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Doubt Based vs. Faith Based Religions |
Another important difference between the Church of Reality and most other religions is the processes that we use to evaluate what is real and what isn't. How do we know for sure if what we believe in is real? How do Christians know for sure if what they believe in is real? How do the different religions fix mistakes?
These issues are a real problem for Christianity because Christians are prohibited by God from questioning their faith. To doubt is the unforgivable sin. Christians are prohibited from self scrutiny. They are not allowed to question if any of this is really real or if the stuff in the Bible really did happen. In contrast, the Church of Reality takes the exact opposite position. The Church of Reality requires that you doubt everything and that you take nothing on faith. The Principle of Self Scrutiny is one of our most sacred principles because we accept the fact that we are absolutely sure that we will make mistakes and by embracing doubt and self scrutiny we hope to catch our mistakes and fix them.
The only teaching in the Church of Reality that can never be questioned is that we must question everything!
If God inspired the Bible and the Bible is the Word of God then it has to be 100% word for word accurate. "God said it - I believe it - and that is that!" is what I've read on bumper stickers. God being omnipotent and infallible has the limitation that he can never make a mistake. (I can make mistakes, so I can do something God can't do.) And since God is omnipotent, we have to assume that he is a good writer and that he has the ability to get his point across clearly to the reader. So whatever the Bible says is what God means. Some people have raised issues with the chain of custody of the Bible. Has it been tampered with? Has it been altered? If it has, then that introduces error into the process and introduces the element that the Bible might not be 100% reliable. If that is the case then how much of the Bible is unreliable and what parts? How do we test the Bible to determine what parts are reliable and what isn't? That is why perhaps we have thousands of Christian denominations fighting over those very points.
Christians have to be 100% right because they don't have a process for correcting their mistakes.
The problem with Christianity is that they have to be 100% right to start with because they don't have any way to correct their mistakes if they are wrong. If it was ever proved, for example, that Jesus never existed, then Christianity would in theory cease to exist. If, on the other hand, Jesus or God showed up and came out into objective reality, then we would still be Realists, we would change our minds and God and Jesus would become part of our reality. Hopefully we can get God into an anger management class before someone pisses him off and he destroys the world.
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