QuestionsDoes God exist?Religions contradict each other: why believe your own?
Does God exist?AtheismCritique of religion

Religions contradict each other: why believe your own?

The argument from conflicting revelations

Herman Philipse born 1951Religions contradict each other: their revelations cannot all be true.
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What it claims

Revelations are not reliable sources for knowing which God exists: nobody has a good reason to believe in the God of their own religion rather than in those of the others.

Why

Religions contradict each other, and each rests on the same kinds of reasons: a holy book, an experience, an inherited tradition.

The same idea through history
David Hume1748"In matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary": each religion's miracles serve to prove it is the true one, and so to ruin the others. The testimonies of rival religions cancel each other out.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1762In Emile he remarks that faith is often "a matter of geography": born in Rome, one is a Christian; born in Mecca, a Muslim. His Savoyard vicar adds that each people has made God speak in its own fashion.
Denis Diderot1762Against Pascal's wager: "an imam can say just as much as Pascal". The same reasoning works for every religion, so it does not tell us which one to choose.
Herman Philipse2012He makes it a central objection to Plantinga: a Christian has no more reason to trust his "sense of the divine" than a Muslim has to trust his. Only natural theology could decide between religions.
In short

"Religions contradict each other: why believe your own?" is an argument by Herman Philipse (God in the Age of Science?, 2012; "The Real Conflict between Science and Religion", 2013, 2012) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: atheism). Its claim: Revelations are not reliable sources for knowing which God exists: nobody has a good reason to believe in the God of their own religion rather than in those of the others. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

God in the Age of Science?, 2012; "The Real Conflict between Science and Religion", 2013
Valid with an implicit premise

A Christian believes that Jesus is God made man. A Muslim believes that God was never incarnate. A Hindu may believe in many gods. They cannot all be right. Yet each has reasons of the same kind: a holy book, an inner experience, the tradition received from parents. And most often one has the religion of the country where one was born. The Dutch philosopher Herman Philipse draws a conclusion: these sources are not reliable for knowing which God exists. The argument does not prove that God does not exist, and it leaves one door open: arguments independent of revelation ("natural theology") might decide between religions. But as long as they do not, nobody has a good reason to believe in the God of their own religion rather than in those of the others. That is why the argument is filed here under atheism ("no good reason to believe"); Philipse himself explicitly refuses to stop at agnosticism.

P1The revelations of the religions contradict each other on central points: Jesus is God incarnate or he is not; there is one God or several. At best, only one is right on these points.
P2Each religion rests on reasons of the same kind: a revealed text (Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon), an inner experience, a tradition received from childhood. And a person's religion depends mostly on where they were born.
P3These reasons do not allow us to decide between religions: the miracles and testimonies of each count against those of the others, so that they cancel each other out.
P4When sources of the same kind give incompatible answers, one can trust one of them only by showing, with an independent reason, that it is reliable and the others are not. Otherwise religious diversity defeats confidence in each of them.
P5 · implicit premiseNo reason independent of revelation (an argument of natural theology) shows that the God of one religion exists rather than those of the others.
Therefore revelations are not reliable sources for knowing which God exists: nobody has a good reason to believe in the God of their own religion rather than in those of the others.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where religions contradict each other and rest on reasons of the same kind that decide nothing, and where a believer still has a good reason to prefer his own: he has an independent argument showing that his God exists.
Valid with P5, which the argument does not prove itself: Philipse defends it elsewhere in his book, where he examines the arguments of natural theology one by one. Without P5, a believer might have an independent proof that decides between religions, and the conclusion would no longer follow. The strongest objections aim at P1 (do religions really contradict each other?) and P4 (does one really need an independent reason to be entitled to believe?).
Analogy. Five witnesses describe a thief: one says he was tall and blond, another short and dark, another red-haired. Each is sincere and sure. The judge cannot believe the first just because he is his neighbour: without outside evidence (a camera, a fingerprint), no testimony tells him what the thief looked like.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

J
John Hick (religious pluralism) 1989 · attacks premise 1

Religions are not rival theories about one object, of which only one could be true. They are different human responses to one ultimate reality, which Hick calls "the Real". Each culture perceives and names it in its own way: the Trinity, Allah, Vishnu, the Tao. The great religions are therefore all valid paths towards that same reality.

