WHENEVER I read of Westerners converting to Islam, I am not particularly surprised. These conversions are the result of proximity to Muslims, but also, I believe, of the fact that Muslims hold to one very important truth that is stubbornly rejected by many Western believers. Muslims believe, or at least act as if they believe, that only one religion is true. In this, they are absolutely correct. Either one religion is true — and all other religions are false — or no religion is true. Muslims believe the former proposition.

In Islam, some Western secularists sense the clear and refreshing air of a certain honesty. They know, without perhaps being able to articulate it, that the ecumenical, “interfaith” movement that has swept the modern West is nonsense. Astute non-believers understandably have contempt for this opiate of the masses. Different religions hold to different propositions, even if they agree on some points. Both sides of a contradiction cannot be true. This is obvious even to a child.

Those who believe that all religions are partly true are sloppy thinkers or dangerous liars. “Interfaith-ism” is far more damaging than atheism. Most people are not inclined to atheism. Most people, indeed all people, are inclined to wanting God on their own terms.

Many so-called Catholics believe, for instance, that other religions are partly true and that Catholicism is fully true. This cannot logically be so. Either Catholicism is the one true faith, and other faiths are entirely false [as religions], or Catholicism is wholly false. The Catholic Church states that salvation can only be attained through the Church. But Lutherans implicitly believe that salvation can only be attained through the Lutheran Church. They just don’t state it openly.

Here is a good analysis from the website Novus Ordo Watch. For non-Catholic readers, simply replace whatever their own religion is with the reference to Catholicism to arrive at the basic philosophical conclusion that only one religion is true or none are true:

The very concept of “partial truth” in other religions as a supposedly good thing totally leaves out of account the fact that the other parts of that religion’s teaching are false. Yet this consideration is crucial because a body of doctrine that contains only some truth is not “partially true” but in fact completely false.

This is very easy to demonstrate. If I say that “Christ died on the Cross and did not rise from the dead,” my statement is false — it is not “partially true” or “imperfectly true.” Or, using an even clearer example, saying that the Most Holy Trinity consists of Father, Son, and the Virgin Mary, is false. It is not “partially true” on the specious grounds that the Father and the Son are part of the Holy Trinity after all. That’s just not how it works.

A few examples from daily life may help to illustrate the folly of the “patrial truth” idea further.

Who would eat a cake from a baker who says that the ingredients he used are only “partially poisoned”? Should we praise him for the healthy parts? And yet, are not religious teaching and the health of the soul infinitely more important than some man-made cake and the health of the body, which must, in any case, wither away and return to dust (cf. Eccl 12:7; Mt 10:28)?

Likewise, a cocktail that has been poisoned isn’t “partially healthy.” Rather, the toxic elements mix inseparably with the healthful elements, thus creating a drink that is entirely deadly. And so it is also with false religions and their teachings — all the more so, in fact.

As Michael O’Halloran explains in this essay (it is also from a Catholic viewpoint but, non-Catholics, please substitute your particular faith for his references to the Catholic Church and arrive at the same philosophical conclusion regarding the truth or falsity of one religion vis-à-vis the rest), religion is something revealed by God, not by man. God cannot reveal falsehood or he wouldn’t be God. O’Halloran writes:

Let us finally deal with one pressing objection to these assertions of contradiction: the claim that false religions really do contain “elements of truth and goodness,” and that for this reason they should be respected as being more or less near approaches to our own true Catholic religion. [NOTE TO READER: Substitute whatever your faith is here.] In reply we note that this objection treats the difference between the true religion and false religions as a difference of degree but not of kind. But this is a false distinction; St. Pius X identified it as one of the root errors of Modernism. Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton explains this well, rejecting the false implication that the false religions, those other than the Catholic, are in some measure a partial approach to the fullness of truth which is to be found in Catholicism. According to this doctrinal aberration, the Catholic religion would be distinct from others, not as the true is distinct from the false, but only as the plenitude is distinct from incomplete participations of itself.(21)

