4 INTRODUCTIONis an essential feature of philosophy that views offered on philosophical issues
are also assessed. There is no such thing as philosophy without argument.
Assertion without assessment is not philosophy.
A religion offers a diagnosis of what it tells us is our deep and paralyzing
problem. It also offers a solution. This combination of diagnosis-and-cure itself
makes assumptions about what there is, what can be known, and what has
positive worth. It inherently contains the seeds of a full-grown worldview. At
the very least, it contains commitments as to what there is, what must be
known, and what has worth that can be consistently developed into some
worldviews but not into others.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam agree that our deep problem is that we are
sinners in need of divine forgiveness and renewal. Advaita Vedanta, a variety
of Hinduism, holds that our deep problem lies in our ignorance of our identity
to Brahman, a qualityless ultimate reality. Theravada Buddhism claims that
our deep problem is that we mistakenly think of ourselves as enduring self-
conscious beings and the cure is seeing that we are composed of only
momentary states. Jainism maintains that our deep problem is that we regard
ourselves as inherently dependent on something else and having limited
knowledge, whereas in fact we are enduring self-conscious beings that are
inherently independent and capable of unlimited knowledge. These diagnoses
and cures involve commitments as to what there is, what is known, and what
has ultimate worth. These commitments differ from one diagnosis-and-cure to
another in such a way that the correctness of one diagnosis-and-cure entails
the incorrectness of the others. A central part of the philosophy of religion
involves understanding these competing diagnoses-and-cures and examining
what can be said for and against the views to which they are committed. This
investigation involves getting the data about competing religious traditions
straight. This, in turn, involves offering an accurate account of the kinds of
religious experience these traditions include. It includes providing a fair, clear
description of the doctrines that are an essential part of these traditions.
A view that is very popular in some Religious Studies circles is incompatible
with the basic approach of this text. Religious Pluralism endeavors to escape
any necessity for assessing competing religious traditions by claiming that, in
any straightforward sense of the term, all religious doctrines are false or
meaningless. Religious traditions are to be assessed simply in terms of whether
or not people come closer to Religious Pluralism’s moral ideal by virtue of
accepting them. The overall argument of this book is a refutation of this view.
Nonetheless, given its popularity, we have devoted a chapter to showing that
Religious Pluralism is both self-refuting and self-contradictory.
In Part II, we consider the philosophical content of religious traditions.
Monotheism takes God alone to be an independently existing creator;
nonetheless, there is more than one variety of monotheism. Advaita
Vedanta holds qualityless Brahman to be the only ultimate reality, a status