[Vision2020] Response to Mr. Lawyer on Asian Religions

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Mr. Lawyer:

I will be happy to answer your questions about what I learned from the Asian religions.  I'll take your questions one by one.

LAWYER: What I'm wondering is, in all of your travels have you ever met anyone who thought their religion wasn't correct? My guess is you haven't. No one would do something they didn't think was right. Thinking you are right and being right are not the same thing, as you well know. 

GIER: I have discovered that the Asian religions and the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) differ on what is the correct religion.  Except for Hindu and Buddhist fundamentalists (my research convinces me that we unfortunately taught them to be fundys), most Asians embrace the moral and spiritual elements of other religions.  Religious syncretism (mixing) not religious exclusion has been the rule in Asia.  The result has been very little religiously motivated violence in Asian history; indeed, three major sects of Hinduism have lived together in peace for 3,000 years.

Christian missionaries typcially despair at the response of most Hindus to their efforts.  The Hindu will usually respond by saying: "I already accept Christ as an incarnation of Vishnu," just as formerly they made the Buddha the 9th incarnation of Vishnu.  This is the reaon why over 80 percent of India still remains proudly Hindu. By the way, Jackie Woolf needs some better references on Hinduism, and I would be happy to provide them.

Gandhi was tempted to convert first to Christianity (finally rejected it because of its meat eating), and then to Islam, but decided to stay a Hindu and then encouraged all people to stay in their own faiths because each them had a core of goodness and value.  The Dalai Lama tells his American and European followers the same thing, although they yearned to become Buddhists.

LAWYER: Also, have you ever visited a place where the religion was not part and parcel of the surrounding culture? Again, my bet is that you haven't. This is because religion comes out people's finger tips (to coin a phrase) and a person's beliefs in their god color everything they do; how they raise their kids, how they form their government, etc.

GIER: You're absolutely right on this and that's why I've devoted most of life to the study of religions and also committed myself to honoring and respecting these religious cultures.  That's why I reject missionaries of any sort that would want destroy these cultures and substitute an alien worldview in their stead.  I respect the Roman Catholic mission in Asian because it emphasizes health, education, and other social services over antagonistic evangelizing.

LAWYER: And finally, I wonder what would happen if you jumped up in one of these cultures you visited and told them that all their beliefs were false because they've not done an exhaustive study on all the religions of the world. How would they have treated you if you had ever done 1/10th the things you've done to Christians over the years?

GIER: I want to know about the nasty things I've done to Christians "over the years." Does it include sponsoring two Indian Christians students for their graduate education?  Does it include the wonderful interchange I've had with Christians of all persuasions in my 30 years of professional life?  (Those Christians actaully accepted me as their regional president despite my heinous crimes against them!) Was it the praise I heaped on conservative evangelicals in my book "God, Reason, and the Evangelicals" for not falling into the Wilsonian trap of arrogant, off-putting pseudo-theology?  If I have criticized Christians, it is because they have given poor arguments, not because their religion is false. (I believe that all religions are true to some extent.) The strongest condemnation from religious scholars should be given not to religious people who have made honest mistakes, but those who have deliberately descecrated their own traditions for their own purposes.

LAWYER: Christianity is not true or false because I've not studied every religion on the planet. It is true because it is true. And since it is true, everything else, including those systems you've spent your life studying, are false. I don't need to prove it, it is self authenticating. 

GIER:  Wow! Such statements take one's breath away!  Does that mean that Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, and all the others are also self-authenticating?  Do you realize that you are reasoning in a circle and begging the question? (Both logical fallacies for your information.)  The honest religious person believes on the basis of faith, and that means that questions of objective truth and falsity no longer hold.  Saying otherwise is what I call "evangelical rationalism," which is an arrogant and misguided form of religion.

Mr. Lawyer, you are in a very different situation than most people in India. Forty percent of them are illiterate and have no access to information about other religions. They are unfortunately easy prey for Hindu fundamentalists.  You, on the other hand, are highly literate and information about the other religions is at your finger tips.  And yet you will not budge. Remember Max Muler: "They who know one religion know none."

May your eyes be eventually opened,

Nick Gier