To illustrate the problem, suppose that divine revelation can be expressed in 1,000 truths, that the Catholic faith (the “fullness” of the truth, in modern lingo) professes all 1,000 truths, that the Eastern schismatics profess 980, Protestants, 700, Jews, 500, Moslems, 300, and agnostics, 50. Modernism, which sees false religions as mere “incomplete” versions of the true, would say that the Catholics have slightly more faith than the schismatics, who in turn have a bit more than Protestants, who have a bit more than Jews, and so forth. But this is not at all the case. As St. Thomas points out, if 1,000 truths are divinely revealed, if a man believes 999 of them, and if he pertinaciously(22) rejects even one, he has the same amount of supernatural faith as an avowed atheist: none at all. This is because the formal or distinguishing cause of supernatural and divinely-given faith (as opposed to merely natural, human faith) is the authority of God revealing. A man with true divine faith believes in divinely revealed truth because the all-truthful God has revealed it. And since God is all-truthful, the man with true faith believes, not 99.9% of what God has revealed, but absolutely all of it. If he rejects even one truth, he rejects the authority which upholds them all,(23) which means that he does not have an “incomplete” or “imperfect” faith, but no faith at all.

Protestants face a very serious dilemma in accepting their Scripture from a religion which they believe is false. If the religion from which they obtained the Bible is false then the God who revealed himself in Scripture is also false. Many Protestants are, through no fault of their own, oblivious to this contradiction. As Ronald Knox, the Anglican convert to Catholicism, put it:

In fact, of course, the Protestant had no conceivable right to base any arguments on the inspiration of the Bible, for the inspiration of the Bible was a doctrine which had been believed, before the Reformation, on the mere authority of the Church; it rested on exactly the same basis as the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Protestantism repudiated Transubstantiation, and in doing so repudiated the authority of the Church; and then, without a shred of logic, calmly went on believing in the inspiration of the Bible, as if nothing had happened. Did they suppose that Biblical inspiration was a self-evident fact, like the axioms of Euclid? Or did they derive it from some words of our Lord? If so, what words? What authority have we, apart from that of the Church, to say that the Epistles of Paul are inspired, and the Epistle of Barnabas is not? It is, perhaps, the most amazing and the most tragic spectacle in the history of thought, the picture of blood flowing, fires blazing, and kingdoms changing hands for a century and a half, all in defence of a vicious circle.

There is a problem here that is not posed by the Catholic use of Jewish Scripture, since not only did the Catholic Church choose what parts of Jewish Scripture to include in the Canon, the Church recognizes God’s former covenant with the Jews, a covenant which was necessary to the Incarnation. Jesus Christ did not say he would form a covenant with one sect of his followers that would end with the Reformation.

However they may attempt to resolve the aforementioned contradiction, honest Lutherans must agree that the Lutheran and the Catholic cannot both be right. Of the different Gods they believe in, only one exists and he would logically offer salvation to whomever recognizes him. This means that though they may live alongside each other peacefully and amicably, the Lutheran and the Catholic must not base this friendship on any foolish effort to meld their faiths. That in the end leads to nothing for both.

— Comments —

Tom writes:

There has to be an objective truth, that is, an actual, factual, proven truth (2+2=4, the sun is bright…blue is blue) and not only a physical or scientific truth. There has to be a moral, objective truth by which a person can live his life.

Truth cannot be subjective, that is, subject to our interpretation of it. If it is, each person, because of his or her self-centered nature and weaknesses, tends to see truth in a way best suited to his desires and needs.

Thanks for the magnificent picture of the Virgin of La Salette.

Peter writes:

How we struggle with the blinding power of our own lusts.  We do not merely “figure it out” in the search for truth, but it is as Voegelin described; God compacts the experience and opens our souls to the truth as we open ourselves to him.

