Wow, you only got one clap on this pretty profound piece!
I also land where you are in the middle. And agree with your challenge. Indeed in the bible it says ``and they will know you by your love''
And as you observe, you DON'T differentiate many Christians by their love. Two observations to add:
- Many (not most) Christians/Buddists/Muslims/Jews have dramatically shaped significant parts of their lives based on their faith. Not ALL areas, but still quite significant. This does show significant belief.
- And notice one need not execute perfectly to demonstrate belief. In general even when we have certainty in belief we do not have certainty in action. Consider the cardiologist who has suffered heart attacks and has very high risk of death, who understands with perfect certainty that a fatty burger literally IS killing her. And yet she chows down when out with friends. What do we think, do we really believe her beliefs are not certain. No, she is trained, the science is clear. But certain beliefs do not in general lead to certain actions. The human machine does not work that way.
- Second observation is about beliefs themselves. I am an AI researcher who develops machine intelligent algorithms. Inside an algorithm, beliefs tend to be absolute. But human beliefs are not. We believe contradictory things. Its not uncertainty, it is just a matter of focusing one belief in one moment and a contradictory belief in another moment. So God is the center of my life and I need to get that place in Tahoe so we can decompress in the summers can both truely be believed. Just not in the same moment.
We happily live with such inconsistencies, until one of our friends spends several hours confronting us with the inconsistency ;-)
so not lack of certainty... rather lack of consistency.
(but in many cases I bet it is lack of certainty too.)
btw, be careful pushing your friend in this way, you can actually convince them they are less certain than they are. Using their own actions as evidence, you can explain they are not certain... when in fact they are just not consistent, or they are not sufficiently emotionally driven instead.
great article!
