The History of Evil From the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today by Jerome Gellman & Charles Taliaferro & Chad Meister

Author:Jerome Gellman & Charles Taliaferro & Chad Meister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

12

Why religious pluralism is not evil and is in some respects quite good

Robert McKim

Pluralisms

As even the most casual inquiry will reveal, the term “pluralism” is used in a bewildering variety of ways. Setting out to consider whether pluralism is evil or problematic in any way, or why anyone might think it to be evil or problematic, without first explaining what we mean by “pluralism” is itself likely to promote bewilderment. It would be a little like asking about the value of parties without first clarifying what sort of parties (birthday parties, political parties, parties to a conflict of some sort, for example) one has in mind. So, I begin with a brief discussion of religious pluralism. In what follows, I use the terms “pluralism” and “religious pluralism” interchangeably.

Sometimes “pluralism” is used to refer to the entirely uncontroversial fact of religious diversity – that is, the fact that there are many different religions. Let’s refer to this as the fact of “mere variety.” That there is mere variety is uncontroversial in the sense that there is no question that there is such a fact, and indeed that it has been an enduring fact. It is, on the other hand, controversial whether mere variety is a good thing. And the explanation of mere variety is controversial. I will soon return to these controversial topics.

However, “pluralism” is also frequently used to refer to the very controversial proposal that there is parity of a certain sort among various religions. For example, there is the claim that the religious traditions are equally true or equally effective salvifically. If the parity claim is about truth, probably it is best understood along these lines: our religion does extremely well in terms of truth; other traditions do equally well, and no tradition does better than we do.1 A parity judgment about truth may, however, not be an all-purpose claim about the entire body of belief associated with the relevant traditions, and may instead pertain solely to their competing claims about a limited area of enquiry. Thus, there is pluralism concerning the truth about a putative supreme religious reality, which would pertain only to claims about a supreme religious reality. By “the supreme religious reality,” I mean a putative religiously significant dimension of reality or a “religious ultimate.” This is a generic way to refer to putative realities such as those variously called “God” or “Allah” or “Brahman” or “Nirvana” or “Jahweh” or “Vishnu” or “Krishna,” and so on, by the traditions that posit such realities.

On the other hand, the parity claim may not be about what is true. Rather, it may be about the capacity of the religious traditions to facilitate salvation.2 Perhaps pluralism about salvation is best understood as saying that the home religion provides a very good means to salvation, that other traditions provide an equally good means, that no tradition provides a better means, and that members of the relevant traditions – the home tradition and the other traditions in question – are consequently all very well, and equally well, situated with respect to salvation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.