I like this passage from 2 Corinthians 3:12-17:

With this hope in our hearts we are quite frank and open in our ministry. We are not like Moses, who veiled his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing its fading glory. But it was their minds really which were blinded, for even today when the old agreement is read to them there is still a veil over their minds—though the veil has actually been lifted by Christ. Yes, alas, even to this day there is still a veil over their hearts when the writings of Moses are read. Yet if they “turned to the Lord” the veil would disappear. For the Lord to whom they could turn is the spirit of the new agreement, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, men’s souls are set free.

Stan writes:

Truth cannot be subjective, that is, subject to our interpretation of it. If it is, each person, because of his or her self-centered nature and weaknesses, tends to see truth in a way best suited to his desires and needs.

Well, perhaps that’s just the case. Ideas about reality may be likened to maps: just as a map never reproduces a terrain in every detail, so a man-made theory never duplicates reality exactly. Now it would be foolish to ask whether a political map is more or less true than a topographical map, because different kinds of maps serve different purposes. So it is with beliefs and opinions: different people have different experiences, different ideals and temperaments. The religion most suitable for you may be not at all suitable for someone else.

Laura writes:

Truth suits everyone. God suits everyone. A religion is God revealing himself to man. God is an objective reality. He does not change depending on who is understanding him. While a true religion suits everyone, there is plenty of room for individual differences in emphasis, works, comprehension and forms of devotion.

Nov. 9, 2013

Jacques writes:

I’m a fan, and I agree with you that liberal “interfaith” ecumenism is generally idiotic.  Still, I have to object to much of the reasoning in your post:

“Either one religion is true — and all other religions are false — or no religion is true”

This seems patently false if by “one religion” you mean “one existing human religion.”  Surely you’d admit that it is logically possible (i.e., a non-self-contradictory supposition) that the one true religion has never yet been revealed or invented.  (Imagine someone uttering this same sentence in the year 1000 B.C. and referring to religions that existed back then.  Would that person have been saying something true?  If not, what is the logical difference between your situation and that one?)

You then go on to make the even stronger claim that if any one religion is true, it must be entirely true and therefore all others must be entirely false.  Regarding the idea that Catholicism is wholly true and some other religions are partly (but not wholly true), you say that “this cannot logically be so”.  But what is the logical problem?  You write:

“Either Catholicism is the one true faith, and other faiths are entirely false, or Catholicism is wholly false. The Catholic Church states that salvation can only be attained through the Church. But Lutherans implicitly believe that salvation can only be attained through the Lutheran Church.”

Okay, so it logically follows from the fact that Catholicism involves this claim about salvation that, if Catholicism is true, Lutheranism must be false.  But does it follow that every proposition of Lutheranism is also false — including the proposition that God exists, the proposition that Jesus Christ is God, the proposition that there is an afterlife?  On the contrary, that cannot logically be so, given that many of these are also propositions of Catholicism; if the truth of Catholicism has the implications you claim, then the truth of Catholicism implies that Catholicism itself is only partly true (and no truer than Lutheranism).

The Novus Ordo Watch passage is not well-reasoned, in my opinion.  For example:

This is very easy to demonstrate. If I say that “Christ died on the Cross and did not rise from the dead,” my statement is false — it is not “partially true” or “imperfectly true.” Or, using an even clearer example, saying that the Most Holy Trinity consists of Father, Son, and the Virgin Mary, is false. It is not “partially true” on the specious grounds that the Father and the Son are part of the Holy Trinity after all. That’s just not how it works.

Objection:  There is some kind of difference between the following claims that can be quite naturally understood in terms of degrees of truth:  (a) “Bill Clinton is a former President and the husband of Hilary Clinton,” (b) “Bill Clinton is the current President and the husband of Hilary Clinton”, (c) “Bill Clinton is not the President and never was, and is the husband of Michelle Obama.”  Is it not also “very easy to demonstrate” that statement a is more true — or closer to being true, if you like – than statement b, which is in turn more true than statement c?  It seems absurd to insist (or stipulate) that statement a alone is simply true, and that b and c are exactly alike in being simply false.  Call the gradation whatever you like, but it is a real thing that has to be acknowledged somehow; it is logically coherent to suppose that the one true religion (if such there be) is related to the rest in this same general way (i.e., the same way that a is related to b, b to c, etc.)

