And why should I not say the confusion that has been sown by multiplied religions, denominations and crass syncretism being couched as “religious studies” is a work of the Devil?
Well, leaving aside the rather silly slam at “religious studies,” you’re shifting your ground. First you said that non-Christian religions (not just Wicca) were invented by the Devil. Now that you’ve been challenged on this, you redefine your position, saying that “the confusion that has been sown” is of the Devil.
Two quite different things.
The existence of non-Christian religions has many effects. Some of them are good, some of them are evil. You can’t equate the religions themselves with a particular effect that you believe flows from them.
In my opinion the form of speech “X is from the devil” is pretty hard to defend. Satan cannot create. Any human phenomenon contains a mixture of good and evil. Thus, it’s misleading, dehumanizing, and maybe even heretical to say that any human phenomenon is “from the devil.” One can perhaps speak of a particular twist given to some idea as being from the devil–I’ve said that sort of thing on occasion.
Scripture is clear that God does not author confusion and in every corner (and most seminaries) students are taught that religion is all pretty much the same
What seminaries teach this? What evidence do you have for this?
You are painting with a very broad brush.
Most scholars of religion would now say that it’s pretty hard to define what religion is, so saying that religion is all pretty much the same would make no sense.
The simple fact is, it is not the similarities that make a religion true but rather the quality of its truth claims,
This doesn’t make sense. By saying “quality of truth claims” you seem to be allowing for varying levels of truth (since “quality” is susceptible of degrees) and abandoning the indefensible position some try to maintain that a “true religion” must have 100% true truth claims, and anything that doesn’t is simply false. But once you do that, then of course you have to allow that religions that have similarities to the “true religion” (assuming that such a thing exists) are to some extent true.
and as soon as a truth claim is made; it is made to the absolute exclusion of all other truth claims.
That doesn’t make sense either.
It is true that there is one God.
It is true that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are God.
These two truth claims do not contradict, although many people think they do. One of them certainly does not exclude the other.
Indeed, your claim would be falsified simply by the fact that “there is one God” and “God inspired the Bible” are both true, since these are both truth claims.
I think the problem is that you don’t define what you mean by “other.” I’m not cutting you any slack on this one, though, because I don’t see what “other” can mean that will help your argument. If you mean “a claim maintained by another religion” (never mind the difficulty in defining what a religion is in the first place!), then my first example above disproves your argument, since Muslims make the first claim along with us. If you mean “disproves every other
contradictory claim,” then what you are saying is obvious and I don’t see how it helps your argument.
Therefore there really is only one truth, and if all religions are on equal footing
Straw man.
It is in fact possible that several different religions with apparently contradictory claims are really equal, and all reveal different aspects of a truth that transcends our understanding. That I think is the position you are trying to attack, and which you mistakenly think is the position held by scholars of religion generally (even in seminaries, according to you!). Some people hold this. I don’t think it’s self-evidently false as you claim. But I think it makes no sense to claim “equality” between two different religious traditions, especially if you’re appealing to a truth that transcends language and reason (how then would you know they were equal?). And more to the point, your criticism fails because the argument is not that contradictory truths are both true but that the truths only appear to be contradictory.
But if any truth claim is true then all other truth claims are lies, and lies do not originate with God.
Again, you need to clarify what “other” means here. I don’t see how your argument will hold up once you clarify that very loose word.
Furthermore, the word “lie” implies malice. Whatever became of the category of “mistake,” or even “imperfect understanding”?
And finally, whether you use the word “lie” or not, humans have been known to err. So saying that “lies” don’t originate with God does not prove that the ideas in question originate with Satan. No doubt Satan, being malicious, loves to help people fall into and remain in error. But that doesn’t mean that the ideas themselves “come from” Satan.
I am persuaded the truth claims of Christianity are true.
Therefore I am also persuaded that all non-Christian religions ARE inventions of Satan and his followers.
Non sequitur. There are lots of holes in your argument, as I’ve shown above.
I understand people taking harsh positions because they believe truth demands it.
And I understand people letting their feelings of love and charity lead them into sloppy thinking.
But I have precious little patience or understanding for people who take harsh, exclusive positions and can’t be bothered to define basic terms or think through the obvious implications of what they are saying.
Edwin
