Customer Reviews

Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth

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It would be this one, without a doubt. First, though, I can't help but comment on the comical Publisher's Weekly review which calls the book "parochial," "dogmatic," "controversial," and "devisive." Apart from not being able to spell "divisive" the author of that review must find controversial the idea that an indicative proposition can't be both true and false at the same time and the same sense. Or is that the dogmatic point? One wonders if the reviewer thinks her charges true (and that's different than "wanders" for the Pub Weekly folks). Perhaps, consistent with subjectivism, the reviewer is just expressing her taste--I don't like truth-claims--just as she perhaps doesn't like spam and eggs. But then why does her expressing her opinion on the pages of Publisher's Weekly count as journalism, but Adler expressing his in a treatise count as dogmatism. Apparently "dogmatism" only applies to *unfashionable* opinions.

At any rate, the book is a crucial corrective to the sickness of our times: the subjectivisation of religion. Bring me a good atheist any day, but keep the subjectivism to yourself (it only seems appropriate, doesn't it?). This book has some really neat features including a nice little primer on logic. The main target is the likes of Joseph Campbell who defines a religion as a myth mistakenly believed to be true. (Try telling that to Thomas Aquinas Joe-Joe.) The key distinction the book is built upon is the distinction between Truth and Taste. When one makes a truth-claim, the claim is governed by the laws of logic. When one expresses a matter of taste one is only reporting facts about oneself (and trivial ones about the object of the statement). The key difference is this: when I say "Squash is gross" and you say "Squash is good" we aren't really disagreeing. All I mean is "I don't like squash" and all you mean is "I do like squash." Those statements don't conflict. But when I say "The top quark exists" and you say "There is no top quark" we've made conflicting truth-claims. When it comes to squash, we can both be right--not so with quarks. To say that there is a God is to make a truth-claim. It is to assert the existence of an individual, just like in the quark case. Either there's a top quark or there isn't-either there's a God or there isn't. This book will take you on a tour of such thoughts and help you get your thoughts on religion organized. There's still plenty of room for disagreement, so there's no dogmatism here (pace Pub Weekly gal), but at least we will know wherein we disagree and how to go about discovering the truth.

This book examines the world's major religions and the philosophical issue of unity of truth; that is, if something is true, anything that contradicts it must be false. Religion being the touchiest of subjects, this provocative book will inevitably rub some readers the wrong way. The list of potentially challenged readers would include believers of Eastern religions and those who hold that all the major religions are somehow equally valid and true.

Adler recalls that Arnold Toynbee once predicted that in the next millennium world government would come about, either by conquest or by federation, and would prosper only if a world cultural community emerged with an adopted universal religion. If Toynbee was correct, such a religion would likely be based on an as-yet-to-be-developed trancultural philosophical theology. Originally published in his 88th year, in this book Adler entered the ring to begin the dialogue. Open minded readers interested in the question of religion in a global world as well as the theologically-inclined will enjoy this book.

Mortimer Adler, the American philosopher and former Chairman of the board of editors for the Encyclopedia Britannica, was a very prolific writer and teacher. He died in 2001, at the age of 98, and was active until the very end of his life. He wrote this particular book when he was 88. As the Wikipedia encyclopedia says "Adler long strove to bring philosophy to the masses".

In this short (160 pages) book Adler investigates what it says in the title: Truth in Religion. The sub-title is "the plurality of religions and the unity of truth". Adler brings some elemental logic to the discussion. For example: while it is possible that no religion may contain the truth, it is a contradiction to hold that all religions contain the truth. This is because of the conflicting and contradictory views that different religions hold regarding God, the cosmos, and human nature, as well as about how human beings should conduct their lives.

Is religion a matter of taste, or a matter of truth? Adler makes the point that in matters of taste -I'm wearing a yellow shirt today, but maybe I look better in blue - there is no disputing (another way of saying it is "There's no accounting for taste"), but in questions of truth, we have to have recourse to the effort to reach agreement about what is true and false.

Adler offers very cogent critiques of Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) and theologian Hans Kung (Theology for the Third Millenium: an Ecumenical View). He's not impressed with the positions of either of them.

