Sink or Swim: thoughts on philosophies and dogmas

I think a lot about beliefs. Amd I enjoy talking about beliefs, especially with people whose beliefs are different than mine. Though they're often held up as opposites, I think that understanding belief is a vital part of the pursuit of truth.  When the Jahovas Witnesses come to my door, for example, I often ask questions like “How much of your beliefs come from the Bible and how much from a direct relationship with god?” or “Why do you feel that the Bible is an accurate representation of God’s word?”  I’m not as confrontational with these well-meaning folks as I used to be, but I do still like to ask what I see as the core, challenging questions. I think it's important for all of us to be clear on the roots of our beliefs, since those same beliefs cause so much of our biggest conflicts.

Through all of this thinking and such conversations, I have come, I think,  to a useful distinction between holding a philosophy and a dogma.  I find that many people hold dogmas, beliefs that they have inherited from some other, often written source.  Particularly in the case of text-based religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and even Buddhism in some cases, these beliefs never come from the text alone, but are further framed by the clergy of that religion, who select the passages they find most important and endorse a specific interpretation of those passages.  There are also the kind of folkloristic,  metatextual influences on religions that shape the way groups of people in certain places think about their religions.  (The common Christian notion of Mary Magdalen being a prostitute, for example, appears nowhere in the Bible.)  The point here is that a dogma is a relatively fixed and rigid set of beliefs that people hold to that are based more on obedience to an authority than independent thought, whether that authority is a priest, imam, rabbi, a parent or even a book.

Conversely, a philosophy is a belief system that a person comes to from their own logic or experience (usually both).  While a philosophy can still be rigid, depending on how much of the person’s identity has been formed around it, it is inherently more flexible because it is based on personal values, perceptions and conclusions.  It is idiosyncratic, subjective and therefore something that can be discussed and argued.  Where dogmas tend to be mooring posts that people cling to in the stormy seas of doubt, fear and intellectual laziness, personal philosophies tend to be skills and practices that people develop that allows them to tread water, or even swim, on their own.  Though I understand the need many feel for dogmas, since it is far easier and seemingly safer to let others in authority do the thinking for us, I clearly favor philosophy as an ideological construct by which we steer our lives.  Not only do dogmas require us to abdicate our own critical thinking, they anchor us to a fixed line of belief that may be and probably is wrong. And when the seas of changing knowledge rise, as they always do, I would rather be free to swim than stuck to a dogmatic mooring post and sink.