I will be concerned with only one problem about truth which is raised by the diversity of religions which exist in the world. The problem is this: many religions claim to state truths about the nature of the universe and human destiny which are important or even necessary for human salvation and ultimate well-being. Many of these truths seem to he incompatible; yet there is no agreed method for deciding which are to he accepted; and equally intelligent, informed, virtuous and holy people belong to different faiths. It seems, therefore, that a believing member of any one tradition is compelled to regard all other traditions as holding false beliefs and therefore as not leading to salvation. Since each faith forms a minority of the world's population, all religious believers thus seem committed to saying that most intelligent, virtuous and spiritually devoted people cannot know the truth or attain salvation. This is a problem, because it is in tension with the belief, held by many traditions, that the supremely real being is concerned for the salvation of all rational creatures. How can this he so if, through no fault of their own, most creatures cannot come to know the truth and thereby attain salvation?

Religious piety and proofs of God's existence have not in modern times invariably sat so happily beside one another as the attempted euphony of my title may at first appear to suggest.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the existence and nature of God came to be conceived as a purely philosophical question that could be answered, if at all, without recourse to ‘narrowly religious’ considerations. Philosophers and sympathetic theologians agreed that a religiously independent philosophy is itself competent to demonstrate the deity's existence and nature by means of formally valid and generally convincing rational proofs.

There are good reasons for being suspicious of the very concept of ‘a religion’, let alone a ‘world religion’. It may be useful for a hospital administrator to know a patient's ‘religion’ – as Protestant or Church of England or Catholic or Buddhist – but such labels clearly do little more than identify the most suitable chaplain, and connote groupings in the vast and confusing region of ‘religious thought and practice’ that are of very different ranks. By any rational, genealogical taxonomy ‘Protestant’, ‘Anglican’, ‘Catholic’ connote species, genera or families within Christianity, which is in turn a taxon within the multivariant tradition traced back to Abraham. ‘Buddhism’ includes as many variants as would ‘Abrahamism’. Most Abrahamists, traditionally, have been theists, but it is difficult not to suspect that Marxist socialism is an atypical (and probably non-viable) variant which has inherited a linear view of time, a contest between the chosen agents of justice and the doomed powers-that-be, and the prospect of a future in which ‘there shall be no more sea’.

An identical consciousness of close communion with God is obtained by the non-sacramental Quaker in his silence and by the sacramental Catholic in the Eucharist. The Christian contemplative's sense of personal intercourse with the divine as manifest in the incarnate Christ is hard to distinguish from that of the Hindu Vaishnavite, when we have allowed for the different constituents of his apperceiving mass.

Do all religions worship the same God? Sometimes this question is answered positively, sometimes negatively. Various reasons are given. In the first four sections of this paper we will analyse arguments which affirm or deny that all religions worship the same God. We will see that different types of argument are used. Some authors base their answers to our question on their theological insights (section 1); others defend their thesis with reference to the results of studies in comparative religion (section 2); a third type of argument derives from the philosophy of religion (section 3) and a fourth from philosophical views regarding the ultimate unity of the world (section 4). After this survey we will deal with the structure of the various arguments given. What kind of argument is decisive? I will also make some comments on each of these arguments in order to develop my own. We will then draw our conclusion as to the kind of arguments which are appropriate to our theme (section 5). In the last section I will elaborate my own view.

At least since Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, theism has been under indictment; indeed it has been on trial for its life. In part, this indictment is that the enormous quantity, variety, and distribution of evils evident in the natural world disconfirm the core beliefs of theism. Those core beliefs, I think, are the following pair: there exists a being at once omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, the worshipful creator of the universe (henceforth G); and G stands in a relation to the natural world which might be called one of moral responsibility (henceforth M). Obviously, theism says a lot more than the above, rather abrupt, conjunction; nevertheless, that conjunction constitutes its core.

‘Open-minded’, ‘detached’, ‘objective’, ‘disinterested’, ‘impartial’, ‘non-partisan’ and ‘independent’ are terms typically used when Religious Studies seeks to present itself as an academic discipline. Phrases like ‘methodological agnosticism’, ‘suspension of judgement’, and ‘procedural neutrality’ are also found, in attempts to formulate an appropriate methodology. Seldom are those terms and phrases precisely defined, or the differences between them examined. Yet a moment's reflection reveals that they are far from clear or unambiguous, and that if they are to be used at all effectively in this context, more work must be done by way of preliminary analysis and clarification.

In his book Ethics Without God, Kai Nielsen voices criticism of Christian thought and morality. In two of his major arguments, Nielsen contends that morality can not be based on the Christian religion or similar theistic metaphysics, and secondly, that if morality is based on God, or God's will, any ‘moral decisions’ are arbitrary and involve no reasoning on the part of the individual. These two criticisms of Christian moral thought can be met by drawing upon the Ideal Observer Theory in ethics.

Three of the most venerable objections to anthropomorphic conceptions of the divine are traceable to Xenophanes and his critique of the early Greek gods. Though suitably revised, these ancient criticisms have persisted over the centuries, plaguing various religious communities, particularly those of classical Christian commitment. Xenophanes complained that anthropomorphism leads to unseemly characterizations, noting that both over the ages, the list of unseemly characteristics has expanded somewhat.

Neither the existence of God nor the nature of God is apparent or obvious. If God exists, why is it not entirely clear to everyone that this is so? How can theists explain God's hiddenness, and how plausible are their explanations? God, if God exists, is an omnipotent, morally good, omnipresent being, than whom none greater can be conceived. Surely it is well within the abilities of God to let God's existence and nature be known to us. Why isn't the existence and nature of our Heavenly Father as apparent as, say, the existence of our various earthly fathers?