The atheological argument that appeals to the presence of suffering and evil is one that has been raised against theism since theism began to be discussed among men. Another argument that has been used against theism for a very long time now is an argument appealing to differences among theists as evidence of theism’s falsity. Even though both arguments have been around for a very long time, however, the terms of the debate about evil have changed relatively little over the centuries, whereas there seems to be more interest in religious differences in our time. To be sure, people of different faiths have always lived near each other, but the existence of religious differences seems to bother modern people more than it did ancient ones. Moderns are more inclined, it seems, to think that in order for a view to be true, it must be universal, or at least nearly so.
But, in fact, as we have discussed already in chapter 4, some theists are Jews, some are Christians, some are Muslims, and a handful are even philosophers who may have no commitments to a revelation of any sort. Not only do these groups not agree with each other on many important points, but often there are divisions and subdivisions within the main groupings. Occasionally the divisions become so great that the various theistic groups actually fight with each other. As a result, it is not uncommon to hear an uncommitted observer of religious conflict simply throw up his hands and say, “Well, this one says X and that one Y and yet a third Z. Since there is no agreement, they must all be wrong!” In this chapter, we will try to explore this argument in several of its permutations.
A. The First Premise of the Atheological Argument from Religious Difference
Stated in its simplest and perhaps most extreme form, the atheological argument appealing to religious difference would look something like this:
1. If the God of theism exists, then almost everyone should hold the same views about God.
2. But views about God differ.
Therefore, the God of theism does not exist.
If we examine the structure of this argument, we notice that it is of the form “If P, then Q; but not-Q; therefore not-P.” This is a valid argument pattern of the type that is commonly called modus tollens in philosophical logic. So, if one should want to critique the argument, one will need to examine the premises, and the argument begins to have problems if one does this.
Let us begin with the first premise, which seems to assume that in order for a claim to be true, it must be held by “almost everyone”. Immediately the premise sails into some pretty strong headwinds. Consider, for example, that while scholars have known since antiquity that the earth was a sphere, there was once widespread agreement that the earth was at the center of the universe and the sun thus moved around the earth; in other words, the theory known as “heliocentrism” (that is, that the sun is at the center of the solar system and that the earth moves around the sun) was definitely not held by “almost everyone”. Indeed, during the time when the debate between geocentrism and heliocentrism was at its hottest pitch, there was actually a third theory in the debate, the opinion of Tycho Brahe. His view was a sort of combination of the others in that it claimed that the sun moved around the earth but that the other planets moved about the sun. At the time, none of these three views was able to prove its correctness against the others, principally because the more powerful telescopes capable of detecting the stellar parallax that would really establish the matter were not yet in existence. In the end, though, one of the three views turned out to be true and the other two false. The mere fact of disagreement, then, hardly proved all three theories false.
Of course, examples could be multiplied: if four high school students are sitting around a table working an algebra problem, and all four come up with different answers, it simply does not follow that all four of the answers are false. It does follow that no more than one can be true, of course—at least if we are talking about the sort of algebra equation that has only one correct solution. It is also the case that if all four of the high school students in our example should come up with the same answer, it still does not necessarily follow that the answer is correct. So, it is not too hard to cast serious doubt on the first premise of the argument, which seeks to link the establishment of truth to the existence of broad agreement.
Perhaps what the first premise really wants to say is not that, in order for something to be accepted as true, “almost everyone” must agree to it. Perhaps this is interpreting the argument as if it were extreme, when something lesser is what is really being claimed. Perhaps, then, it would be more charitable to say that the first premise wants to claim only that “most people” rather than “almost everyone” would hold the same view about the God of theism if the theistic God existed. This would be to interpret the first premise as making a majoritarian claim: “If something is true, then at least a majority would accept it as true.” Lowering the bar in this manner, though, does not really help the premise. It still claims that evidence of truth and falsity is linked to what “the many” say, and of course we all learn that “appeal to the majority” is a fallacy. Truth cannot be established by a show of hands.
