by Matthew Christopher

Created on: June 09, 2008

Seen as a means to helping people, the existence of many religions is a good thing, allowing many different people to be served spiritually who might not be otherwise. But when push comes to shove and you get to the details, is one more right than another?

Could there be two right religions?

Imagine that there are two religions which are equally correct in their analysis of God (or gods). However, both claim that no other religion is correct. Because of this single claim, neither can logically be "right." They are flawed by assuming that no other religion is correct, when indeed, the other one was just as right as they were.

The world's current major religions dictate that they are the only correct religion. This alone means that, logically, there can be, at most, only one correct religion out of that group.

(There are semi-exceptions: It could be argued that practicing Buddhism does not restrict one to a single religion; however, Buddhism is more similar to a philosophy than a religion - it was developed to supplement Hinduism. Agnosticism is a similar example.)

In the English-speaking world, this is especially interesting because the monotheistic dominant religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the Latter-Day Saints) have all branched from the same roots and even share some of the same texts. Because of this, technically speaking, the teachings of Judaism are not negated by Christianity. Similarly, in many ways, the teachings of the New Testament are not entirely negated by Islam.

Still, no two of these religions can both be correct, so long as they continue to proclaim themselves to be the only right religion.

So, we've deduced that, at best, there is only one correct religion - at least among the major religions of our time. There cannot be two "right" religions, much less three or four or twenty, unless those religions accept that they are not all-encompassing. (This, of course, would be incredibly difficult for any religion to say, as it would undermine the very foundation of that religion.)

This, of course, leaves the possibility that there are zero correct religions. However, this would be impossible to prove, particularly if Atheism (the belief in no God) is considered a religion. Even if all major religions were systematically and decidedly proven to be false, there still exists the possibility that a "right" religion exists that has yet to be revealed to humanity.

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