Living inside the world, we can never stand outside it and observe it with complete objectivity. Our understanding is always partial, always filtered, always limited.
Ancient thinkers expressed this through a simple image: blind men touching an elephant. Each man felt a different part—leg, trunk, ear—and each drew a different conclusion. None had the whole picture. Humanity’s search for ultimate truth is not very different.
We do not truly know what the world is.
We do not fully understand who we are.
We cannot explain why the universe exists, or why human life exists within it.
Science illuminates many facts, but even science remains silent before these deepest questions. And whenever facts fall short, imagination rushes in.
Every culture, in every era, has tried to answer life’s great mysteries not through proof but through story, symbol, and faith.
Thus were born the world’s many religions—beautiful, diverse, and profoundly human attempts to speak the unspeakable.
Beyond True and False: A Better Way to Look at Beliefs
If no ultimate answers are available to us, can we divide religions into “true” and “false”?
Not really.
Beliefs, by definition, cannot be verified like mathematical equations or scientific experiments.
Yet people often forget this. A belief, held passionately for a long time, begins to feel like a fact. When believers insist that their view alone reflects reality, tension begins, especially when different religions meet and try to explain themselves to each other.
A Christian who says “Jesus is God”
and a Muslim who says “Jesus is a prophet”
are not making factual claims that can be tested in a laboratory.
They are expressing metaphysical convictions born from their own sacred traditions.
The conflict does not arise from the beliefs themselves—
it arises from the certainty with which the beliefs are held.
A More Honest Question: Are Beliefs Helpful or Harmful?
If beliefs cannot be judged as “true” or “false,” they can be judged by their effects.
Some beliefs lift humanity upward:
God loves all people equally.
This belief leads to compassion, dignity, and justice.
Some beliefs wound the world:
God loves some people more than others.
This divides, excludes, and harms.
Between these extremes lie countless harmless beliefs that neither help nor hurt—ideas about the unseen that shape personal meaning but do not interfere with communal life.
This moral evaluation—beneficial, harmful, or neutral—may be the most responsible way to approach religious diversity today.
Where Extremism Begins
Extremism seldom begins with belief itself.
It begins with a dangerous shift in posture:
- Only my belief is right.
- Those who reject it do not deserve to live as fully as I do.
- They are unacceptable to God, unworthy of the world, unfit for eternity.
This psychological move is the seed of extremism.
History shows that when people believe their faith grants them superior rights—or denies rights to others—violence is never far behind.
The tragedy is not that humans believe differently.
The tragedy is that humans often forget that beliefs are beliefs, not facts.
Seeing One Another More Clearly
If we acknowledge the limits of our understanding, if we recognize that every religion is humanity’s effort to interpret mystery, then the world becomes less threatening and more beautiful.
We gain the freedom to say:
- I hold my belief with sincerity.
- You hold yours with equal sincerity.
- Neither of us needs to destroy the other to make sense of the world.
Humility, not certainty, may be the true foundation of peace.
In a world where no one sees the whole elephant, our best hope is to listen to one another’s stories—and to remember that all of us, in our own ways, are reaching out in the dark, searching for the same truth.
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