But maybe the unarticulated thought behind the premise is something more sophisticated than our blunt articulation of it. Maybe the atheist really wants to say something more subtle in appealing to the existence of different theistic religions. Maybe what he intends is something like this: “If the God of theism exists—that is, a God who is omnibenevolent and cares for human beings—t hen it seems that God would want to make sure that we would know him; indeed, God would make his existence and nature so obvious that we could not hold different views about him.”
It seems to us that reconstructing the first premise along these lines is being overly generous to most people who make the argument. Most people really do mean it in a much more simple form, but since it is fairly easy to dismiss the first premise if we take it at face value, let us attempt to address this more serious restatement of the premise. If we do so, what we notice is that the argument turns out to be reducible to the argument for evil discussed in the previous chapter. Why do we say this? To begin, let us reformulate the argument like this:
1. If the God of theism exists, then God would reveal himself so clearly that at most only a few people would be ignorant of God.
2. And if at most only a few people were ignorant about God, then almost everyone would hold the same views about God.
3. But views about God differ.
Therefore, the God of theism does not exist.
Of course, if the God of theism exists, then ignorance of God is a bad thing, for “to be ignorant of God” might well mean the same thing as “to be separate from goodness itself”. But this implies that the first premise could be restated as “If the God of theism exists, then there would be no evil in the universe”—or at least there would not be this particular kind of evil in the universe. In other words, it is possible that the atheistic argument appealing to the existence of religious difference might reduce to the atheistic argument from evil.
If so, then we are back to where we were in the last chapter. Rather than repeat all that was said there, we will simply recall some of the main features. We said that in order to find a defense of theism against the atheistic argument from evil, one would try to imagine why God might permit human beings to experience evil (including, in our new case, the evil of not knowing God). One logically possible reason for God to do this that has been explored by theistic philosophers is that maybe God wants to respect our free will, including the free will to reject him. Perhaps, then, God so much wants to respect our freedom that God knows that to make himself too obvious would be to make it impossible for us to deny him. Another reason why God might permit us to be ignorant of himself is that perhaps God wants to permit the testing of our characters so that we will know the status of our own faith; perhaps God permits testing so that, based on such self-knowledge, we may redouble our efforts for knowledge of him.
We will not explore either of these possible reasons here; our point for bringing them up is only to help make clear that the current atheological argument that appeals to religious difference is, if stated in a certain way, reducible to the previous atheological argument that appeals to evil. And thus, the sorts of defenses the theist might use against the argument from evil and suffering that were discussed in the last chapter are probably going to be applicable to the new argument as well.
It may be added, too, that just as the atheological argument from evil and suffering may be recast as an inductive argument, so too may the argument from religious differences. Its initial premise could be restated: “If the God of theism exists, then it is likely that almost everyone would think the same about God.” But such a premise will only lead to a conclusion that is “likely” to be the case, and thus such an argument will have to consider the evidence suggesting that the opposite conclusion is true, just as an inductive version of the argument from evil and suffering will have to do.
B. The Second Premise of the Atheological Argument from Religious Difference
So far, several similarities between the arguments from evil and from religious difference have become apparent. In turning to the second premise of the latter argument, though, important differences begin to emerge. With respect to the argument from evil, we suggested that, broadly speaking, few theists would want to deny the premise “But evil exists in the world”, even if many pantheists would do so. The second premise of the current argument, “But views about God differ”, might seem equally uncontroversial to most theists, but it has been challenged in two ways.
The first challenge to the second premise is one we have been advocating in this book, for we have been claiming that at least three religions that appeal to God’s self-revelatory actions in the world (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) share a set of basic views of God and that some philosophical theists share these views, also. We have stated that chief among these common claims is that God causes the world to exist at all moments of its existence, but that the world in no way causes the existence of God. We have also said that there exists a set of common claims pertaining to the attributes of God that are shared by all theists. These attributes were discussed in chapters 7 and 8, and indeed in chapter 4 we used the following diagram to illustrate the domain of these common teachings:
We have, therefore, already challenged the second premise of the argument, but only in part. That is, we would want to qualify the second premise so that it stated that “Some religious views are unique to individual religions, but some are common.” The simple claim that religious views differ lacks qualification, then. Perhaps since theists share in common some teachings about God, it follows that one of the articulations of theism is likely to be true.
