62 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIONadherents of one or another religious tradition who either do not know their
own tradition very well or are just confused. But it is clear that, in their
traditional forms, religious traditions take as essential to salvation precisely
matters on which there is deep disagreement among religious traditions.
An argument sometimes is offered that two people who really respect one
another cannot knowingly disagree on ultimate religious matters, and since we
respect each other as persons we cannot really disagree on ultimate doctrines
even though we may seem to. One of my two PhD advisors, who by the way did
respect each other, was an orthodox rabbi and the other an atheist; both became
my lifelong friends. I regret that I never saw anyone try to persuade my rabbi
friend that he really did not disagree with Christianity or atheism or my atheist
friend that he really believed in God; it would have been interesting. The reply to
this argument is that since people plainly do manage both to differ knowingly on
basic religious matters and yet respect one another, tolerance is compatible with
known difference on ultimate religious matters.
The plain fact of functional diversity on high standards
I would suggest as well on the basis of what we have said that it simply is plain
that there is not functional identity among religious traditions. They hold such
divergent values that the ends they seek and the values they inculcate make it
impossible for them to serve the same psychological ends or the same social
functions, unless we describe these ends or functions with high generality. There
may be some point to doing so sometimes; but if we ever want to look with any
care at the religious phenomena we shall have to do so with far more specificity
and clarity than will allow us to maintain cross-religious functional identity.
The doctrinal and functional diversity of religious traditions
Our original question was: are all religions really the same? This split into: Have
they the same content? Have they the same function? On high standards that
yield a significant conclusion rather than low standards that yield a trivial
conclusion, the answers to our questions are: “No” and “No.” What does it
matter? The answer to this question depends on whether any of the traditions
are true.
One’s answer to “What difference does it make?” will depend on what view
one takes of the religious traditions. If one supposes that all religious traditions
are false, then the difference it makes is like the difference it makes as to whether
one thinks that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or Bruce Springsteen
and Victoria Principal were the first and sixteenth US Presidents. One who made