious thinkers arguing that the texts had to be relevant to the times in order to gain traction. The literal atheist is obviously right to point out that many of the old customs have no place in modern society, and that this is a valid point about the place of ancient religions in today’s context, but the metaphorical theist is also obviously right to point out that the lessons set within the old customs are still valuable within new customs.
Both are right and wrong in different ways.
You see this mismatch in contemporary popular thinkers, such as when Sam Harris debates Jordan Peterson about truth. They’re talking about different ways in which to draw truth, both valid, but the paradigm is different - so they talk past each other. Does JP believe in God? He never seems to answer this question to Sam’s satisfaction or to the satisfaction of atheists alike. He’s answering it in terms of stories and “types” of truth. Sam and other atheists want specifics about believing that a God is a Being that exists “out there” in the world in some kind of detectable way. I imagine the answer to that requirement in atheist terms would be “no”, although it would be phrased as “not exactly” in theist terms. It’s not as though God doesn’t exist at all “out there” in the world in some kind of detectable way, because in a way He does, but not in the same way as matter, energy and forces do in science. God won’t have a specific temperature or mass etc. but that which is being identified as His effect is detectable to humans in a way that at least appears to be just as ubiquitous and eternal as any scientific law because as the religious point out - the morals appear to be valuable in ancient and modern contexts alike, and there’s no reason to believe that this will change in future.
Am I on the right track here with my distinction between type-truth and token-truth?
Is one more valid than the other? I think it depends on your values. I’ve been an atheist for as long as I can remember because I value specifics and drawing patterns from literal detail only in order to maximise accuracy in prediction in the most objective way possible. I imagine that theists are looking more to ethical decisions to guide the tendencies in how they act towards more preferable outcomes according to what they want from life. If so, the theist is in a way more engaged “in the world” than the atheist who is standing back from the world first before engaging themselves with it. I would presume that this is a similar difference between continental and analytical philosophical schools of thought, where the poets see the trees more than the wood, and the mathematicians see the wood more than the trees.