No one attitude of mind is the correct one to have; indeed it may be better to view a phenomenon from several points of view, or from several attitudes, to start with. In other words, the way you look at a problem cannot be the whole truth about it; at best it is only largely true. It will look differently depending on which frame of mind is finally chosen. And whichever frame of mind is chosen, if you allow logic and reason to take you to extremes, you will end up with absurdity. Logic or reason is a tool, not a god; and it will only tell you what conclusions are sound, if certain given assumptions are sound. Only false assumptions suggest Achilles never overtook the tortoise. So one must never allow oneself to be divorced from experience; or you end up with myriad frames of mind which are sheer and utter fantasy, delightful in their way, but having no connection with reality. It is always possible to misinterpret experience; and further experience usually corrects this. But there is nothing to correct fantasy worlds, except final catastrophe! So mental disciplines, like philosophy, are cut down to size and made to rest on experience; and in England it is safest to look at things from an English point of view. The Iraqi point of view may be better in the Middle East; but not here.
Furthermore when one comes to religion, the thoughts in any attitude of mind are seen to be man’s thoughts. However much they were inspired by a God in whom one believes, His voice will have been masked by some distortion, just as His will always tends to be seen through a glass darkly. Theological propositions are not immortal truth, whatever your religion; they are man’s interpretation of what he believes he was inspired to think. Therefore they are very much linked with time; and must evolve or become meaningless, and die. To deny that they evolve is to slip into the error of thinking one’s consciousness is reliable, when most emphatically it is not. It is to misunderstand the processes of the human mind. If I am right, only the perfectly relaxed consciousness is reliable; but you never know for sure whether your own consciousness is perfectly relaxed. And anyway thought is not possible in that frame of mind. To think, your frame of mind must be under tension. All experience can be misinterpreted; and religious knowledge is experienced like any other sort of knowledge. Even if you think God is talking to you, that is experience; and you may have misheard Him, particularly if you were hoping to hear something different from what He was trying to tell you. If when the Christian God says, “Love your enemies”; the Muslim Allah is heard to say, “Kill the infidels!” it is difficult to think it is the same voice speaking. Or alternatively some-one has misheard Him.
It becomes very difficult in these circumstances to take seriously any sect or religion which says they alone have the prerogative of absolute truth; except when they threaten to kill you! Several sects of the Christian Church say they alone have the truth, Muslims say the same, and atheists say the same.