Religious Pluralism vs. Christian Exclusivism

This round was originally only for conclusions, but given that the structure of the debate has already been broken by Con with his misplaced and misdirected rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, I will be using this round to counter the points brought up by Con in round 4. ...R1) Definition of Pluralism"...now, he's contradicting himself. Now, he disputes my first premise on the basis that "more or less equally valid" does not mean "all of them are true." I already responded to that in the second round. I defended my first premise..."I do apologize for my lateness in objecting, but I must point out that Con was the one to first misconstrue the definition of Religious Pluralism to support his own arguments, and the objections I brought up ARE valid, according to the definition given in Round 1. Also, it's not like I'm doing it in a way that Con doesn't have ample time to fix his arguments; he had all of last round to do so."First, because religious pluralism could be true even if all reigions were completely false. All atheists would be religious pluralists, which is absurd. Nobody uses "religious pluralism" that way."True, but one of the conditions of the debate was the assumption of God's existence, which invalidates the possibility of atheism being a form of Religious Pluralism. "To defend Pro's new interpretation of religious pluralism, he's got to demonstrate exactly how correct each of these religions are in their respective interpretations of divine reality, and he's got to show that they are exactly equal. Good luck with that!"I would like to call attention to the "more or less" in "more or less equally valid". I do not need to show that all religions have the exact same amount of truth to them. Some religions ARE truer than others....R2) Law of Non-ContradictionMessiahCon has simply re-asserted that the concept of a Messiah is essential to Christianity, ignoring my arguments showing how little Christianity and Judaism's core claims are affected by the concept's absence. "Once a person comes to believe Jesus is the Christ, they are no longer Jews; they are Christian"False. There is more to Christianity than believing that Jesus is going to be the heir to David's throne; having such a position does not imply any sort of divinity whatsoever. Jesus's divinity and his actual teachings are much more central to the religion of Christianity. The concept of a Messiah is not an essential claim.Trinity"Pro seems to accept my correction on the Trinity, but leaves the contradiction between Christianity and Islam unresolved. In Islam, Jesus is not God, and to call him God is blaspheme."Con has ignored my analogy...By rejecting Jesus as God, all Muslims are really doing is rejecting one of God's "forms"; they choose to see him as the full circle and ignore the existence of the sectors. Quran"But the universal Islamic view on the Qu'ran is that they are the words of Allah himself... The truth of the Qu'ran is essential to Islam, which means every word of it must be true... So the claim that Jesus was not crucified is an essential claim of Islam"This would be one of the "arm" doctrines I spoke of earlier; something that seems like an essential claim on the surface but really isn't. The Quran is just a book written by Muhammad's followers to record his teachings. If one takes a look at how the Quran was compiled [1], there is no doubt that there was plenty of room for error; it was basically a couple of Muhammad's followers who'd supposedly memorized everything he said reciting it 10 years after he died... The Quran's absolute truth is not an essential claim of Islam.Nature of RealityAgain, Con just re-asserts that the Eastern world view of monism is incompatible with the Abrahmic world view of creator/creation, ignoring the argument that God "being everything" could be the underlying basis of his creation. In other words, God could have created his creation out of himself, and then that creation could have been interpreted by humans as either something separate from God (the obvious truth) or as a part of God (the underlying truth)- both interpretations being truthful in their own sense.AfterlifeHere, all Con did is switch paradigms on me. I was looking at the two afterlife systems from the broader perspective, which revealed that the two systems are actually really similar in terms of the default fate of humans and their methods of salvation. Con ignores all that and goes back to the idea that dying once and being judged is different from eternally being born and dying until eventually escaping. Allow me to point out, though, that Eastern religions also have a concept of judgement after death; the soul undergoes judgement after every life, being sent to heaven (unity with God) or hell (next life), depending on how they lived life. So really, all we are looking at is a difference in the number of chances being given to a soul, and Christianity does NOT necessarily preach against having more than one chance at attaining Heaven; in fact, the very existence of an all-loving God almost mandates "second chances" being given. ...R3) Omnibenevolence and Exclusivism"Christian exclusivism is simply the belief that Christianity alone is true. It has nothing to do with whether non-Christians are going to hell or not. A person could be a Christian exlucsivist even if they thought everybody was going to heaven."Not so. The only reason to believe Christianity is the true religion (after refuting the Law of NC arguments, that is), is that the Bible says so, and the Bible also dictates that all non-Christians are to be damned. Thus, logically, Exclusivists must believe that all non-Christians are to be damned."Whether everybody has access to a pardon or not is irrelevant to whether it is their fault that they are punished for their sins."However, it is VERY relevant to the fact that the one giving out the pardons claims to love all human beings equally. It is simply unjust and hypocritical, no matter how one looks at it. It is impossible for a perfect God to exist in a world where Christian Exclusivism holds true....CONCLUSIONS1) While they may have been made late, my objections to Con misconstruing the definition of Religious Pluralism are valid and are not "unfair" in any way.2) The Law of Non-Contradiction does NOT refute Religious Pluralism; all supposed contradictions between religions have either been shown to be between non-essential, man-made claims, or shown to be nothing more than different aspects of the same idea3) The implications of Christian Exclusivism do, indeed, contradict the concept of an all-loving God. .Note:Con has dropped C2, the contention made about the universal nature of spiritual experiences supporting Religious Pluralism over Christian Exclusivism; Con cannot respond to this in his next argument either because I would never get a chance to make a counter-rebuttal. Thus, Con has conceded C2.On that note, Con may not bring up ANY new points in his next argument, as I will not be getting a chance to respond to them..Thanks to Con for a great debate! It was really fun defending this aspect of my religious views for the first time :DAnd also, thanks to the voters for taking the time to read such a lengthy debate!Good bye to all!.SOURCE(S)[1] http://islam.about.com...