A much more radical challenge to the second premise of the argument from religious difference, however, has been proffered, especially in recent times. This view wants to challenge the second premise not simply in part but in its entirety; that is, some people want to say that not only do Islam, Christianity, and Judaism share some common teachings, but that in fact all religions, including pantheistic ones, ultimately teach the same thing. This view denying the significance of religious differences often goes by the name of the “world religions” approach to the study of religion.
The “world religions” approach would seem to be different from an approach that simply compares religions. Making comparisons is hardly controversial. Teachers know, for example, that one of the easiest and best ways to get students to come to see the importance of any one thing is to compare it to something else. If we want students to notice what is interesting about apples, one of the best things to do is to compare apples with oranges. Thus, students at various levels of learning are often asked to complete exercises that ask them, for example, to compare frogs with toads, bases with metals, deciduous trees with coniferous ones, Hamlet with Macbeth, Plato’s Republic with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and so on and so forth. In such exercises, students have to say what is the same and what is different about two things, and they almost always wind up noticing interesting things about each of the two items being compared that they would not have noticed had they studied just one item alone. Christian students who examine Judaism, for example, often reach a greater clarity about their own faith. Even in this book, in explaining theism early on, we tried to do so by saying how it was different from pantheism. Making comparisons will not teach everything there is to know about something, but it is often a good way to begin.
The world religions approach, however, goes much farther than clarifying similarities and differences. It wants to claim that all differences among religions, or at least among the major religions of the world, are insignificant or even illusory. It seems, they say, that there are real differences, even contradictions, among the various religions of the world, but these differences are only apparent.
This claim strikes us as indefensible and, indeed, just contrary to fact. Muslims, for example, claim that Muhammad is the definitive prophet of God; Jews deny this. Christians claim that God is incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ; Muslim deny this. Hindus accept notions of the reincarnation of souls; Christians deny this. In our view, the differences between religions are real: Muhammad is or is not the definitive prophet of God; God is or is not incarnate in Christ Jesus. There seems to be no “in-between” position that is logically possible.
In our view, then, the world religions approach is an overreach. Certainly there are similarities between some religions, but the world religions approach actually claims that the differences between theistic and pantheistic religions are not ultimately very significant, and neither are the differences among the theistic religions or those that exist among the pantheistic religions.
In order to explain themselves, the advocates of the world religions approach often resort to the old allegory of the blind men and the elephant. One of the blind men touches the elephant’s tail and reports that the elephant is like a rope. Another encounters the trunk and says that the elephant is like a large snake. And the others touch other parts of the elephant and thus have very different things to say about the elephant:
What the advocates of the world religions approach think the story teaches, of course, is that all of the world’s religions are like the blind men. They each “touch” a different part of God and thus experience God differently, not realizing that they are only in touch with a part of the entire reality of God. If somehow they could just become enlightened, the world religions approach claims, they would understand that they are all experiencing the same thing and that the purported differences are only due to the limitations of their own experiences or, indeed, their own blindness.
Of course, the story is extremely misleading. To begin with, it assumes that all the blind men really are encountering the same thing, and it is quite fair to ask, “Why should we think that?” Perhaps the blind men really are encountering different things. Perhaps the drawing should be reconfigured to look like this:
Even more importantly, though, the world religions narrative is misleading because it assumes that there is someone standing outside the “picture” who can see that the blind men are touching only a part of the elephant. In other words, the advocate of the world religions approach wants to insist that he is not blind. Rather, he alone knows what the world’s religions do not know. He stands above it all and sees clearly because he—and he alone—is truly enlightened.
