Religious Pluralism

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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What view should we take in regards to the plurality of world religions. Clearly not all of them can be right, many contradict each other on the most fundamental beliefs. What best explains this phenomena?

Should we embrace Religious Exclusivism? That one religion above all others is correct, and all the other are just wrong.

Perhaps Religious Inclusivism? That while one religion is the right religion, it is possible to for followers of other religions to achieve salvation.

Both seem inadequate. Exclusivism has the balls to admit that, ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’, but it can not provide any justification for which religion is the right one. Inclusivism is a water-down version of Exclusivism that merely panders to other religions sensitivities.

John Hick forwards a solution called Religious Pluralism, which, taking note from Kant, suggests that all religious traditions are phenomenal realities, and are derived from a noumenal ‘Real’. Religious claims therefore are true or false only within their respective reality, so there is no contradiction in the Christian claim that Jesus was the Son of God and the Jewish claim that he wasn’t. Essential to this position is the claim that we can no nothing about the ‘real’. For if we could then clearly some religious traditions would be wrong.

But does this not ignore the diverse and complex natures of religions? It seems to me to be saying to Christians, ‘you think you’re worshipping God, but really you are responding to the ‘real’’. Similarly Muslims with Allah.

Does anyone think Religious Pluralism has credibility? Are the different world religions simply a response to the same thing? Can we know nothing about the ‘real’? If we can’t then what good does religion serve?

Personally, if I was a follower of any religion, I would be incline towards Exclusivism, simply because to think otherwise, would indicate my uncertainty of my position.

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Thanks for sharing, humegotitright. At a glance religious pluralism appeals to me. John Hicks is new to me. Where did you learn of him?

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Currently studying his theory of Religious Pluralism for an essay due on Monday. I think its intents are of merit, but generally, it is self-contradictory, in that nothing can be said of the ‘real’, but yet all religious traditions are an interpretation of it. Similarly I think the problems it tries to solve, disagreements between religions, cannot be solved in this way, as people would simply take to arguing over who has the best phenomenal religious reality.

He is a Christian philosopher, who ironically has been condemned by many Christians for his views regarding Exclusivism, Hell and the literal interpretation of the resurrection. More can be found here:

johnhick.org.uk/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hick
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_pluralism

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Hicks runs into a type of “The next sentence is true. The last sentence is false.” problem. Part of some religions is denouncing other religions and/or non-religion and atheism. So from religion A’s standpoint, religion B is wrong. But from religion B’s standpoint, religion B is right, and religion B might also say religion A is also correct.

So from the Religious Pluralism viewpoint, religion A is right (which states religion B is wrong), and religion B is right (which states religion A is correct).

Religion A says the next statement (made by religion B) is wrong. Religions A and B are correct.

You can make a bunch of variations on this.

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All kinds of things can be said about The Real as long as we realize that the things said are at best reflections of The Real and not The Real Itself. It could be a helpful step to recognize what is the best phenomenal religious reality" is a matter of opinion rather than an ultimate conclusion at this time.

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Exclusivism is actually a part of relatively few religions, so I think that you are painting with a very broad brush here.

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Can we express religious pluralism in a way that isn’t just something silly suspeding the law of non-contradiction when people’s feelings might get hurt? I’m fairly sure there’s more to it than that, but unfortunately it tends to be something people express with a series of genuflections they know are expected of them, but don’t actually scrutinize.

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I think a lot of it can be viewed in terms of the totality of revelation. Those religions that claim to possess a total revelation have to be exclusive, because otherwise, well, it just makes my head hurt trying to think about the mental gyrations necessary to get around that one. On the other hand, religions with a limited revelation can find similarities in other religions without fear of contradiction. Think about the Buddhist story about the blind men and the elephant: none of the men are wrong in their description of the elephant, but they would be wrong if they claimed that their view was the correct one. An example of this kind of thinking that should be common to everyone here is Caesar’s writings on Gaul. Believing the Roman gods to be real, when he encountered the Gauls and their gods, he looked for similarities and figured that the Gauls simply understood the gods differently. But you’ll note he doesn’t disparage them for their different understanding, to him the differences are trivial and beneath his consideration. In this way, they can almost be seen as matters of taste. I think chicken is a terribly boring meat, but a friend of mine really loves chicken. Neither of us can be said to be “wrong” in this matter, though we cannot reach an agreement.

That doesn’t mean that paternalism can’t occasionally be included in pluralism. When Buddhism first entered China, there was a wide-spread assumption that it was just a perverted form of Daoism (according to legend, Laozi went west to teach the barbarians), a sort of “Daoism for Dummies”. They didn’t see Buddhism as wrong, they just saw it as an inferior version of what they already knew. Both traditions have incomplete revelations but that incompleteness needn’t become a sort of bland, “everybody wins”. There can be “better” and “worse” while recognizing that the “worse” option may contain some truth and that the “better” option may be flawed in some way, even in some way the “worse” option is not.