This analogy is useful, but undermines the author’s absolutism:

Likewise, a cocktail that has been poisoned isn’t “partially healthy.” Rather, the toxic elements mix inseparably with the healthful elements, thus creating a drink that is entirely deadly. And so it is also with false religions and their teachings — all the more so, in fact.

But toxicity just obviously does come in degrees.  Not all poisons are lethal, and not all are lethal at every dose.  Some mixtures of toxins with “healthful elements” are indeed “partially healthy” in a straightforward sense:  the mixture as a whole will (or may) have some beneficial effects but also some harmful ones.  This is a very obvious and uncontroversial fact about the things we eat and drink, so why not think of “false religions” in the same way?  Maybe some or all of them contain many elements that are harmful, and maybe some or all also contain many other elements that are beneficial.  Maybe – all — religions are like this, so that none contains all and only truths.  You don’t believe that, of course, and maybe you’re right not to believe; but to say that it is logically impossible or even problematic is a very radical and implausible claim.

O’Halloran’s argument, insofar as I can understand it, seems also to be defective:

This is because the formal or distinguishing cause of supernatural and divinely-given faith (as opposed to merely natural, human faith) is the authority of God revealing. A man with true divine faith believes in divinely revealed truth because the all-truthful God has revealed it. And since God is all-truthful, the man with true faith believes, not 99.9% of what God has revealed, but absolutely all of it. If he rejects even one truth, he rejects the authority which upholds them all,(23) which means that he does not have an “incomplete” or “imperfect” faith, but no faith at all.

It is entirely possible for a man to believe only some of what God has revealed without rejecting God’s authority.  Suppose this man simply fails to understand some of the divinely revealed truths.  Or suppose that he understands them all but finds it psychologically impossible to accept some of them (perhaps because they seem to him — no doubt wrongly — to be at odds with the requirements of natural reason).  Or suppose that he understands all but, through some contingency, wrongly believes that only 99% were divinely revealed.  These scenarios seem coherent, and they don’t seem to involve any necessary rejection of God’s authority.

Moreover, O’Halloran seems to be relying on an invalid inference here:  if a man rejects God’s authority (whatever exactly that may mean here) then he has “no faith at all” and — therefore? — his religious beliefs are completely false.  The topic is supposed to be truth and falsity, so I am assuming that the comment about “imperfect faith” is simply about the truth (or degree of truth) of the man’s beliefs.  So is it possible for someone to reject God’s authority while simultaneously believing some but not all religious or even divinely revealed truths?  Yes, that is obviously possible.  There is no logical connection at all between the man’s attitude toward God, or God’s authority, and the propositional contents of his beliefs.  Imagine two thinkers:  T1 is a strict atheist, T2 a tortured Catholic who believes there is an all-powerful and morally perfect Creator but also believes that this Creator approves of gay marriage.  Would O’Halloran say that there is no difference at all in the degree of religious truth possessed by T1’s beliefs as opposed to T2’s?  This is flatly absurd.  Everyone in this debate agrees that there is some large set of true religious propositions.  Obviously, it does sometimes happen that people believe just some of those propositions but not all.  Obviously, then, there is some important difference with respect to truth between believing most of those propositions rather than none.

Laura writes:

I have struggled myself with the very objections you mention, but I came to conclude that the arguments in the original post are correct and logical. You are wrong in your fundamental conclusion that it is possible that religions which contradict each other are all to some degree true.

You write:

“Either one religion is true — and all other religions are false — or no religion is true”

This seems patently false if by “one religion” you mean “one existing human religion.”  Surely you’d admit that it is logically possible (i.e., a non-self-contradictory supposition) that the one true religion has never yet been revealed or invented.  (Imagine someone uttering this same sentence in the year 1000 B.C. and referring to religions that existed back then.  Would that person have been saying something true?  If not, what is the logical difference between your situation and that one?)

