370 NOTESelicits worship. Happily, this sort of complexity can be avoided by using the notion
of relevance conditions that relate experiences and claims, as we will do before we
consider the question of the evidential force of religious experience. So it is not
cheating to ignore it here.
7 Note that the criterion as stated is stronger than it would be were it only required
that B differed from A in that it would not follow from B’s veridicality that A was
not veridical.5 The importance of doctrine and the distinctions of religious
traditions
1 John 14:6.
2 John 3:36.
3 Acts 4:12.
4 George Thibaut, trans., The Vedanta Sutras of Badarayanna with the Commentary
of Sankara (New York: Dover Publications, 1962; originally published 1896), Vol. II,
p. 399.
5 Geshe Sopa and Elving Jones, A Light to the Svatantrika-Madhyanika, p. 62; privately
circulated.
6 The knowledge in question is not construed as merely knowledge by description,
but there is no pretense of a knowledge by acquaintance that does not include some
knowledge by description.
7 Munkara Upanishad III, i, 3.
8 I, 271.
9 Digha Nikaya II, 251.
10 I John 5:20.
11 B’hai and Advaita Vedanta both hold this view; so do various secularized versions of
Protestantism and Catholicism.
12 Another factor promoting the same “all religions are the same” line is a popular sort
of mind-set that has persuaded itself that religions make no claims at all. Sometimes
this rests on some principle of meaning (that is likely not to meet its own standard).
Sometimes it is based on a view of what it is to know that something is true (that is
likely not to be knowable on its own standards). Sometimes it rests on some sort of
relativism (that is likely in turn to make relativistic the view that no religion makes
truth-claims). Sometimes it rests on a new account of truth (that will serve its intended
purpose only if it is true in a sense of truth of which it provides no account). Each of
these perspectives has its own varieties, and it would take some space to describe, and
more space to discuss, these views. The present author has argued against such views
in Christianity and Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984) and Hume’s
“Inexplicable Mystery”: His Views on Religion (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1990), as well as in “Empiricism and Theism,” Sophia, Vol. 7, No. 3, October
1968, pp. 3–11; “A Reply to Nielsen,” Sophia, Vol. 7, No. 3, October 1968, pp. 18, 19;
“Some Varieties of Relativism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion,
Vol. 19, pp. 61–85, 1986.
13 I have written about these views elsewhere. See “On the Alleged Unity of all
Religions,” Christian Scholars’ Review, Vol. VI, Nos 2 and 3, 1976, pp. 140–55, and
“Some Varieties of Religious Pluralism,” in James Kellenberger (ed.), Inter-religious
Models and Criteria (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993), pp. 187–211.
14 Cf. the present author’s Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Religion (Boston: Allyn
and Bacon, 1970), chapter 1.