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On the completeness of revelation: I’m not sure what that is, entirely. I think there’s an attitude of it, in the sense that certain religious folks will regard other religions as incorrect by virtue of the fact that they are ‘other religions’, full stop. But on a doctrinal level, where does that come from? If I believe that everything in the Bible happened just the way the Bible says it did, for example, and I religious pluralist if I acknowledge the fact that many other religions will have the same moral teachings as mine, and that is a good thing? Or, does moral pluralism need to work against evangelism- is it inherently exclusivist to want the world to ‘come around’ to your way of thinking?
Also, a pluralist is never a total pluralist, right? To use the example with the blind men and the elephant, we can suppose that in the real world, there really are blind men who are feeling ropes, trees, snakes, stones, fires, and all sorts of things that aren’t the elephant at all, right? On the one hand, if the pluralist extends his respect (is that what it is?) to anything and everything that somebody has called a religion, then that respect is meaningless. On the other hand, if they set some standard of age of tradition or number of members, that seems arbitrary. On the third hand, if the pluralist respects a religion based on it’s expression of a particular set of principals they see as important, then really aren’t they just evaluating religions based on how similar they are to their own ideas?

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I wonder if there is more value in saying “all views are wrong” than “all views are right”. I know that’s an enormous and possibly completely inaccurate simplification, but hey - it just means I’m wrong too. :slight_smile:

Seriously though (although I was being serious), I see no reason to turn a paradox into something completely sensible. I value most highly what I determine to be most right. At the same time it is obvious to me that all opinions are born of particular circumstances. Thus my values tend towards overcoming fixation on opinionatedness. In other words, no matter what I think, I am always wrong. That’s nothing to cry over though. It’s actually kind of liberating.

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Theeeeere we go =D>

While this rule seems to falsify itself, it seems the most sensible to me. No one is absolutely right, but you will be the most right if you know that you and everyone else is wrong.

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The problem for Hick, is that nothing can be said about the ‘real’, because the ‘real’ is ineffable. So there is no basis for judging which are the best reflections of the ‘real’, basically anything could be justified as being a valid response to the real.

The point of Religious Pluralism is though, to state that all religious realities are equally valid, one is not better than the other.

I never said it was. Certainly it used to be, but I don’t think many officially subscribe to it today. But is that out of fear of being condemned bigoted? At a personal level, there are definitely people who believe exclusively they are right, and that salvation is only attainable through their beliefs.

See above.

Certainly that is one of the problems the theory faces.
Similarly what about religions that don’t profess faith in an ultimate reality. That can hardly be considered a valid response to the ‘real’

I don’t know about value, but certainly it’s a more honest position.

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If we embrace pluralism, aren’t we in effect saying that pluralism is itself right? Wouldn’t we be making the claim that exclusivism is “less right” than pluralism? If we say that exclusivism and pluralism are both equally “right”, then it seems to me our best bet would be to be exclusivist, based on some sort of Pascal-type wager. I think that pluralism runs into the problem that it says you cannot know the “real”, then attempts to tell us what the “real” is. I’m actually agreeing with anthem on this one for a change. :slight_smile:

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Hey, how about that. Cheers :slight_smile:

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Exclusivism though isn’t a religion. It’s a stance on the plurality of religions. Similarly with pluralism. If we take pluralism as correct, then a religious experience that had exclusivist policies centre to it, such as evangelism, would have to be explain in terms of a response to the ‘real’, which is what Uccisore raised as a problem.
however I feel that essentially Religious Pluralism, if true, in itself becomes the new kind of religion, a unifying one that everyone, whether you know it or not, is following.

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Well, I think this goes back to the Jewish innovation that Campbell talks about: having the tribal god be the primary god (and ultimately exclusive god). In this way, the other gods can’t be seen as gods anymore, but as demons, foul things to eliminate.

Well, I think that sort of view is inevitable. I believe there is even a passage in the Bible where God tells the Jews that other people have moral codes that are similar to their own. I think that can be said to be insufficient for pluralism as we are discussing it here, though it is a firm foundation for tolerance, which I frankly think is more important.

I think that there can be grades of “right” and “wrong” in this case. I also think that there needs to be a line between “religious pluralism” and “moral pluralism”, so which one are we discussing? In the case of religious pluralism, I think that evangelism is ultimately unnecessary. Since it is viewed that the “other” in this case has the same religion as you do, converting them whole-cloth isn’t really necessary. Instead it is more along the lines of, “Yeah, so, we just conquered you, so if you’d put a statue of our Emperor/tribal god in the corner over there and occasionally pour some libations for him, we can get along fine.” In the occasional extreme case they might add, “Oh, and our Emperor/tribal god is also now your principle god, so he’d best get the biggest temple.”

Moral pluralism is more basic, and is something that I hope we all embrace to some degree. Moral pluralism is just the idea that other ways of life are valid. I am sure you are familiar with C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra story, right? That’s all moral pluralism is about, the recognition of other ways/means of life as valid. But not necessarily all ways/means of life.

