By Stephen Prothero (abridged & adapted)

There is a famous folk tale about blind men examining an elephant. It likely originated in India millennia ago, but it eventually spread to East and Southeast Asia and then around the world. According to this folk tale, blind men are examining an elephant. One feels his trunk and declares it to be a snake. Another feels his tail and declares it a rope. Others determine that the elephant is a wall, pillar, spear, or fan, depending on where they are touching it. But each insists he is right, so much quarreling ensues.

Among true believers of the world religions this story is gospel. In their eyes, the elephant is God and the blind men are Christians and Muslims and Jews who mistake their particular and partial perspectives on divinity for the reality of divinity itself. Because God is beyond human imagining, we are forever groping around for God in the dark. It is foolish to say that your religion alone is true and all other religions are false. No one has the whole truth, but each is touching the elephant.

The inspiring Hindu teacher Ramakrishna concludes, “…one can realize God through all religions.” But this folk tale also demonstrates how different religions are, since it has been told in various ways and put to various uses by various religious groups. Among Buddhists, it shows that speculation on abstract metaphysical questions causes suffering. Among Sufis, it shows that God can be seen through the heart but not the senses. Hindus read it as a parable about how “God can be reached by different paths.” Finally, modern Western poet John Godfrey Saxe turns it into a tale of the stupidity of theology:

So often in theologic wars,

the disputants, I ween,

rail on in utter ignorance

of what each other mean,

and prattle about an Elephant

not one of them has seen!

This story is a reminder not of the unity of the world’s religions as Ramakrishna would have us believe, or of their shared stupidity as Saxe the Atheist would argue, but of the limits of human knowledge.

One function of the transcendent is to humble us, remind us that our thoughts are not the thoughts of God or the Great Goddess— to remind us that, at least for the time being, we see through a glass, darkly. Religious people offer solutions to the human predicament as they see it. Yet these solutions inevitably open up more questions than they answer.

Confucius, Hillel, and Rilke remind us to “love the questions themselves.”

Muhammad said, “Asking good questions  is half of learning,” and Jesus’ parables seemed to be designed less about teaching us a lesson and more about leaving us to scratch our heads.

Far more powerful is the reminder that any genuine belief in what we call God should humble us, remind us that, if there really is a god or goddess worthy of the name, He or She or They must surely know more than we do about the things that matter most.