Right For The Wrong Reasons

By Leo Gura - June 24, 2025

Notice that it is possible to believe true things for the wrong reasons.

Religion is a prime example of this. Religious people believe in God, which happens to exist. However, they believe it for the wrong reasons. God is not the province of any religion, religious ideas of God are deeply wrong, and God cannot be understood through religion. So religion is superficially right. But religious believers take this as validation of the rightness of their faith. No. The existence of God means your faith is wrong, a profound mistake. Just because you lucked out by believing in a thing which happened to be true does not mean that your belief was epistemically sound or intelligent. Religious belief is not sound even though it turns out to be true. You weren’t intelligent, you were just lucky. Which is why religious people believe all sorts of stupid shit. Because they will believe anything. It just so happens that some of the things they believe turn out to be true. But this is nothing to be proud of.

Notice, if I walk through my neighborhood with a machine gun, spraying bullets blindly in every direction, I might get lucky and shoot a serial killer who just happened to be walking down the street at just the right time, and that might turn out to be a net positive since killing him saves a few lives he would have taken had he still been prowling the streets. However, this does not mean that firing a machine gun wildly in a neighborhood is a valid behavior. A religious person is right about God in this same way — right, but for completely perverse reasons.

Conversely, you can believe false things for good reasons.

Atheism is a prime example of this. Atheism is factually false — God does exist. However, the reasoning behind atheism is sound and healthy. It is correct that one should not believe in supernatural entities without serious evidence and proof. It just so happens that that’s true, but God still exists.

Atheists did all the right things but turned out false. Theists did all the wrong things but turned out true. Sometimes it’s just better to be lucky than good. Sometimes a total fool ends up being right. But that doesn’t mean being a fool is the way to go. Eventually the fool’s luck runs out. Which is exactly what happens to all religious believers. Just because you got God’s existence right does not mean you understand God or solved the problem of self-deception. Yeah, you got lucky and got God right, but so what? You’re still completely self-deceived.

In the long-term it’s better to be wrong for the right reasons than right for the wrong reasons. Just as it’s better to get the wrong answer on a math test but with good mathematical steps, than get the right answer but with all the wrong steps.

It is foolish to envy the lucky fool because his luck will soon run out.

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