Of course. It is important to distinguish pluralism from relativism. Relativism either has no good or thinks that the good is unknown. Pluralism just thinks that there is more than one good, or more than one way to realize the good.

Agreed.

Depends on your justification. Are things like pure reason the best path to the good? I don’t think any of us are going to claim that we

Sure. But I don’t see that as being problematic.

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OK, I can see that then.

Looks like we agree on that, too, as well as the difference between moral and religious pluralism. The thing I worry about is that if you seperate them, religious pluralism becomes completely unimportant, and it’s not really what most people talk about. It seems to me that the pluralism that is discussed has everything to do with getting along, and not with some percieved importance of actually thinking that disparate religious truths are equally valid.

Well, once you seperate moral and religious pluralism, it’s not problematic, it’s just a matter of fact that this religion respects any spiritual belief that advocates obedience to the Will of the Emperor, and the word we use for that is ‘pluralism’. That’s fine.

But, I don't think religious pluralism gets brought up very often without the implication that it's a morally/rationally superior position to take, for example, 'in today's complex world'. In that case, I think it's very problematic.  If the pluralist and exclusivist can agree on the following statement:

There are wrong/dangerous/inferior religious practices in this world, and I feel comfortable in my ability to identify some of them.

Then they aren’t so different after all.

.

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I think the division there has more to do with living in a pluralistic society as opposed to pluralism qua pluralism. It is pretty much impossible in the modern world not to recognize that there are different ways of life from what we have, pluralism is an inevitable conclusion from contact with other cultures. Thinks like effective means to transportation and communication only deepen this issue. So, in a pluralistic society, how ought one live? One fairly established means that has been used throughout history is to emphasize harmony. Sure, the various groups disagree, but the idea is that everyone should get along so that society can move along. The emphasis here is on Kant’s second question, “How should I live”, as opposed to his first, “What can I know?” which has more bearing on what you are talking about. The function of pluralism is harmony.

Well, let’s use a Confucian example (because it’s easy for me) and see how that plays out. You have three people: a politician, a robber, and a merchant. Now, if you asked a classical Confucianist which one of these people was “good”, they could only answer “the politician”. The other ways of life would not, could not be respected under that system. On the other hand, if you were to ask a Libertarian which of those was “good”, they would only really be able to answer “the merchant”, with the other two not being respected. That is because both systems are monolithic. On the other extreme, there would be someone like Imp, hardline relativist that sees all three as being the same thing and so all should be equally recognized. Somewhere between that, there lies sane pluralism where we can recognize that both the politician and merchant have roles to play and can be considered “good” in various ways; whereas the robber (barring Robin Hood) can be considered “bad”. Now, that pluralistic thinker may themselves be a politician or a merchant and they probably think that one of those two is better than the other. Despite that, they recognize the value of the other, even if they view it as being an inferior thing. That is opposed to mere tolerance, where the Confucian “tolerates” the existence of merchants because they have some functional utility, but they are still “bad” and likewise with the libertarian and the politician.

I think that creating a pole where they can be either monolithic and discerning or relativistic and non discerning is creating a false dichotomy that ultimately is a disservice to the discussion.

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Hello humegotitright:

— Does anyone think Religious Pluralism has credibility?
O- It is modern day paganism. Try Symmachus/Ambrose controversy for your research. Monotheism has no use for this however.

— Are the different world religions simply a response to the same thing?
O- A Pagan would say:“Yes”.

— Can we know nothing about the ‘real’? If we can’t then what good does religion serve?
O- The transcendence of God is found within the same tradition that spouses It’s nearness…call it two sides to one coin, at least it is not as absurd as the Trinity, in my opinion. Of course, revelation allows us them to know a lot about the Real but never the Real in-itself. See Job on this and how God’s answer is a list of Job’s limitations.

— Personally, if I was a follower of any religion, I would be incline towards Exclusivism, simply because to think otherwise, would indicate my uncertainty of my position.
O- It is the most appealling thing to be “certain”, but you’ve to ask yourself whether what you’re certain of is what actually “is” or what you wish for? Is it possible that you are serving yourself illusion as fact? As if you decide that you are not, then find out on what basis you are priviledge with the truth but not another, or to explain it in another way, your task is to explain why other religions that also claim certainty are wrong but not yours. This means that after proposing a theory for error, that theory must apply solely to Them and not You. Good Luck.

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But try to give it a charitable inspection Anthem. Is it really that inconceivable that an Infinite Being, God or whatever could be at the center of all religious experience? Sure, each religion has many details that make them incompatible with other religions but also they share many qualities. Think of the Big 3. They agree, for example, that God is One and that there will be a Day of Judgment. All three trace their lineage back to Abraham. Muhammed, before he went a different route held that his vision was within the same tradition of prophets as that found in Judaism and Christianity, so it is not at all inconceivable that we take all 3 as sisters rather than as strangers.

The objections come from religious folks however that such generalizations abstract the faith so much that they feel they have no belief in particular, but I think that they are simply avoiding the loss of certainty.