Believers are right when they say that to understand a religion properly you need to get under its skin. But to understand it fully, you cannot stay there: you have to take a more objective view, too.
Interpretation
Understanding a religion requires both immersion and a detached perspective.
Julian Baggini emphasizes the importance of fully understanding a religion by not only immersing oneself in its beliefs and practices but also by adopting an objective viewpoint. This dual approach allows for a deeper appreciation of the complexities and nuances of religious systems, suggesting that a comprehensive understanding requires a balance between subjective experience and critical analysis.
In practice
In a discussion about religious tolerance, one might say, 'As Julian Baggini noted, understanding a religion requires both immersion and an objective view.'
The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.
The Christian life is stamped by 'moral spontaneous originality,' consequently the disciple is open to the same charge that Jesus Christ was, viz., that of inconsistency. But Jesus Christ was always consistent to God, and the Christian must be consistent to the life of the Son of God in him, not consistent to hard and fast creeds. Men pour themselves into creeds, and God has to blast them out of their prejudices before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.
Regard as free not those whose status makes them outwardly free, but those who are free in their character and conduct. For we should not call men truly free when they are wicked and dissolute, since they are slaves to worldly passions. Freedom and happiness of soul consist in genuine purity and detachment from transitory things.
If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.
Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.
It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.
The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.
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