The necessity of religious diversity

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to philosophical discussions of religious diversity in three ways. First, by observing that diversity pervades all levels of human community, it corrects the usual description of the situation as one of diversity between religious systems taken as wholes. Second, it seeks to show, through an analysis of the epistemology of religious knowledge, that religious diversity is logically necessary and thus inevitable. Third, it concludes that because religious diversity is inevitable, it is not a problem to be explained or solved, but a datum with which theories of religion should begin.