Your right to your truth, and others' rights to their own

Once you've made your choice of what to believe, or gone with your instincts, maybe you'll be happy with just that.

However, some people go further than this - they believe that their decision on the truth is so right that they find others to back it up, and go and evangelise, and try to bring others round to their way of thinking.

There's no objective evidence for any of the choices that this group of believers has made. There is absolutely no evidence that they have the right to tell others what the right choice is. (Note that these groups include some Roman Catholics, many right-wing Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hitler, Mormons, several Muslim sects, the nutters who released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway, and the followers of David Koresh at WACO.)

(A brief note on why I'm still a Christian, although it seems that Christ was an evangelist: it's because Christ's resurrection convinces me that he was genuinely sent from God. However, I can see why other people wouldn't believe in that resurrection from the available evidence, so I respect their right to that.)

Once you have decided and thought about what you truly believe - and not just what you believe, but why you believe it, and realised that the evidence is not conclusive - you have to accept that your beliefs are partly based on your own feelings of what is "right" and "good", and your own hopes that you are correct.

Just because some other people happen to believe the same thing does not make it right to try to make others think the same way - and trying to convert others to your church's specific way of thinking runs the incredible risk of you being wrong. Personally, I'm prepared to gamble my own afterlife on the possibility that I am wrong against the hope that I am right. But I will not wager anyone else's soul upon that.

Finally, consider this - if two groups of believers of this sort meet, then they both believe that the others are damned. They will try to convert each other. They will both have closed minds and will waste a huge amounr of effort. What good does that accomplish? It's wasted effort at best, which could be used for other purposes. And the only way in which a winner will be declared is if one group is exterminated. Their minds can't be changed, after all. Encounters between religious groups, each insisting that theirs is the only truth, have caused several major wars in the past, and at the moment look set to do so again.

I believe fervently that we should try to be part of the solution to this problem.

I'm not saying that you should open your mind to other religions and allow them to convert you - that would defeat the purpose. But if you've decided what to believe, and looked at why you decided that, it should be apparent that others can draw different conclusions and beliefs from the same evidence - and that as a result, they have as much right to their beliefs as you do. And we have a duty to make sure that others respect that right.