All Is Opinion, Not Divine Knowledge ~ The Second Enlightened Tenet
Socrates said that the greatest fools were those who purported to have divine knowledge. This is wisdom.
The Lesser cannot understand the Greater. There is no frame of reference that can be could be socialized or communicated, and what is experienced by a human being and known as such is subsumed into The First Enlightened Tenet.
To purport knowledge of divinity is first to assume divinity as fact and then arrogantly to restate or to interpret divinity. Of course, we know that this ancient foundation has never worked for humanity, because the “compares and contrasts” adduce judgment and “better than and worse than” condemnations. Human knowledge understanding has evolved beyond the ancients.
For this reason, it has been said, “In rebus divinis omnes rationales personae necessario sunt agnosticae.” (“As to matters of god, all rational persons are necessarily agnostic.”). That is, each of us may believe and have faith in something, even perfect faith “as if fact,” but it is the self-awareness that “faith is faith and not fact” that is the basis of The Second Enlightened Tenet. For example, a Rational Deist who is also a Christian does not condemn a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other faith, because, within the space of opinion, each is entitled to personal faith without “being wrong.” If we do not purport “to know,” but only “to believe,” we reconcile to each other in rational mind and empathetic feeling. “I am a Hindu, Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew,” said Gandhi. This is wisdom.
Different faiths of opinion can happily co-exist. But faith as fact adduces abrasion. It cannot and does not follow that one revelation is right and another revelation is wrong. Socrates would say that no one can judge with divine knowledge, and purporting it is arrogantly foolish.
When we treat “faith as fact” for ourselves, it may support The First Enlightened Tenet. But, when we try to socialize “faith as fact” in the same manner as a “fact as fact” it becomes judgmental, condemning, and comparative. If someone is “right on the fact” then anyone who disagrees is “wrong on the fact.” Treating opinion as if fact within the container of self can be a beautiful thing for self, but imposing it upon another as fact is delusion, because treating an opinion as fact is delusion, by definition.
Therefore, a Rational Deist is rationally tempered by understanding the proper metes and bounds of opinion, as well as what is actually capable of knowledge versus what is not capable of knowledge being within the proper scope of faith, belief and opinion.