74 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION1 The only-one-religion-is-true line will require that much of very many
religious traditions is false.
2 The all-religions-are-true line will yield one massive contradiction –
indeed, a whole intellectual museum of contradictions.
The all-religions-are-true line is self-contradictory. The only-one-religion-
is-true line is not self-contradictory, but it is anathema to RP. Reject the
view that only properties generated from logic alone can be properly
ascribed to the Real, and one has either the all-religions-are-true line or
the only-one-religion-is-true line. So rejection of the view that only
properties generated from logic can be properly ascribed to the Real leads
to self-contradiction or to what RP finds despicable. So that view is one RP
is reluctant to reject. Dropping it is as attractive to RP as beekeeping in
swimwear is to those allergic to stings.
To put things bluntly, it is by appeal to the idea that the Real is both
what religious experience is a response to and can be said to have no
property not generable from logic alone that RP shifts religious traditions
from being either true or false, and largely incompatible to being useful,
and non-competitive. Drop either of those claims, and the shift is without
basis in RP.
A critical discussion of RP: Part two
Various other attempts might be made to state a non-self-destructive and
non-self-contradictory version of the restriction that RP so desperately
needs. For example, one might consider two views about properties as
follows.
Natures or essences
Consider the doctrine of property universalism which holds this:
(PU) For any item X and property Q, necessarily either X has Q or
X does not have Q.
Contrast it to restricted property universalism which holds:
(RPU) For any item X and property Q, necessarily either X has
Q or X does not have Q, unless X has a nature N such