In this essay I examine the relation between religious non-realism and religious pluralism. Religious pluralism is celebrated by it's adherents, to be benevolent and tolerant towards other religions truth claims and practices. Religious non-realism is also, by its adherents, praised for its including way to look upon truth claims and differing opinions about reality. When it comes to questions like what there is and what is not, does God exist or does he not etc. the religious non-realist is prone to less dogmatism and definite answers than metaphysical realists. Or at least so does the non-realists themselves like to think. What I examine in this essay is whether religious non-realism pragmatically implies religious pluralism, or if a non-realist judiciously can dismiss religious pluralism and instead adopt a form of confessional view of a specifik religion. Religious exclusivism, like the one Alvin Plantinga defends, rejects the possibility of x being both true and false. If a religious claim is taken to be true then incompatible claims have to be considered false according to this view. This fits poorly whith religious non-realism since the latter does not embrace a correspondance theory of truth. Religious pluralism is strongly criticized, among others for leaving “God” or other religious entities empty and whithout characteristics or content. This, because if God is litterally indescribable and unreachable, we would have no reason to believe that God has the chatacteristics we think he has. If religious pluralism cannot answer to the criticism, and if non-realism can not help pluralism evade the problems, then we are in need of a religious inclusivism that does not depend on metaphysical realism. I propose, what I have called, a pragmatic non-realistic inclusivism as an answer to the problem. This is a non-realistic theory that evades metaphysical realism and reductionism of religion, but nevertheless can prefere one religion before others. Not because one religion is concidered to have metaphysical and objective truth while others do not, but because one could prefere a specific religious language and consider that religion to be the most adequate response to human life
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-274746 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Åhlfeldt, Lina |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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