When I said, “Either one religion is true — and all other religions are false — or no religion is true,” I meant, “Either one existing human religion is true — and all other existing human religions are false — or no existing human religion is true.” It is entirely possible, as I said, that no religion is true. But if that were the case, we could not say whether a religion would occur that is true.

When I say a religion is “entirely false,” I mean it is false as a religion. Therefore, it may contain truthful propositions, but as a religion, which is God revealing his nature to man, it is false. We will deal with the meaning of its containing truthful propositions below.

You write:

Okay, so it logically follows from the fact that Catholicism involves this claim about salvation that, if Catholicism is true, Lutheranism must be false.  But does it follow that every proposition of Lutheranism is also false — including the proposition that God exists, the proposition that Jesus Christ is God, the proposition that there is an afterlife?

That is correct. It does not follow that if Catholicism is true as a religion, every proposition of Lutheranism is false. But it would follow that as religion, as a vehicle for knowing God, Lutheranism would be wholly false and worthless in any sense except to the degree to which it proved the falsity of itself and effectively led others to the truth. If any of the existing religions are true, other religions contain elements of that truth. However, given that, again, religion is God revealing himself to man, a religion that maintains that God has revealed a proposition about himself which is false in a world where God has revealed the explicit truth about that particular proposition denies God. Therefore, it is in essence not a religion.

O’Halloran did not say that if someone believes a false religion, his religious beliefs are completely false. He said if one rejects an aspect of God that God himself has revealed, one’s religion is false. If you read his entire essay, he emphasized that a religion is a belief system. Novus Ordo Watch acknowledged that there are truthful elements to false religions.

You write:

Imagine two thinkers:  T1 is a strict atheist, T2 a tortured Catholic who believes there is an all-powerful and morally perfect Creator but also believes that this Creator approves of gay marriage.  Would O’Halloran say that there is no difference at all in the degree of religious truth possessed by T1’s beliefs as opposed to T2’s?  This is flatly absurd.  Everyone in this debate agrees that there is some large set of true religious propositions.  Obviously, it does sometimes happen that people believe just some of those propositions but not all.  Obviously, then, there is some important difference with respect to truth between believing most of those propositions rather than none.

Yes, there is an important difference between the person who rejects all of the elements of a true religion and the person who rejects some of them. The latter possesses some of the elements of the true religion, which makes him more capable than those who reject all of them of believing the true religion. But he does not possess the religion itself, which functions as a system. It is similar to a man building a house who has the concrete foundation, the roofing materials and the bricks, but lacks mortar. He simply doesn’t have a house. Does the fact that he has so many elements of a house make him closer to building a house than the man with none of it? Of course! Now if this man cannot possibly obtain mortar of any kind would we say he has rejected the possibility of building a house? No? But what if he can obtain mortar and won’t? Then he is not a builder and will never have a house.

To  use the Novus Ordo Watch analogy of a drink, some elements may be so toxic that the drink kills you right away. Other poisonous drinks might not kill you and make it possible for you to have a healthy drink. So, yes, the nature of the elements matters.

You write:

Maybe some or all of them contain many elements that are harmful, and maybe some or all also contain many other elements that are beneficial.  Maybe – all — religions are like this, so that none contains all and only truths.  You don’t believe that, of course, and maybe you’re right not to believe; but to say that it is logically impossible or even problematic is a very radical and implausible claim.

You are denying here that the religions contradict each other. I acknowledged at the beginning of my post that it is logically possible that no religion is true. But given that they contradict each other, they couldn’t all be “kind of” true. It would be foolish to believe that any religion is exhaustively true, or that any one religion fully knows God, but if no religion is true to the best of human understanding in all of its fundamental propositions then not a single of the existing religions possesses a revelation. God wouldn’t reveal falsehoods. A religion is revelation.

