Political and religious arguments

Many years ago I was a notorious character when it came to religious arguments. I can’t imagine the amount of time I spent and wasted in high school trying to persuade others through arguments.

During my time as an undergraduate student, I spent hours and hours researching and compiling evidence and proofs that would counter others’ arguments. While this helped grow my knowledge on religious issues and doctrines, it didn’t necessarily work well when it came to discussions with other people. They always stuck to their convictions regardless of the evidence I showed up. In 2011, the 2^nd year of my studies, I even opened a Facebook group called “TRUTH SEEKERS IN BOTH TRUE SCIENCE&RELIGION” to extend the debates to an online platform. I have twice participated in the Christianity Vs Islam debates, famously called “Muhadara” . I joined two such debates at Section 3,Eastleigh, Nairobi. In 2010, I almost got beaten for vehemently challenging my opponents.

Same issue with political arguments. I can’t imagine the amount of time we wasted with friends and classmates arguing about politics. It didn’t matter how much you knew and raised your voice, it never worked. No one would allow themselves to be convinced out of their convictions.

Any inkling of a debate and I would jump at it. None of all this was fruitful at all though. It took me years pondering on the issue. Why are we so passionate about religion and politics? And why does it seem that everyone, I mean everyone, has a say when it comes to religion. Even atheists.

When it came to discussions on technical issues, say, “whether to use Matlab or DIgSILENT for power system analysis”, these were always conclusive and only those well versed with these could argue. The rest kept quiet and listened.

Years later, I finally realize why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions.

Any discussion or mention of religion anywhere (online or offline) always degenerates into a religious argument. Why does this happen with religion and not with Matlab, PHP, cooking recipes or other topics we talk about all the time?

When it comes to religion, people don’t feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. They only need strongly held beliefs. That is it. And anyone can have these. When it comes to religion, everyone is an expert. No talk on say, PHP will grow fast and become a heated argument as it is with religion or politics. Politics, like the aforementioned religion, is an issue where there is no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. You only need strong convictions.

How can we explain this? We somehow can say that religion and politics deal with questions that may really not have definite answers. Thus, there is no pressure to back up your opinion. No one can really prove you wrong and thus every opinion is valid. And therefore you are free to air yours. Of course, you can say some political questions may have definite answers, like how much it will cost to extend the SGR to Kisumu? Or how much it will cost for the government to provide free high school education. But as we have witnessed, it doesn’t matter. Precise or not, the questions suffer the same fate.

Another possible explanation. We tie our own identity to religion and politics. So we are naturally partisan. How can we ever have fruitful arguments about something that’s part of our identity? So, to a huge extent, when it comes to these issues, it is more of us arguing about our identities and not the topics themselves.

Say, we have a discussion about the 2013 Kenyan election, and whether it was rigged or not. Since we still tie our identities to players involved in this, this discussion would degenerate to a heated argument. Suppose now we generate another discussion based on the election that took place in the Greek city of Corinth, and Diogenes was elected its mayor. Probably this last discussion won’t degenerate into an argument. We won’t really know which side to be on. We can say it is not really politics that’s the source of the trouble. It is identity. When discussions degenerate into religious wars, it is because those involved are really involved in identity wars. It is the identity that drives them, and not the topic of discussion. Therefore, it would be wrong to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious or political war, it must not have an answer.

Same way, we can tie our identity to any other topic of discussion. We can really never have any fruitful discussion when we do. Thus we need to exclude our identity if we want to have a meaningful discussion on anything. And we need to be wary of people who respond from their identity.

Religion, politics are minefields of heated arguments because they engage so many of our identities. But in principle, we can have useful conversations about them with some people.

To have any fruitful discussion, we have to exclude our identities from the discussions. And if possible we have to let as few things as possible into our identity. If you are a programmer, don’t tie your identity to say JavaScript or PHP or Ruby on Rails. It can blind you. Avoid labelling yourself as this or that. If you are a guitarist, don’t tie your identity to your acoustic guitar. Have you tested the semi-acoustic or the electric one?

And if you don’t want to waste your time, if you want to avoid making unnecessary enemies, avoid arguments on religion and politics.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be involved in religious or political activities.

Bertolt Brecht, the German poet says:

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”