Inter-religious Frameworks

[Eufrosnia]

As you might be aware, these days there is a massive push by the Church for inter-faith dialog. Now dialog with the idea of fostering some peace between parties to start discussion is understandable. That will not be the subject of this thread.

Rather, I would like to discuss the specific issue of dialog for the sake of furthering a cause such as religious liberty or opposing/combating Atheism. This too has been mentioned few times when the Church mentions inter-religious dialog.

I would like to oppose the above mentioned position for the following reason.

1. Every faith other than Christianity is based on an arbitrary assent to a set of truth claims regarding the Transcendent (God, heaven, hell, salvation, sin, reincarnation etc). It is unreasonable for someone to embrace those religions and those who leave them and opposes them are doing something GOOD.
2. Some Christians have also embraced the view that Christianity is one of many belief systems among many that require arbitrary assent. Therefore their thinking is reenforced by such events/situations of inter-religious dialog i.e. scandalized.
3. Some Christians are reluctant to evaluate their position reasonably. Hence they wander outside the Church and at times opposes the Church. A good example would be those who hold to Sola Scriptura. For them to simply consider Catholics as also correct would be infifferentism. For Catholics to not take initiative to try get them to be reasonable is also just as unreasonable.
4. I also do not see reasons to respect all religious belief. I am sure even the Pope will disagree that one should exempt all Jehovah’s Witness from paying/covering health care for blood transfusion. Similarly, I could start a new religion tomorrow calling myself a prophet and say that paying taxes is immoral. Surely, my religious liberty and that of my followers should not be respected?

I see this whole issue as being due to people trying to argue Theologies (so perhaps this post was more appropriate on the Philosophy section). People want to take out Reason to evaluate theologies but not Reason to evaluate why assent to a given theology. There is a wide spread view, I feel even among Church leaders, to carry out discussions on the Theological plane when the actual issue is in the reasons for assent.

I feel that we can go on for centuries on Theological debate between religions and never get anywhere.

In any case, what are your thoughts on this?