Chapter 7: It’s Enough To Be Right!

I’m going to argue in this chapter that it’s enough to be right about something. My focus is on religious beliefs as a subset of paranormal beliefs, of which Christianity is my main target, but I think the case can be made about most any issue. While reasonable people would certainly want more than to just be right, when it comes to solving problems, alleviating misery, and doing what is good, being right is good enough.

Let me begin with a political example. Let’s say there are two people who voted for the same USA presidential candidate. Person A had good reasons to do so. Person B did not. Let’s say every political commenter and scholar agreed that person A had good reasons to so vote (regardless of whether they agreed with those reasons) and person B did not have good reasons to so vote. Now let’s say person A is right to have voted for the chosen presidential candidate for the said reasons (irrespective of how we can know this). Then it is enough for person B to have voted for the same chosen presidential candidate irrespective of the fact that good reasons were not offered for doing so.

I know the point of contention will be on the epistemological question, that is, how we could know Person A voted for the right presidential candidate. However, that changes nothing. If Person A was right to vote for the chosen presidential candidate then so was Person B. Period. The standard definition of knowledge is that it’s justified true belief. So if my critics want to say that due to this definition Person B’s decision to vote was not based on knowledge, since it was not reasonably justified, I can agree. That being admitted, it still does nothing to change the fact that Person B voted rightly.

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