You write:

It is entirely possible for a man to believe only some of what God has revealed without rejecting God’s authority.  Suppose this man simply fails to understand some of the divinely revealed truths.  Or suppose that he understands them all but finds it psychologically impossible to accept some of them (perhaps because they seem to him — no doubt wrongly — to be at odds with the requirements of natural reason).  Or suppose that he understands all but, through some contingency, wrongly believes that only 99% were divinely revealed.  These scenarios seem coherent, and they don’t seem to involve any necessary rejection of God’s authority.

Notice that O’Halloran uses the word “pertinaciously.” You may have missed it. I’m sorry, it was italicized in the original and I have restored the italicization. It is an important distinction. Someone incapable of grasping certain religious truths is obviously in a different position. That’s why the Catholic Church teaches that someone who is “invincibly ignorant” — a person who has never encountered the Church or  who is incapable of grasping certain things (only God can know this) — would not be condemned. We must willfully reject the truth or refuse to seek it. Someone who does not come in contact with the true religion cannot be blamed for not believing it but that doesn’t mean that his religion is true.

Ronald Knox writes:

Pius IX has enunciated the principle for us very clearly: “Those who are hampered by invincible ignorance about our Holy Religion, and, keeping the natural law, with its commands that are written by God in every human heart, and being ready to obey him, live honourably and uprightly, can, with the power of Divine light and grace helping them, attain eternal life. For God, who clearly sees, searches out, and knows the minds, hearts, thoughts, and dispositions of all, in his great goodness and mercy does not by any means suffer a man to be punished with eternal torments, who is not guilty of voluntary fault.” It may be added that invincible ignorance is defined as “that which has not been capable of being overcome or removed by reasonable care; whether because no thought or doubt concerning such matters ever entered the mind; or because, even if such a thought had come into the mind, this ignorance could not have been overcome or removed by the use of reasonable and common care, nor could a knowledge of the truth have been obtained.”

I would like to return to your point about the significance of religions containing common elements. Again, I have maintained that these common elements are meaningless in the sense which you maintain, as possessing the true religion to a certain degree.

Put it this way. Everyone must possess some degree of divine truth because divine truth is reality. The Satanist may acknowledge that God exists, but he rejects him and hates him. So is he closer to the truth because he probably possesses an element of the true religion that an atheist does not? Is he partially a Lutheran? The Communist may disbelieve in God altogether, but believe in the importance of sharing wealth, in caring for those who are not rich. Does he possess the true religion, assuming that the true religion views God as valuing altruism, to a degree? Egalitarianism includes an important element of Christianity, but because this element is mixed with falsehood, I would say the egalitarian is as far from God as the most hardened atheist because he has denied the God who has already revealed himself.

Jacques writes:

You write:

When I say a religion is “entirely false,” I mean it is false as a religion. Therefore, it may contain truthful propositions, but as a religion, which is God revealing his nature to man, it is false.

Given the context, one would expect that “religion” is being used in a merely descriptive sense — an anthropological or historical concept.  In fact I think your use of the word is extremely unusual, maybe just a false definition the English word “religion” (or cognates in other languages).  On your definition of the word, an atheist cannot coherently assert “Some people believe in the Catholic religion” and a Catholic cannot coherently assert “There are many religions in the world.”  To be sure, if we define “religion” as true religion — that is, the relevation of God’s nature — then by definition there can be no false religions. [Laura writes: Yes, that’s what Chesterton said. There is, in the end, only one religion in the world — he was saying that as a Catholic but one can agree with that regardless of whether one is a Catholic or not. But I don’t think that’s an unreasonable way to define religion — that it is something that cannot be false. Here I speak of true and false religions instead of religions and non-religions.]  Given the plausible assumption that the divine revelation is internally coherent and complete, there cannot be more than one (true) religion — but, again, only by definition.  Ineed, you would be contradicting yourself (on this definition) when you say that some religions are “false” or “entirely false” or “false as religions.”  Given how you have defined the term, phrases like “false religion” are self-incoherent — like the phrase “true falsehood.” [Well, when I say a religion is false I mean that it does not stand up as true statement about God. 

