From BlessedCause.Org

Maximize Truth? You call this "Maximizing Truth?" Truth is truth whether you believe it or not. Truth commensurate on belief is already forfeit. This line of reasoning is pure fabrication in an attempt to paint a Christian as fearful of challenge. Christians often refuse to "debate" with non-believers because Jesus didn’t argue with people. He simply told the truth. The truth that pluralist priests have rejected and are furious that we won’t argue about it, thus spending lifetimes in higher education debating with hypothetical "exclusivists" and forming pluralist beliefs which have now been imposed on children.

What if we assume, as do most philosophers today, that belief assessment in the face of religious diversity will not normally resolve debate over conflicting religious perspectives in an objective manner?

I often see it resolved. There are so many people who, once hearing the Gospel, give their lives to the Lord.

That is, what if we assume that while the consideration of criteria such as self-consistency and comprehensiveness can rule out certain options,

Which options?

there exists no set of criteria that will allow us to resolve most religious epistemic disputes (either between or within religious perspectives) in a neutral, nonquestion-begging fashion (Peterson et al. 2003, 40-53)? In what epistemic position does this then place the exclusivist?

The answer, as some see it, is that the exclusivist can no longer justifiably maintain that her exclusivistic beliefs are true.

Lol, and this is the end you have been so sincerely fighting for. Just because you cannot find a common ground between religions is no reason that an "exclusivist" can no longer justify their beliefs as true.

J.C. Schellenberg, for example, argues that because no more than one among a set of incompatible truth claims can be true, a disputant in a debate over such claims is justified in continuing to maintain that her claim is true only if she possesses nonquestion-begging justification for believing the incompatible claim of any competitor to be false.

However, since no disputant in religious conflicts possesses such justification, no disputant can be justified "in holding her own claim to be true."

We are "justified" because it is our Constitutional right. Imposing epistemic theories in public education, mandating these types of classes as part of the requirements for credentials...is THIS what universities like Stanford receive funding for to teach students? Is THIS what teachers are required to learn for teaching credentials? Are these the thoughts that permeate a teacher's mind when approached by a parent who "doesn't understand" what they are trying to teach? Christians might have a difficult time understanding twisted philosophical logic, but we discern VERY WELL the practices our children are mandated to participate in are attempts to annihilate their faith.

"In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students." –Justice Fortas, Id.

Or, as Schellenberg states this conclusion in another context, we must conclude that in the absence of objective, nonquestion-begging justification, none of the disputants in religious conflicts "has justification for supposing the others' claims false" (Schellenberg 2000, 213).

David Silver comes to a similar conclusion: "[Exclusivists] should provide independent evidence for the claim that they have a special source of religious knowledge … or they should relinquish their exclusivist religious beliefs" (Silver 2001, 11).

Its called Freedom, which trumps all epistemic arguments.

Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled in favor of requiring 7^th grade students to memorize prayers to Allah because a hypothetical "reasonable observer" would not conclude that these prayers were done with belief. This is the same reasoning being used in courts today, imposing pluralist standards, disregarding religious rights, injecting pluralist beliefs, (philosophy’s illegitimate child), and enforcing it through public education. Coincidentally, Hamilton attended Stanford, the source of this publication.

Silver, (quoted above), an Associate Professor at the Universities of Delaware and Pennsylvania, also published, "Religious Experience and the Facts of Religious Pluralism" in which he writes:

We lost our right to have a belief? (shock) And Basinger believes these "philosophies" are worthy of thought, time, treasure and talent? That these precepts should be seriously contemplated? Shouldn’t these be in a class titled "Subversive Philosophies to Overthrow American Freedom"?

Others have not gone this far, arguing rather that while the exclusivist need not abandon religious belief in the face of unresolved conflict, she should hold her exclusive religious beliefs tentatively.

This sounds exactly like the goal of our Department of Education State Standards, criticizing religious passion and learning to compromise, regardless of outcome.

Such tentativeness, as McKim puts it, does not entail never-ending inquiry. What it means, rather, is that in the face of unresolved religious diversity, one should be open to the possibility "that one or more of the [alternatives] may be correct … that the position one had thought to be correct may be wrong [while] one of the other positions may be right" (McKim 2001, 154-55). Joseph Runzo and Gary Gutting agree. According to Runzo, "all faith commitments must be held with the humbling recognition that they can be misguided, for our knowledge is never sure" (Runzo 1993, 236).

Philosophy might be built on sand, but the foundation of Christianity is solid rock that one can be sure of.

Runzo, a professor at Chapman University and associated with Cambridge, does not have the authority to proclaim, "all faith commitments must be held with the humbling recognition that they can be misguided, for our knowledge is never sure" in any mandated class for credentials. These claims belong in a "Developing Fascism" class.

