"There can't just be ONE true religion"

Question 1

“Religion has created so much war and suffering in the world.”

Answer 1

• Yes, religion has been the source of much intolerance and oppression
• however, the 20th century has shown that the greatest intolerance and violence has come from those who believed that religion was intolerant and violent (communist Russia, China and the Nazi regime)
• the root source of violence and intolerance clearly, then, does not come from religion

Question 2

“All major religions are equally valid and teach nearly the same thing.”

Answer 2

• Claiming that “radically opposed doctrines between major religions don’t matter” is a doctrine in itself
• It holds a specific view of God, just like everyone it condemns fo doing!
• they do the very thing they forbid others of doing

Question 3

“Each religion holds part of spiritual truth, but none can see the whole truth”

Answer 3

How can you possibly know that no religion holds the whole spiritual truth unless you have some sort of superior knowledge of spiritual truth?
- Didn’t you just claim nobody can know what you claim to know?

Question 4

“Religious belief is too culturally and historically conditioned to be true” - “therefore, everything is relative”

Answer 4

• this statement can only be true if the relativist exempts himself from that statement.
• How do we know that his statement isn’t relative?

Question 5

“It is arrogant to insist that your religion is the right one and everyone else should convert to yours”

Answer 5

• The inherent contradiction: there are plenty of good and intelligent people who believe that their religion is correct. For you to call them arrogant and wrong is, in its own terms, arrogant and wrong

Question 6

“It is ethnocentric to believe that your religion is superior to religion in other cultures”

Answer 6

• There are plenty of cultures fully willing to claim their religion is correct and everyone else is wrong
• Therefore, the original statement is akin to saying, “Our cultures approach to evaluating other cultures is better than yours”
• you end up doing the very thing you forbid others to do

Question 7

“Any exclusive claims to spiritual reality cannot be true”

Answer 7

• This claim is itself a religious belief.
• It assumes that God is unknowable, or God is loving but not wrathful, etc.
• This claim ends up being an exclusive claim itself!

Question 8

What is religion?

Answer 8

A set of faith-assumptions about the nature of things

Question 9

“Keep religion private, never use religion-based arguments in public discourse” - “we should keep our religious views to ourselves and unite around policies that “work” for everyone”

Answer 9

Even the most secular, pragmatic people come to the table with deep-seated views about the purpose of human life and what it means to be human. That is religion.
- All moral positions, therefore, are implicitly religious