Pros And Cons Of Religious Pluralism

Atheism & Alternative Religions

2.1 Religious Pluralism

One of the challenges facing evangelism today is the proliferation of religions in the world. Without a body with adequate authority to regulate the creation of religions, this has continued unabated. This trend toward religious pluralism and the labeling of Christian particularists as 'hatemongers' is growing. These times calls for evangelical Christians to put more concerted effort in their work as the threat is particularly huge. With the decreasing influence of Christianity in Western world and the proliferation of other religions such as Islam and Hinduism in the West, opposition to the traditional Christian view and those who hold to it will continue to grow.

In contemporary society, religious pluralism presents a range of complex challenges to religious groups and communities. In a plural situation, they are faced with the need to compete for social and communal support, such as members, financial contributions, legitimacy, and political influence. Religious groups have to decide on the ways in which they want to approach and relate to members of other groups—whether they opt for dialogue, mission, confrontation or indifference. They have to find ways of addressing internal pluralism, democratic pressures, and individualism.

Rationales for not believing in any supernatural deity include the lack of empirical evidence, the problem of evil, the argument from inconsistent revelations, rejection of concepts which cannot be falsified, and the argument from non-belief. Although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies, there is no one ideology or set of behaviours to which all atheists adhere. Many atheists hold that atheism is a more parsimonious worldview than theism, and therefore the burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence of God, but on the theist to provide a rationale for