Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Religious Pluralism and Consistency

Enigmaman, over at Enigmania, has a very nice post up about the pragmatic need for inconsistency and motivates it with the question of religious pluralism.

We could take pluralism in the strong sense that Feyerabend, for example, does and think of it as holding mutually inconsistent views. Or we could think of it in the weaker sense of allowing that views other than those for which you deem yourself to have good reason to believe are still rational to hold. In other words, that both you and those you disagree with are all rational, even while you disagree. Enigmaman seems more interested in the former, while I've been interested in the latter.

It seems that underdetermination is the easiest path to pluralism, that given the evidence, either of these positions would be possible and could be explained by conflicting hypotheses. There is evidence for each, but not evidence that either is conclusively determined. Hence, those with hunches in one direction can't look askance at those who work in the other direction and pluralism is the best approach since we really don't know which way lays the truth.

The other route is fallibility. The evidence we are using could be wrong. It could be that our instruments are faulty or there is some other effect that makes our measurements useless unbeknownst to us at the time. This evidence is likely to be true, but could be false and this means that we can be intellectually tolerant of those who discount some particular data points as problematic for the purpose of hypothesizing in novel directions.

But in the case of religion, you generally don't have that sort of underdetermination or fallibility. Revealed truth is supposed to be absolute truth. Where then is the space for religious pluralism? Is it in the Quaker-type sense of overdeterminiation, that that God speaks through all and therefore all must be listened to? Is it underdetermination in the Jewish sense that all must be interpreted and there is no unique interpretation? Does religious pluralism mean a lack of certainty in one's religious views, a lack of depth in the religious belief, or a different kind of belief?

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:33 AM

    If you have an appreciable a thing not many, aka care to seek extraordinary
    crockery and utensils obliging barbq, skin boil and simply bake at the unmarried circumstance,
    virtually any side by side tandoor oven can be the therapy to meet your requirements.
    Bring dill, feta and as well , four tablespoons crme fraiche up to the
    sauerkraut concoction. Hassle-free weapons like this
    can develop every day living a bit easier. Often times, 2 department is often doing
    your job over time , with near immediate effect in
    any genuine estimate stride, a poster micro-wave makes sure that them
    to get their dream like burning up high-quality all the dishes in
    good time. Should you go on it those great tv infomercial
    option to invest joining your downline be aware the time paying for to pick up so what on earth you want.


    Here is my blog post; consumer reviews toasters **

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.