Is it wrong to believe your beliefs are right, and others are wrong?

Really, who doesn't?

Via MCJ, a snippet from an Episcopalian reception for South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu yesterday thanked Pittsburghers who worked to end apartheid in South Africa and received an unprecedented dual honorary doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.

He also threw down a theological challenge on a doctrine that the worldwide Anglican Communion is threatening to split over.

In his sermon, he poked fun at the belief that only those who accept Jesus as their savior can enter heaven.

"Can you imagine that there are those who think God is a Christian?" he said to laughter from a mostly appreciative audience. "Can you tell us what God was before he was a Christian?" [....]

He invoked his friendship with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who has been exiled from his homeland for nearly 50 years. Although others would be embittered, the Dalai Lama is filled with "bubbly joyousness," he said.

"You have to be totally, totally insensitive not to know you are in the presence of someone who is holy and good."

He then asked, "Can anyone say to the Dalai Lama, 'You are a good guy. What a shame you are not a Christian'?"

His question drew laughs, but was a direct challenge to conservative Anglicans, who have long said that their deepest concern about the Anglican Communion is not gay ordination but the rejection of classic doctrines about Jesus. One of the most important is the belief that humans can only come into the presence of God if their sins have been forgiven, and that their sins can only be forgiven because Jesus died to atone for those sins.

Tutu's stance, and its prominent and friendly reception, certainly validates the contentions of "conservative Anglicans, who have long said that their deepest concern about the Anglican Communion is... the rejection of classic doctrines about Jesus." Thus, I can understand how they might feel unhappy that their church has been hijacked by a completely different theological system.

One has paid a lot of tithes to something which suddenly turns into the opposite of what it has always taught was true.

But, more broadly, I'd like to highlight Tutu's line of argument, as it contains a few interesting tricks I see repeatedly, which I think might be of interest to anyone who loves logic and truth, regardless of one's faith or views.

"Can you imagine that there are those who think God is a Christian?"

Technically, the term "Christian" means "little Christ", thus a follower of Jesus. It would be incoherent to claim God is a follower of Jesus, so the argument, if we just read it literally, is a straw man: no Christian claims that God, who made the universe, is a follower of Jesus.

But really, it's a tendentious way of arguing that's it's absurd to think the Christian view of God is accurate.

Certainly, Desmond Tutu has his own beliefs about God. We might call them "Tutuism" to be coy, or we might just sum them up as "Universalism" -- the belief that God is pleased with everyone who "does good" (as evaluated against Desmond Tutu's favored policies) -- regardless of their religious beliefs.

I could just as well say: "Can you imagine that there are those (like Bishop Tutu, himself) who think God is a follower of Desmond Tutu?"

Does that sound absurd, or like an unfair way to paraphrase Tutu's position? It would be. So we can similarly see the intellectual dishonesty of Tutu's phrasing. ("Do unto others" -- reversing the situation -- is a remarkably effective technique for making moral evaluations.)

He then asked, "Can anyone say to the Dalai Lama, 'You are a good guy. What a shame you are not a Christian'?"

Of course. Couldn't Desmond Tutu look at, perhaps, a hypothetical wealthy conservative, who financially supports a lot of causes Tutu would agree with (say, feeding the poor), and say: "You're a pretty good guy. What a shame you aren't an open-minded Universalist like me"? Of course he could. In fact, he's already saying precisely that to the conservatives to whom his comments are directed: No matter how good they behave, or what a nice personal disposition they might have, their theology is wrong, and that's his sticking point with them.

What would be wrong for God is apparently fine for Tutu.

Both groups -- Tutu's associates and the conservatives -- believe that the others' beliefs are wrong, and that their wrong theology is important and harmful. But only the conservatives admit the that they "believe their beliefs", whereas Tutu is trying to have it both ways.

As an aside, I'm amused at his choice of the Dalai Lama: once you know the backstory, it becomes clear that Tutu couldn't have chosen a better example for demonstrating the bankruptcy of his argument.

You see, the grand irony here is that Dalai Lama is anything but a Universalist. Although he presents a tolerant, humanistic, and Universalist face to the public, internally, Tibetan Buddhism teaches that the world must be brought under a single religion (his), and that all unbelievers must be annihilated.

Frankly speaking, the Dalai Lama has two faces. He makes his official contact with the West under the maxim of Mahayana Buddhism and then deftly assimilates the highest values and ideals of western culture (Christian, Jewish and humanist)... Nearly all of the speeches the Dalai Lama delivers in public are extremely tolerant, human and compassionate. You can only agree. And yet, there is another face that peeks out from behind the mask of goodness, charity and kindness, which gives one pause to think more deeply about the shadow of this “man of peace.” [....]

In the Kalachakra Tantra is prophesized the establishment of a Buddhocratic Empire, a clash of civilizations will arise as the military forces of Buddhism wage war against the armies of non-Buddhist religions.... the Kalachakra explicitly names the "leaders" of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as the opponents of Buddhism: "Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mani, Muhammad and the Mahdi" describing them as "the family of the demonic snakes" ... The final, Armageddon-like battle (Shambhala war) ends in the total victory of the Buddhists. The official Kalachakra-Interpreter Alexander Berzin openly compares the principles of the Islamic “Jihad” with that of the Shambhala war. As in the Islamic martyr-ideology Shambhala-Warriors, who will be killed in the last battle have earned passage into the [Buddhist] paradise.

Yup. That's the belief system behind Desmond Tutu's shining example of tolerance: he or one of his successors will rule the world, end other religions, and kill all the nonbelievers in bloody battle in order to gain access to paradise.

Really, Tutu couldn't have chosen any better, and I believe this is one of those little hints that God indeed has a great sense of humor.