Benjamin Cain
2 min readMar 30, 2021

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Regarding interfaith dialogue, I was thinking of the relations between the monotheistic religions (specifically Islam and Christianity), and between either of those and any other religion. Those are the two religions that brook no compromises unless they're being politically correct (or unless we're talking about their liberal or secularized wings).

Regarding my articles at Interfaith, I haven't been arguing for atheism against any kind of religion--although, again, technically that would still be relevant interfaith dialogue in the broad sense, assuming the positive side of atheism (secular humanism, neoliberalism, naturalism or whatever) is regarded as a belief system in competition with the world's religions.

Instead, I mainly argue against bad faith versions of religion to help Christians, for example, recognize the versions of their faith that will never play well with other religions. You can find fault with the tone of my articles if you like, but their relevance to interfaith dialogue isn't hard to justify. A strident evangelical Christian whose religion is wholly Americanized and fraudulent should be just as unwelcome at an interfaith dialogue as a strident atheist who thinks all religious faith is a mental disorder and who declines to defend any secular worldview. Both would be bad faith actors in that setting.

Regarding my article on Romans, I don't matter-of-factly assume atheism. Rather, I analyze Paul's worldview and show that his smugness is based on his parochial cosmology and anthropocentric assumptions which are no longer intuitive or tenable after the explosion of modern scientific discoveries. It doesn't matter what Christians are open to: if they incorporate Paul's smugness without his premodern cosmology, they haven't a leg to stand on.

Nor do I say here that every aspect of Christianity is bunk. I'm talking about Western, catholicized, exoteric Pauline Christianity. See the article below for a take on where Western Christianity went wrong, when it betrayed Axial Age mysticism.

https://medium.com/@benjamincain8/christianitys-betrayal-of-the-axial-age-37a55ddfc172?source=friends_link&sk=882cb3dba529e2be8ca3d8b913596d56

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Benjamin Cain
Benjamin Cain

Written by Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom

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