56 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIONIt is worth noting and emphasizing that these passages are not simply
exceptions that do not deeply reflect the perspectives that we have been
discussing. A religion typically offers an account of the conditions in which
we exist, a conception of the religious problem that we face because of
existing in those conditions, and a solution to that problem that is viewed as
realistically facing and resolving that problem under those conditions.
Different religions see those conditions differently. They hence describe the
basic religious problem differently. They therefore offer different solutions.
If you think that all religion is a crock, you will not take seriously those
descriptions of the conditions in which we exist, and the problem that we
thereby face; they will not describe live options for your acceptance. But you
can still see that they are different and that the solutions offered are
different. If you think that we are not in danger from fire or from flood, you
will not think we need a fire extinguisher or an ark. But you can still see that
the fire-fearers disagree with water-fearers in their analysis of our troubles
and in their proposed remedies.
“Truth-claims”
Religions make what are sometimes called “truth-claims,” though of course
that is redundant since to make a claim in the sense of asserting something is
to say that what is asserted is true. “Truth-claims” are just claims; there are
false claims but there aren’t any “falsity-claims.” Of course religions make
claims – if they asserted nothing, there would be no religions. Sometimes –
particularly when a religious tradition is under rational scrutiny, or when a
would-be believer recognizes that she thinks what she would like to be her
religion is false and wants to keep it anyway – a religious tradition may be
presented as claiming, and even may claim, that it makes no claim except that
it makes no claims. But once the crisis is over, we are back to talking about
God and sin and salvation, or Atman and Brahman and moksha and identity,
or Jivas and kevala and enlightenment, or momentary states and nirvana and
release from the Wheel. It is in the very nature of a religion to offer an
account of our situation, our problem, and its solution. Not every problem
can arise in every situation; not every problem has the same solution. The
account of our problem depends on the account of our situation; the account
of our salvation depends on what we are and what we need to be saved from.
To accept a religion is to embrace some particular and connected account of
the situation and problem and solution.
Two popular contemporary perspectives often keep people from seeing
religious differences. One is a popular sort of academic quasi-religion that
has as one of its doctrinal claims that religions do not differ. The other is the