364 GLOSSARYreligious pluralism The view that no religious tradition is true and that every
religious tradition produces morally good people except those that do not.
religious tradition A tradition that offers a diagnosis of what it alleges is our
deep and enduring problem and proposes a cure for that problem.
salvation The condition of being rightly related to God, with sins forgiven.
self-authentication A proposition is self-authenticated to a person by an
experience if and only if it is logically impossible that the person accept
the proposition on the basis of the experience and be mistaken in so doing.
semantic logical necessity = informal logical necessity.
substance theory The theory of persons on which they are self-conscious
beings that endure uninterruptedly over time.
syntactic logical necessity = formal logical necessity.
teleological argument An argument to the effect that the intelligible order in
nature that makes everyday action and natural science possible is best
explained by reference to a Mind in whose image our minds are made.
Theravada Buddhism An Indian religious tradition, one of whose core
doctrines is that a person at a time is simply a bundle of states and over
time is simply a series of such bundles.
Upanishad A sacred Hindu text; the exact number is disputed, but there are at
least over a hundred.
valid argument An argument* such that if one asserts its premises and denies
its conclusion, one accepts a self-contradiction.