Philipse replies
William Alston 1991
That is not describing religions but reinventing them. Most believers think their beliefs say what ultimate reality really is, not merely how it appears to them.
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John Hick 1997
Hick grants it: most believers do not think this way. But without pluralism, one leaves unexplained an immense fact: the other great religions are as well grounded as Christianity.
See the rest of the debate (2)
Alvin Plantinga 1997
Pluralism does not escape the problem: it is one more case of it. Hick thinks, against almost all of mankind, that all the great religions are false if taken literally. That is one more belief, contradicting all the others.
Herman Philipse 2013
The messages believers say they receive often contradict each other. To make them agree, one has to "relativize" them drastically, as Hick does: that is to admit they teach us nothing sure about God.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: are religions rival theories about one object, or different responses to one Real (Hick)? Alston charges pluralism with reinventing the religions, Plantinga with being one more doctrine that contradicts them, Philipse with emptying beliefs of their content; Hick answers that without it the equal standing of the great religions is left unexplained.
Alvin Plantinga ("Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism") 1995 · attacks premise 4

A believer can know that others think otherwise, that they are sincere, and that he cannot convince them, and keep his faith without any intellectual or moral fault. He is not arbitrary: he thinks the other beliefs are not as well grounded as his, because God has given him a sense of the divine or the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. We do the same in ethics: I know racism is wrong, even if I cannot prove it to a racist.

Philipse replies
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John Hick 1997
Plantinga only shows that the exclusivist is not necessarily arrogant. He misses the real problem: the other religions are as well grounded as his, and each person's religion depends mostly on their birth.
Alvin Plantinga 1997
But that is just it: the believer does not think the other beliefs are as well grounded. He believes that those who disagree lack something he has received. He may be wrong, but he is not arbitrary.
See the rest of the debate (1)
Herman Philipse 2012
That would still have to be shown. Plantinga gives no independent evidence that his sense of the divine is more reliable than that of Muslims. And it is hard to see how to do so without arguing in a circle, unless one proves by natural theology that the triune God exists and Allah does not.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: can a believer remain reasonable without independent evidence, knowing that others think otherwise? Plantinga says yes; Hick and Philipse judge that the parity with other religions remains. Open point: no consensus.
Alvin Plantinga 1995 · attacks premise 2

The birth argument turns against the pluralist. Pluralism has never been popular in the world: born in Madagascar or in medieval France, the pluralist would probably not be one. Must we conclude that he has no right to be one?

Philipse replies
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John Hick 1997
The two cases are not alike. One is almost never a pluralist because one was raised in pluralism from childhood, whereas one is most often a Christian, a Muslim or a Hindu because one was raised that way.
Alvin Plantinga 1997
It is not clear the difference matters. Hick and I were brought up to think racism is wrong; born elsewhere, we might think otherwise. If, after reflection, racism still seems unjust to us, there is nothing arbitrary in continuing to reject it. Why should it be different with Christian belief?
The debate goes on (our summary) The debate goes on on this point: is morality a good model for religion? For Plantinga's critics, basic moral judgements ("causing pointless suffering is wrong") are shared by almost all cultures, whereas religious beliefs vary precisely with one's place of birth.
Where the debate stands (our summary)The debate concerns the birth argument: does it discredit a belief? Plantinga holds it applies to pluralism too; Hick sees a difference between the two cases. Open point: the value of the analogy with morality.
William Alston 1997 · attacks premise 1

The contradiction is exaggerated. Nothing shows that most of the beliefs of one religion contradict most of the beliefs of the others, and we do not even have a way of counting beliefs. Religions may agree on many things, and religious experience keeps some value, even though it can be wrong.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Philipse in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Philipse does not need religions to contradict each other on everything: it is enough that they contradict each other on central points, such as God's incarnation in Jesus or the number of gods. On these points, at best one is right, and the question of which one remains open.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: we have not found a published reply to this objection of Alston's by Philipse or by another defender of the argument. The disagreement is about the extent of the contradiction: Philipse needs only contradictions on central points, Alston judges that it is exaggerated.
What today's voices say
Defend it
Matt DillahuntyAsked why billions believe in a god, he replies that they believe in different, mutually exclusive gods, so they cannot all be right.
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