This extra comment is a nice follow up to your other one, because I was going to ask whether you acknowledged the relativism of your answer. And, it sounds like you are by recognizing that it’s “assessed individually.”
Lately, I’ve begun to see that epistemology, itself, is entirely relative, too. Or, at least, entirely subjective, which is basically the same thing, no? So, if all religious understanding (whether about god or gods, Confucianism or Taoism) is only *relatively* true, then they might as well be false. We’re looking for something that True, always and everywhere.
Since we were on the topic of evolution, I should point out that I wouldn’t say that “science” is True, here either. Far from it, in fact! Science is constantly being tested, updated, challenged, and questioned (as it should be). Science may tell us “how” but it cannot tell us “why.” Adherence to any religion that purports to have an answer to how and why by pointing to an imaginary entity possessed of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, should be only lightly held, if at all.
Again, I don’t want to poke at what you hold sacred. Your beliefs are yours, to whatever extent your conditioning creates them.
Replies (1)
This is not even to cover the different kinds of truth or to specify any of my preferred epistemological frameworks, just sort of a meta thing. Piaget invented a field called genetic epistemology to cover a lot of this meta stuff and explain how truths can be concordant with reality in the way I've described. I only just learned of him, so I'll be looking more into that soon.
I consider myself a kind of rationalist, realist, with I would say a strong conceptualization of the relativeness of meaning to frameworks and to the objective reality to be beheld. A lot of my philosophy is concordant with Objectivism, but I don't believe in their dogmatic claim that there is no god just because they don't understand what God is and can't measure him, and so they further define God as outside of all of existence. That's the empiricist's fallacy plus victory by definition.
Despite my strong rationalist a priori bend, in fact reinforcing it, I have also a predilection to the critical inspection that is the essence of Critical Rationalism, and a fondness for his form of empirical falsification that forms the backbone of most modern scientific inquiry (well, the good science that is done that's not completely ruined by fiat and superstitious dogmatic nonsense)
I do hope this is an engaging conversation for you and doesn't come off as gloating or anything. This is just me.