Religious Diversity and Perceptual Knowledge of God

Abstract

The existence of a plurality of religious communities, each with its own belief system that is incompatible in various respects with each of the others, poses a serious and well advertised problem for the claims of each community.After all, it looks as if Moslems, Hindus, and Buddhists have grounds of the same general sort (revelation, religious experience, miracles, authority, etc.) as my fellow Christians and I have for the truth of our respective systems of doctrine.But then, unless I have sufficient reason for supposing that Christians are in a superior position for discerning the truth about these matters, why should I suppose that we are right and they are wrong?How can I be justified in continuing to affirm my Christian beliefs?Note that this is hardly a crucial epistemological problem unless there are substantial grounds of belief within each community.If Christian beliefs are without any significant internal justification, then they lack positive epistemic status quite apart from competition from other religions, and so for the others.'I have no time in this essay to argue that this condition holds for the major religions of the world.I shall simply assume that it does, so as to throw the distinctive difficulties posed by religious pluralism into sharp relief.One response to this problem is to argue that, despite appearances, there are no incompatibilities, or no fundamental incompatibilities, between the major world religions, thereby removing another fundamental condition of the problem.This line can take different forms.(1) The strongest would be the contention that the existent doctrinal systems, as generally understood, are not incompatible.To show this would be a brilliant feat indeed.(2) A more modest and feasible-seeming project would be to try to trim each system of various "excesses" so that what is left in each case is compatible with what is left in the others.(3) We might follow John Hick and others in introducing a level distinction, contending that though the various belief systems conflict with each other that is because they constitute different "pictures", "images", or "representations" of the one ultimate reality, which is represented in each adequately enough for practical (salvific) purposes butthe real nature of which is adequately captured in none of them.And there are other variants.However, for purposes of this paper I am going to take none of these enterprises to succeed in eliminating at least a stubborn residue of incompatibilities.

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