My Problem with Omnism
Or, The Blind Men and the Elephant
On their surfaces, different religions can appear to be quite different from each other. Some religions see many gods manifest from one. Some see many gods with one primary entity. Some don’t include a single divinity of any kind. Some see nature as god. Some see one god. Some see one god represented by a trinity, while others see god as the leader in a battle against evil. And this is far from a complete list.
“All religions have merit.” This is the essential tenet of omnism. Adherents of omnism respect and believe in the truth of all religions.
Opposing omnism is atheism, in which there is no god, there is no afterlife, and adherents do what is right because it’s right, not because they’re afraid not to, and not because they expect some kind of eternal reward.
There is a third leg, here. It’s the conviction that one religion and only one religion is true and right and holy, that only its doctrine will lead to enlightenment, or heaven, or paradise—and in many religions, disobedience to that doctrine will lead to eternal agony.
While I wouldn’t call myself an atheist or an adherent to any specific religion, I have a problem with omnism. It puts me in mind of the fable about the blind men and the elephant.
The oldest texts we have about this story are from very early Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain writings. Today we have different versions, but essentially the story goes like this:
Several blind men hear about a strange new animal and decide to use their capacity for touch to come to an understanding of it.
One man touches the trunk and declares the elephant to be like a thick snake.
One man touches the tusk and insists the elephant is like a smooth spear.
One man touches the ear and insists that no, the elephant is like a fan.
One man touches the animal’s side and says no, it’s like a wall.
One man touches the leg and declares the elephant is a pillar like a tree trunk.
One man touches the tail and declares the elephant is like a rope.
Omnism would say that each of these men is correct. But here’s the thing. They are also each wrong. In many versions of the fable, these men argue with each other, even to the point of fighting and killing.
I’d like to propose a different ending. After the sixth assertion, the one about the rope, each man takes a step to his left and experiences the elephant from another’s point of view. The snake doctrine recognizes the truth of the spear, the spear recognizes the truth of the fan, and so on. After each man has experienced his neighbor’s perception, they rotate again, until each man “sees” what every other man has seen. And then I want them to sit down together and discuss until they realize that not only are there many different ways to approach this thing called Elephant, but also their limited perceptive abilities might prevent them from perceiving even more aspects of Elephant.
They will conclude that they will probably not ever fully understand Elephant, but that they can understand each other.
My view of omnism, then, is that although it doesn’t hold one religion above another, it’s role is that of a parent placating a sulky child who’s insisting that he’s right about something he doesn’t understand.
“I’m right! I am, I am, I am!” says the child.
The parent pats the child’s head and, in a tone not unlike baby talk, says, “Yes you are.”
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I’m an inveterate observer of human nature, writing novels about all kinds of people, some of whom happen to be gay or transgender or bisexual or intersex—people whose destinies are not determined solely by their sexual orientation or gender identity. Check out my work on my website.
Wonderful essay. I hadn’t heard that story about the Elephant before, I really love your solution to it.
The foundation of every major religion is faith, which is blind, and exactly the opposite of critical thinking, a deviant practice of ancient heathen tribes, all of which became extinct after the Last Purge led by our Holy Emperor in Washington in the mid-twenty first century...