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An excerpt from Taming the Violence of Faith:Win-Win Solutions for Our World in Crisis By Jay Stuart Snelson

Jay Stuart Snelson

Over the millennia of intellectual history, one of the deadliest ideas ever conceived is the concept of absolute truth: a truth that is ultimate, perfect, and can never be overturned. The presumed infallibility of absolute truth remains a pillar of win-lose religion. Where God was said to have authored absolute truth, true believers have defended that truth by suppressing disbelievers in its flawless fidelity. In their zeal to spread their vision of truth, believers have forced their truth on disbelievers through the persuasive power of swords, guns, and bombs. As a result, the social impact of advancing absolute truth through the violence of win-lose religion has been catastrophic.

How can we distinguish between that which is true and that which is false? This is the great intellectual challenge of human history. Who is to say that one opinion of truth is superior to another? Can we somehow improve on mere opinion of truth where opinion is arbitrary, relative, and subjective? Must we always depend on authoritarian opinion as our source of truth? What if such authority is undependable because its vision of truth is flawed, if not spurious and designed to deceive?

One of history’s most fundamental and influential discoveries was how to bypass the intimidation of authoritarian explanations of causality. Where authorities in every arena of human endeavor claim that their paradigms of causality are true and above reproach, what if, indeed, they are not above reproach because they are not true? How can we skirt the flaws of authority and blaze the way for truer and simpler models of physical, biological, and social causality?

A formidable barrier to abating the problems of war, poverty, and servitude is the common belief that political and religious authorities are the final voices of social truth— especially where such truth extols the efficacy and rightnes of coercive action for win-lose gain. Yet, as long as educated people with good minds have a priori faith in the equity, utility, and morality of institutionalizing the seizure of wealth and freedom for noble aims—or any aims—humans will continue to reap the tragedies of war, poverty, and servitude.