To the question “What makes you right,” answers range from the thoughtful to the childish. My answer was “Relationship.” I thought I would elaborate on it.
RF is all about ideas, but religion, real religion, is about relationship. This isn’t something new. It’s not even up for debate. Rationalism is simply wrong to suppose that religion is first a primitive belief in something which is then followed by corresponding values. Rather, religion is first and foremost a felt relationship with cosmos; interpretative concepts come only later. The ideas religions employ don’t have to be factual in order to be true because the message they attempt to convey is relational. Concepts are only the vehicle. The criticism of religion by rational argument and a demand for evidence is therefore absurd.
Rationalism doesn’t deny the inner life; it just builds a wall around it tries to live on the outside. Outside the barricades, the foxes of the intellect may engage in clever reasoning and dominate life, but the lion of Being continues to roar within. “I don't believe in the ridiculous just because I want to” is the mantra of the ridiculous. It is evidence of an addiction to externalities. And, ironically, it’s the kind of dualism theists are often derisively accused of.
Monism is also ridiculous. Try as they might to break down or deny the barricades of mind, monists always encounter the “I” and its limitations. “What makes you right?” “I do,” is the answer. It is the I that contemplates One and the I that experiences it. If the I is dissolved into nothingness, who or what is aware of its dissolution? Unless the monist can know my life as intimately as me, how can they question their individuality? Monism is therefore dualism wearing a clever mask. A monist may indeed know God experientially as beyond all comprehension, but he/she live in a fog. For religious knowledge cannot be gained except by contemplation of God’s relation with his creation and entering into a relation with him.
In religion, there is no "right" or "wrong" belief. There is only relationship: in religion, relationship is everything. Everything I said goes to my relationship with the cosmos and everything in it
