A God That is Too Big For One Religion is No God at All

I recently had a conversation with a self proclaimed “truth seeker” pertaining to the existence of god. His theory is one that falls in line with the pluralistic tide recently sweeping across the nation. This postmodern formulation of god can best be articulated through a commonly known analogy.

There are five blind men and an elephant standing in a room. Each man is reaching out and attempting to describe the contours of a specific part of that elephant. One man may state that the he feels something long, hard, and cylindrical with a bit of curvature coming to a defined point. Another man describes something that is also cylindrical; however, it is pliable with a pronounced hole at the end. This analogy goes on until all five men have depicted different parts of the same animal.

Of course they are blindly unaware of the correlating factors in their seemingly unrelated descriptions. As you may have noticed the elephant in this analogy is god while the five men represent the totality of world religions.

Essentially this is nothing more than spiritual relativism, or more generally pluralism.

True enlightenment is understood as the exact same god merely displaying himself differently to different cultural contexts.  In this new age of spiritual fascination outright atheism seems to have taken on signs of atrophy. Debates now reside in the realm of Christianity versus spirituality, or more to the point exclusivity versus relativism.

I will now illustrate how spiritual pluralism necessitates one of only two logical ends. Either god is inherently contradictory or spiritual pluralism is itself another exclusive claim to truth.

 So let us draw out the aforementioned scenario. If all world religions are truly worshiping the same god then the logical application is that no one religion, or for that matter person, may sustain an exclusive claim to the absolute truth of god. If no one person may claim to know the absolute truth of god then it only follows that no one could ever say what is absolutely right or wrong, or at a minimum what is objectively correct or incorrect. If no one can claim objective right and wrong then all interpretations/inspirations from or of god must be taken as valid/justifiable. Now we are at the point of confliction. If the previous premise is valid then god inevitably becomes contradictory.

Let us take the scenario of how a devout follower of god is meant to display his or her upmost commitment. The Muslim suicide bomber supposedly hears from god that he must kill all other infidels and in so doing he will receive the greatest reward in heaven. While Mother Teresa supposedly hears from this same god that in order to display her upmost commitment she must love all others greater than herself, and in so doing she will receive the greatest reward in heaven.

So again, if the previous premise is logically coherent than what we have now is a god depicting himself in two utterly contradictory elements. Let it be known that my own moral convictions do not make this circumstance contradictory. A god who demands death to all and love to all in order to receive eternal incentive is presenting an illogical formulation of himself being both A and non-A. In other words god is essentially saying in order to become favorable in my eyes you must love the world and kill its inhabitants at the same time. So let us presume that the pluralist may be willing to accept the previously mentioned paradox. Then they are forced to make sense of an incomparably illogical god. On the other hand, if the pluralist says that either the Muslim or Mother Teresa is incorrect in any manner with their interpretation/inspiration from or of god, then that in and of itself is an exclusive claim thereby negating the initial premise of pluralism.

In conclusion, a god that is too big for one religion is either inherently contradictory and therefore utterly illogical, or ultimately self-refuting.