The world religions approach, then, winds up saying that the world’s religions are all fundamentally mistaken. They all may grasp a little truth, but they all miss the key point, which is clear to those who are sufficiently reasonable. Thus, the world religions approach really winds up being another form of rationalism, which we treated in the first part of the book. As another form of rationalism, it says that all those who purport to have received revelation from God and to have responded with faith are fundamentally mistaken. In their view, Christians who insist on the uniqueness of the Incarnation of Christ Jesus are mistaken, as are Muslims who insist on the uniqueness of Muhammad, and so forth. Christians need to give up belief in Christ as the incarnate One, Muslims need to abandon their claim about Muhammad being the definitive prophet of God, and so forth. Anything that is particular needs to be jettisoned. In the end, then, the world religions approach seems to do away with the world’s religions.
Presumably the attractiveness of the world religions approach is that it would seem to eliminate all possible sources of religious conflict. And indeed, one supposes that if all religions just gave up any of their religious beliefs that were unique to their own faith, there would be nothing for the religions to argue about! We would presumably be plenty willing to argue about other things, as modern history has shown, but one significant source of conflict, the argument runs, would have been eliminated.
The problem, of course, is that there are almost no religious beliefs that are shared by all religions. This is especially obvious if we seek to compare pantheistic religions with theistic ones, for these two large groupings of the world’s religions have almost nothing in common.
The advocates of the world religions approach think that they offer a reason for the various religions to respect each other and that such mutual respect would lead to resolutions of religious conflict. They appeal to a distinctively modern notion of “tolerance”. What they overlook is that their approach leads to intolerance toward all religions, for it insists they will all have to surrender important teachings.
“Toleration” originally meant something like “endurance”. This original meaning is sometimes preserved even today, when we say things like, for example, “She tolerates high humidity well”, or “Tommy’s mother was very tolerant of his bad behavior.” With respect to opinions, toleration originally meant something like “enduring a view that one disagrees with”, which implied that one recognized that real disagreements exist. In times past, one was asked to practice tolerance toward others patiently, hoping that one might convince others to a better view eventually. In our time, though—and we notice this especially in the world religions approach—tolerance means that we should not or must not disagree with others, because that would imply that others are mistaken, and such thinking is frowned upon. Ironically, though, the advocate of the world religions approach suggests that everyone else is mistaken except the advocates of the world religions approach. Reflections such as these have led one leading theist, Peter van Inwagen, to argue that the world religions approach, while seeking to combat what it views as the arrogance of intolerance, actually winds up being the most intolerant position of all.
We think that the view adopted in this book is superior to the world religions approach because it is far closer to the facts. We think that a fair comparison of religions shows that some religions have some teachings in common; thus, we can classify some religions as theistic and others as pantheistic, for example. At the same time, honest comparison shows that there are real and not just apparent differences that not only distinguish theistic religions from pantheistic ones, but also distinguish one theistic religion from another and one pantheistic religion from another. Thus, we conclude that both Judaism and Islam share some commonalities as well as some real differences and that these differences are irreducible. Reflecting on these similarities and differences in light of a clear distinction between faith and reason, we think that the similarities are usually such that they can be considered in the light of reason alone but that the differences are usually such that they cannot be considered in the light of reason alone. Christianity and Islam, for example, clearly make incompatible claims about purported divine self-revelations. But revelation is something that is either accepted by faith or not; it is not something that is transparent to reason. Thus, the Christian must accept that he cannot rationally prove the truth of Christian revelation to a Muslim, and vice versa. But this, of course, is just what Thomas Aquinas pointed out, as we discussed back in chapter 3.
C. Conclusion
In our view, then, the argument against theism that appeals to the fact of religious difference has a difficult time defending the premises on which it is based. While we conclude that the second premise should be qualified, the main problem is the first premise, which seems hopelessly committed to the view that the mere presence of different views shows that all the competing views are false. We would, moreover, caution defenders of theism against challenging the second premise as the world religions approach is apt to do.