Let me reframe the question, and the answer I’m proposing.  I will define “schmeligion” as follows:  any set of propositions about the divine or the supernatural or the ultimate nature of reality believed by at least one human community.  So Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism, for example, are all schmeligions.  One question that cannot be answered by definition is this:  Can there be many schmeligions that are true in different ways or to different degrees?  The answer seems to be that there can indeed be such schmeligions:  the set of propositions about the divine or the supernatural that one community believes may be “partly true” in that some of those propositions are true and others are false, and other communities may believe some other set of truths and falsehoods.  Maybe some schmeligions are entirely true, in that the propositions believed are all true (and there are no other relevant truths not believed by that community) and maybe some are entirely false.[Laura writes: Let’s say, the Catholic conception of the Eucharist is false, and God does not actually become one with the material substances of bread and wine. Then this false belief makes the coherent statement of Catholicism false because it affects the entire understanding of God, given that the attitude toward the Eucharist underlays and is intertwined with all the other beliefs. Let’s say, the belief in papal authority is false, then Catholicism as a religion is false because papal authority cannot be separated from other fundamental propositions about the faith.We know that religions are coherent statements because people act as if they are and societies which follow different religions are different in many respects. We also assume that whether one believes a true or false statement about God affects one’s closeness with God, which is based on an understanding of him.]

I hope you’ll agree that liberals (or atheists, or agnostics) could easily state and defend their substantive position by appeal to this invented term “schmeligion”, without having to worry about the consequences of a stipulative definition of “religion.”

You write:

O’Halloran did not say that if someone believes a false religion, his religious beliefs are completely false. He said if one rejects an aspect of God that God himself has revealed, one’s religion is false. If you read his entire essay, he emphasized that a religion is a belief system.

Okay, but then his position is consistent with the liberal-ecumenical position he claims to be disproving.  He (and you) appear to be defining (or re-defining) the notion of religious truth or truth-for-religion so that every element in the “system” must be true in order for that religion to be true to any degree.  Fine, but then this definition of “true religion” fails to capture the obvious and important differences that you concede here:  that someone holding to a “false religion,” so defined, may yet have all kinds of “religious beliefs” that are true, or true to some extent, or less false than others, etc.  Again, the substantive position of the liberal can be reformulated with the materials you’re providing here, even if the liberal will now have to use different words. [Laura writes: The liberal would emphasize the similarities between the religions, or schmeligions, and deny that the points on which they disagree are consequential. This makes no sense. Any fundamental proposition about God that is significant enough to define a community of believers is consequential. Two conflicting propositions cannot both be true. I cannot think of any differences between any bodies known as religions or religious sects which aren’t important. If we act as if the Eucharist is God and spend a great deal of time revering it, when in fact God is not present in the Eucharist, then we are denying God as he is when we could have recognized him as he is, given that there are other faiths that do not view the Eucharist in the same way and spend time doing things other than adoring or revering it. If we possess allegiance to the pope and believe that he is a successor to St. Peter when he is not really the successor to St. Peter then we spend time attributing to God actions and intentions which are not his when we could have spent time recognizing him as he is, a God who did not want a unified body of believers in a single divine institution with a monarchical structure. Over time these differences become more obvious. One thing we cannot hold to — and still believe in God — is that God would reveal something false about himself.]

Jacques writes:

When you say that a single false statement makes “the coherent statement of Catholicism false”, it seems to me that you are simply restating in other words a fact that everyone will accept:  if a set contains a thousand propositions and one or more of those is false, then the set as a whole cannot be true.  Not, at any rate, if truth for the whole set or system is defined in your way, so that a set is true if and only if all of the propositions in it are true.  But this is not equivalent to saying that none of the propositions in the set are true, or that no such “false religion” can contain more truths than any other.  Certainly it doesn’t follow that if a set or system has one false element, then the whole system must be false in the relevant sense of being made up entirely of false propositions!

You write:

Let’s say, the belief in papal authority is false, then Catholicism as a religion is false because papal authority cannot be separated from other fundamental propositions about the faith.We know that religions are coherent statements because people act as if they are and societies which follow different religions are different in many respects.

I don’t understand why the one belief can’t be “separated” from any of the rest.  Is that a claim about human psychology — that no one is capable of believing that God exists, or that Jesus is God, without also believing in papal authority?  If so, the claim seems untrue.  Is it a claim about justification — that no good reason can be given for believing that Jesus is God, say, unless one also believes in papal authority?  Well, maybe.  But even if something of this kind were true, it wouldn’t follow that none of the propositions of Catholicism were true (or truer than others) from the mere fact that one of them is false (or not true to any degree).

Remember that “coherence” can mean different things.  If what you mean is just that the different propositions of a religion cohere rationally so that some constitute evidence for others, or serve to explain others, etc. then there is no reason why they cannot be logically separated (so that just some are true but not the rest).

You write:

The liberal would emphasize the similarities between the religions, or schmeligions, and deny that the points on which they disagree are consequential. This makes no sense. Any fundamental proposition about God that is significant enough to define a community of believers is consequential. Two conflicting propositions cannot both be true. I cannot think of any differences between any bodies known as religions or religious sects which aren’t important.

But if (1) there are “similarities” between Catholicism and other schmeligions (“religions,” in my language) and (2) the similarities = true propositions believed by members of different schmeligions, then (3) those others are “partly true.”

This is what liberals mean when they say that all (or many) religions are true.  They don’t mean that “conflicting propositions” can “both be true”, but rather that (a) the same (hence non-conflicting) proposition are believed by members of different religions (e.g., Catholics, Protestants, Sikhs, etc.) and that (b) various different but non-conflicting propositions are believed by members of different religions.

Maybe, as you say, it doesn’t make sense to treat the differences between sects or religions as unimportant.  I agree that it’s silly to insist that none of the differences matter, at least.  But then isn’t it equally silly to insist that none of the similarities are important?  In any case, the issue under discussion is not what matters or what we should emphasize, but the more basic question of whether it is logically possible or intelligible  for a religion to be “partly true.”  It seems to me that you are admitting that this is possible and intelligible in saying that there are “similarities” between “schmeligions.”

Laura writes:

You write:

When you say that a single false statement makes “the coherent statement of Catholicism false”, it seems to me that you are simply restating in other words a fact that everyone will accept:  if a set contains a thousand propositions and one or more of those is false, then the set as a whole cannot be true.  Not, at any rate, if truth for the whole set or system is defined in your way, so that a set is true if and only if all of the propositions in it are true.  But this is not equivalent to saying that none of the propositions in the set are true, or that no such “false religion” can contain more truths than any other.  Certainly it doesn’t follow that if a set or system has one false element, then the whole system must be false in the relevant sense of being made up entirely of false propositions!

Yes, exactly. I never said in my original post that all of the propositions of a false religion are false. When I say a religion is entirely false, that is to say it is false as a whole. A religion is taken and acted upon as a whole. We know this because we see the strong differences between religions in practice even if they differ on just one proposition but agree on all the rest. Believers take in both the true and false propositions together. If we view religions as statements about God, those statements are either true or false. They cannot be “partly true,” however much some of their common propositions (which are elements of the whole and do not stand on their own for the purpose of the religion) may be true.

You write:

 This is what liberals mean when they say that all (or many) religions are true.  They don’t mean that “conflicting propositions” can “both be true,” but rather that (a) the same (hence non-conflicting) propositions are believed by members of different religions (e.g., Catholics, Protestants, Sikhs, etc.) and that (b) various different but non-conflicting propositions are believed by members of different religions.

No, that’s not what liberals mean. They mean that because religions have certain propositions in common, one is as good as another. Liberals don’t speak of a “false religion.” They believe that the true propositions of a religion advance one toward God and the false propositions don’t stand in the way of that advancement.