Stages of Awareness of Religious Disagreement

Consider the stages of reflection that one goes through when becoming aware of how religions disagree with one another.

In most cases one acquires the pro-religious belief B (e.g., “God really exists”, “Jesus really came back from the dead”, “Muhammad spoke with an angel”) via testimony when one is young, where (i) the testimony comes from people one would regard as one’s superiors on the matter (for one thing, they are adults and you are a child at the time) and (ii) one learns pretty quickly that a great many adults have that belief B. It is usually later that one learns of people who disbelieve B, and this realization typically has several distinct stages.

• Stage 1. One learns that there are other religions—ones that differ from one’s own.

• Stage 2. One learns that these other religions have different beliefs: whereas mine has beliefs B1 and B2, that other one has beliefs B3 and B4. Note that stage 1 and stage 2 are different stages: there could be religions that differed in numerous significant ways but had the same beliefs. (In fact, I suspect that many people don’t consider beliefs to be central to religions.)

• Stage 3. One learns that the other religion denies what one’s own religion affirms: we think their B3 is false and they think our B1 is false. So, finally, the person becomes aware of religious disagreement as such: we can’t all be right in our religious beliefs, so someone is wrong.

• Stage 4. One proceeds to the crucial “Wait a minute” realization, which can be expressed this way:

Wait a minute. There are loads of religions out there: dozens and dozens if you separate different kinds of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. They can’t all be right: they conflict in many ways. If the Catholics are right about X, then the Muslims are wrong about X and the Buddhists are so far off it’s almost funny. How do I know my religion, the one I’ve grown up with, is the right one? I think Mohammad spoke with an angel and Jesus was just a man, not a supernatural god. But lots of other people say those beliefs are false. We can’t both be right! Of all the dozens of religious views out there, how do I know I’ve managed to latch on to the right one? Is it okay [prudentially? morally? epistemically?] for me to just have faith or hope that I’ve got the true one?

These stages of intellectual maturity might all occur in one conversation, but then again their unfolding might occur over a span of a decade or more. How long it takes depends on the child’s intellectual sophistication and curiosity, as well as the promptings of the people she talks with.

Even at stage 3, the problem of religious disagreement might not arise with much force in one’s consciousness. A great many religious people will acknowledge that there are hundreds of millions of people who think the central tenets of their religion are false, but no real reaction goes along with that knowledge. They don’t pause to think about it at all.

What should be obvious: this has nothing specifically to do with religion. Some of one’s political and moral opinions are subject to the same sequence of stages.

If my students are at all representative (at universities in five countries), then the “Wait a minute” stage 4 of awareness is uncommon. For what it’s worth, when I teach the topic I encounter a significant percentage of students who by their behavior and facial expressions have clearly not reached stage 4 even though they have managed to reach stage 3. To put the point unkindly: just because the challenge of religious disagreement has been served on silver platter does not mean that people will catch a whiff of it.

Here is another way to think about the topic, one that might be more vivid: