Pluralism is the view that there is more than one valid religion. There is an ultimate reality, but no single religion has a monopoly on the truth about that reality. Each religion represents a different but legitimate perspective on it. Each religion has a distinctive understanding of “God,” “truth,” “enlightenment,” “salvation,” and so on, and they are all valid. In the same way, Pluralism insists that no single religion holds a monopoly on how we are to be “saved.” As an ancient saying puts it, “There are many paths up the mountain.”
Pluralism is a relative newcomer in the history of worldviews, but it’s becoming increasingly widespread, particularly as people grow tired of religious violence and intolerance. Pluralism advocates a “live and let live” attitude, promoting tolerance toward all religious traditions (or at least toward most of them).
Appealing as it may seem in our day, Pluralism faces some serious problems. First, there’s the fact that the major religions make central claims that are logically incompatible. Christianity teaches that Jesus was the divine Son of God, but Islam explicitly and vehemently rejects that claim. Judaism holds that God is personal, but many forms of Hinduism teach that God is non-personal. Some forms of Buddhism affirm no God at all. Clearly these aren’t minor disagreements that can be swept under the carpet! These distinctive teachings lie at the very heart of these religions.
Even so, Pluralists think they have an answer to this problem. They often suggest that such conflicts can be resolved by taking all these religious claims figuratively rather than literally. For example, when Christians say, “The Bible is the Word of God,” we shouldn’t interpret it as a claim that God literally speaks to people through the Bible. It’s only a figurative way of saying that Christians happen to find reading the Bible spiritually edifying and enlightening—or something along those lines. Understood in that figurative sense, the sacred scriptures of the major religions could all be described as “the Word of God.” No more conflicts!
The trouble with this line is that it doesn’t accurately reflect what the adherents of those religions themselves mean by these claims. In effect, Pluralists are suggesting that Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and so on are actually quite mistaken about how to understand their own religions. Are we to believe that they have less understanding of the teachings of their own religions than modern Pluralists?
Think again about the analogy of the blind men and the elephant. (If you need a reminder, flip back here.) Doesn’t the analogy imply not only that traditional religious believers are actually quite mistaken about the overarching truth, but also that the Pluralist alone has the full and correct view of the ultimate reality in his role as the narrator of the story? It suggests that the Pluralist has a uniquely privileged insight that everyone else lacks.
On closer examination, Pluralism turns out to be just as “exclusive” and “intolerant” as many traditional religions, if not more so, simply because it cannot accommodate any religion that rejects its distinctive perspective on religion. If Pluralism is right, other religions must be quite wrong. So much for “live and let live”! By excluding non-Pluralist religions, Pluralism exposes itself as just one more religious viewpoint in competition with all the others.
In the end, it’s hard to defend the view that there are many valid religions. The conflicting teachings of the major world religions can’t be harmonized without distorting those religions beyond recognition. At least some of these religious teachings must be mistaken, which means that some religions have a better handle on the truth about the ultimate reality than others. In fact, it’s reasonable to suppose that one particular religion has the best handle on the truth, all things considered.
(from James Anderson's "What is Your Worldview?")