As he does in all of his books, Adler is very careful to lay out his arguments, and he offers many interesting insights. For example, on the issue of world peace, he makes the point that you can only have world peace if you have some sort of world government. BUT a prerequisite for world government is that a world cultural community come into existence, and with it a universal religion adopted worldwide. He points out that if religion is merely a matter of taste and not truth, this can never come about.

So, a good, short book, and a worthwhile read. To see how Adler ultimately came to a personal conclusion about the truth of religion (and he was in his nineties!), go to the wikipedia article mentioned above.

ADDENDUM: I don't want to give the impression that Adler was intolerant. Quite the contrary - he believed in dialogue to find truth. And he felt that most all the major religions shared what he called "prescriptive truth" or moral values.

When I read this book, I was already - perhaps only instinctively - one who recognized the incoherence of pluralism. Every time I heard some platitude about how "All roads lead to God," I knew that such comments were likely wishful thinking rather than conclusions based on evidence or logic.

As a Protestant, Adler's sound arguments were a bit uncomfortable. Familiar with several Protestant denominations, I recall sitting in my own service thinking, "Obviously, all of these denominations cannot be right." After all, there were differing views of baptism, communion, women leaders and other doctrines. My friends of various denominations assured me that, "It doesn't matter as long as you believe in Jesus." We were preaching Protestant Christian pluralism.

It was a little while longer before I was received into the Holy Catholic Church, but this book was what started the process.

A brief, but lucid, discussion demonstrating that philosophical and religious truth is not relative and that there are criteria for testing it.

Mortimer Adler teaches us HOW to think. Professional word people attempt to tell us WHAT to think. This particular book allows the average layperson to avoid being subject to the tyranny of professional critics, scientists, religionists, and think for themselves. Adler suggests that a variety of opinion, or plurality, is tolerated in manners of taste. But in matters of truth, persistent plurality is intolerable. It calls for continued discussion, or argument. Because what is true for you must also be true for me ... this is the philosophical principle of the unity of truth. Adler professes that we are all philosophers, and the better we learn the principles the govern philosophers the more formidable we will be in our discussions with others. This book is highly recommended. In fact, it is a must read for fledgling philosophers. For any time we discuss issues of significance, we are indulging in philosophy. Whether we care to admit it or not. Facts are not truth. One can be completely correct in fact and yet wrong in truth. Facts are what is, the realm of the scientist. The realm of the poet or visionary or poet is what ought to be. The role of the philosopher is to correlate these two realms. Ordinary values may be matters of taste, but the highest values, or MetaValues®, are not. In matters of truth, beauty, goodness and love, plurality is intolerable, the jury remains out.

Quite possibly the most disappointing book I've ever read. His conclusion is that the only religions worth considering are those that claim to have divinely inspired tenets (because one has no grounds to "trust" a "leap of faith" into doctrines contrived from a merely human mind). Thereby, he rules out Taoism, Buddhism, etc... and "validates" Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. But he never addresses the one real question: how can we know whether or not claims alleged to be divinely inspired, actually are? In the section that touches on this issue, he bends over backwards to defend queer passages in the Bible as being "poetically true" even though they certainly aren't "factually true"... and states that proper use of interpretation is to describe passages in light of modern scientific/historical understanding... but still hold fast to their veracity and divine inspiration. (e.g. "The story of the Garden of Eden, of Adam and Eve and of the serpent and Lillith, may be a myth rather than true history, but this does not alter the religious significance that must be found in it when it is properly interpreted in nonnarrative terms." pg. 66)

This principle seems to lead us to a conundrum... in that any part of any self-appointed "sacred" text will never be disproven, because whatever argument is used against it... just causes us to come up with a new re-interpretation. For example... if some holy book declared the moon to be made of cheese, the astronaut could show that it is instead made of rock. And the adherents of that religion... rather than admitting error... could then say "it is physically made of rock, but spiritually made of cheese." Adler plays right in to this shell game...

Nor does Adler take a stand on the 3 religions that are left. The last paragraph of the book literally says "I would like to hear leading twentieth-century theologians speaking as apologists for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam engage in a disputation. The question at issue would be which of these three great religions has a greater claim to truth." (pg 109-110) ... So, Professor Adler, why'd you write the book if you hadn't done enough research to come to some conclusions for us?

I haven't read this book yet -- I'm just buying it now -- but the Publishers Weekly review is a classic. (My rating is based on a guess; I had to give a rating to post this review.)