72 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIONWhich entails:
(RPE*) There is something to which only logically generable
properties may properly be ascribed and to which
properties that are not logically generable may properly
be ascribed.
Now (RPE*) is self-contradictory. Anything that entails a self-
contradiction is itself self-contradictory. So (RPE) is self-contradictory.
Self-contradictions are necessarily false. So (RPE) is necessarily false. But
(RPE) is the very core of RP. So RP is necessarily false. It commits
intellectual suicide of the worst sort. It has no possibly true explanation of
religious plurality. Explanations that are not even possibly true are not
genuine explanations. So it has no genuine explanation of religious
plurality – none whatever.
We might ask if there is another way to restrict RP. This brings us to
Minimally Restricted RP which says that properties to be ascribed to the
Real so long as they are either properties generable from logic alone or
what we might call happy properties – short for “properties an RP
supporter could without inconsistency be happy to ascribe to the Real.”^26
Then we need something like this:
(H) A property is happy if and only if it is (i) not generable from
logic, (ii) the Real’s having it is not incompatible with
any doctrine that any religion accepts, (iii) there is no
reason to think that the Real lacks this property, and (iv)
the Real having this property would give content to the
idea that there being such a thing as the Real might
explain something RP is supposed to explain.
Whatever charm this idea has is at least matched by its vacuity. The Real
being intelligent is one candidate for being a happy property. There are
religious doctrines with which ascribing it to the Real are incompatible. So
it will go for example after example. The implicit assumption of RP (in
some passages, at least) is that we won’t find any happy properties. This
seems very plausible indeed. In fact, the existence of Advaita Vedanta and
the absolutist brand of Mahayana Buddhism guarantee this result. Causal
or dependence relations between what Advaita Vedanta or absolutist
Mahayana Buddhism takes to exist and human persons are denied. RP’s
own attempt to be consistent with everything leads it to internal
inconsistency. Any talk of the Real being what we respond to in religious
experience, being transcendent in relation to our immanence as things that
do exist, or being a condition of our existence and of our highest good