Gutting argues that only interim, not decisive assent is justified in the face of unresolved diversity and that "those who give merely interim assent must recognize the equal value, as an essential element in the continuing discussion, of beliefs contrary to theirs" (Gutting 1982, 108). Moreover, argues McKim, such tentativeness in the face of diversity has an important payoff. It can lead to deep tolerance: the allowance "that those with whom you disagree are people whom it is worthwhile to approach with rational arguments" (McKim 2001, 178) And personal tolerance of this sort, we are told, may well lead to a more tolerant and open society that will permit and even encourage a diversity of opinion on all issues, including opinions on religious matters.

We recognize that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and all opinions are equally valuable in society, but to have a differing opinion does not reduce the legitimacy or the right to have an opinion affirming faith.

William Alston represents an even more charitable response to exclusivism.

"Even more charitable"? McKim was being charitable?

His perspective is based on what he sees as a crucial distinction between two types of epistemic disputes: those in which "it is clear what would constitute non-circular grounds for supposing one of the contestants to be superior to the others" and those in which it is not. In the former case — in those cases in which there is a commonly accepted "procedure for settling disputes" — it isn't clear, he acknowledges, that it is rational for a person to continue to maintain that her position is superior (Alston 1988, 442-443).

What will happen when pluralist priests, based on these suppositions, pronounce Christians as "irrational." How far is that from being recorded in a DSM-IV book? What are the odds that Philosophy is a required course for a degree in psychology?

As far as claiming superiority, remember when Jesus set an example and washed the feet of the disciples? Positions that demand respect and claim superior standing are the Ph.D’s and Ed.D’s, not Christians.

However, as Alston sees it, there exists no such common ground for settling basic epitemic disputes over religious truth claims, and this, he contends, alters the situation drastically. It still remains true, he grants, that the reality of religious diversity diminishes justification. But the fact that "we are at a loss to specify [common ground]" means, he argues, that with respect to those religious perspectives that are self-consistent, it is not "irrational for one to remain an exclusivist" — not irrational for the proponent of any religious perspective to continue to hold that her perspective is true.

Whew, that’s a relief...or they would have picked out my straight jacket by now.

That is, as Alston sees it, given the absence of common ground for resolving disputes, the proponent of any self-consistent religious perspective can justifiably continue to believe this perspective to be true "despite not being able to show that it is epistemically superior to the competition" (Alston 1988, 443-446).

There are Christian philosophers who claim they show Christianity can be epistemically defended. Nevertheless, it's a moot point, we have RELIGIOUS FREEDOM and pluralism and pluralist priests must be removed from public schools.

In fact, at one point he goes even further. Because there exists at present no neutral ground for adjudicating religious epistemic conflicts, it is not only the case, Alston argues, that an exclusivist is justified (rational) in continuing to consider her own perspective superior. Since we do not even know in most cases what a non-circular reason for demonstrating superiority would look like, the "only rational course" for an exclusivist "is to sit tight" with the beliefs "which [have] served so well in guiding [her] activity in the world."

This is insulting. Exclusivists have just been reduced to "sitting tight" clinging to the only thing they know. I would rather have what I know than what pluralists obviously don’t know.

pluralist priests are merely trying to grapple with the strength of faith, explain it away as though there is no source of the faith, just human frailties that would sustain it for lack of knowing any other way. Except many of us lived in the world before we gave our lives to God. How would Alston explain rationality of born-again believers choosing God over the world?

Philip Quinn represents yet another, increasingly popular approach. While he agrees with Alston that in the face of diversity an exclusivist may well be justified in continuing to "sit tight" — in continuing to maintain that her religious perspective is true — he denies that this is the only rational course of action available (Quinn 2000, 235-246). The basis for this position is his distinction between a pre-Kantian and a Kantian understanding of religious belief. To have a pre-Kantian understanding of religious belief is to assume that we have (or at least can have) access to the truth as it really is. It is to believe, for instance, that we do (or at least can in principle) know what God is really like. To have a Kantian understanding of religious belief is to assume that although there is a literal noumenal reality, our understanding of this reality (and thus our truth claims about this reality) will of necessity be relative to the cultural/social/psychological grids through which our conceptualization of this noumenal reality is processed. It is to believe, for instance, that although there is a divine reality about which we can make truth claims, our understanding of (and thus our truth claims about) this divine reality will necessarily to some extent be conditioned by the ways in which our environment (our culture in the broadest sense) has shaped our categories of thought (Quinn 2000, 241-242).

Alston, Quinn contends, is essentially working off of a pre-Kantian model of religious belief when he encourages religious exclusivists to sit tight in the face of peer conflict since, in the absence of any objective basis for determining which perspective is right, the exclusivist has no sufficient reason not to do so.