Ross Douthat: observation

Transcript context

…I’m just consistent. Right, but it just seems to me that there’s a tendency to place religion in this special category and say, “Okay, it’s inherited. It’s culturally contingent. Therefore, it’s silly to have arguments about this belief versus that belief. ” But people change religions all the time, right? New religions come into being because of conversion. People change their minds because of argument. It’s not like we don’t have tons of examples of this. I feel like it should be possible to balance a certain respect for the reality that there’s religious diversity for a reason. There are hard questions that you’re not going to argue your way to a singular answer, but also say the argument is worth having, and maybe you or I can make progress on some of our own views on those questions, right? But your response saying, “Well, everyone else, including Tyler Cowen, has these weird inconsistencies.” While I agree, I don’t see how that gets you to religious faith. It might get you to some kind of Bayesian deism.…

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