Wednesday, 5 March 2008

Is Religious Tolerance an Oxymoron?

Massimo Pigliucci discusses over at Secular Philosophy.

Lopresti nicely summarizes the options available to religious people who wish to be tolerant of other religious traditions (tolerance toward atheism, of course, is a different matter...). First, one can decide not to be tolerant at all, and embrace exclusivism.
[snip]
The second alternative, according to Lopresti, is inclusivism. Here the idea is that “we all believe in the same God,” sort of.
[snip]
The final option presented by Lopresti is pluralism: the idea is that different religious traditions are in fact distinct (a la exclusivism, contra inclusivism), but they also have enough shared values and common objectives to foster reciprocal collaboration.