Essay

Belief

Creed

29 June 2023

9 min read

Elephants on mountain tops: thinking better about religious pluralism

In the first of a short series on pluralism, philosopher Barnabas Aspray explores the key questions about different beliefs.

Barnabas Aspray

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

Daniel Kim

It used to be easy to assume that other religions are wrong and ours (or our non-religion) is obviously right, without even giving reasons. Those who belonged to ‘other religions’ were far away from us, foreign in their culture and clearly wrong about so many things. But we no longer live in a society with a common religious framework. Members of different religions rub shoulders with one another and with ‘nones’, those of no religion, every day. When those we respect – believe and live differently to ourselves, we are forced to consider the possibility that their way of life may be reasonable and not absurd. We see how arrogant and immature it is to assume that our culture’s way of doing things is superior. It is like assuming that the nearest house to where we are standing is bigger than houses further away – i.e. it is to forget the perspective on the world which we have simply because of where we are and how we grew up.

We have learnt to celebrate cultural diversity as a good thing, not a threat or a problem. So should we do the same with religious diversity? Is it possible to be ‘religiously neutral’? If one religion is right, does it mean all others are wrong? Or is it better to believe that ‘all religions lead to God’?

Cultural plurality vs. religious plurality

There are many definitions of the word ‘religion’. Some have even claimed that it’s a false category made up by colonial powers who projected Christian categories onto non-Western cultural expressions. However, there is a coherent core to the meaning of religion which connects the word’s historical origins to today’s context.

Long ago there was no word for religion because it was simply an aspect of culture; there was no concept of any divide between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’, or ‘physical’ and ‘spiritual’. But at some point, the ancient Romans noticed something about the nations they conquered that could not be explained simply as a cultural practice, which had to do with the ‘worship of the gods’. So they invented the word religio which literally means either ‘reading again’ or (more likely) ‘binding again’. Throughout this article I will take this ancient original meaning as a starting point, using ‘religion’ to mean the ‘bond’ between humans and ultimate reality, the commitment we feel towards what lies beyond the visible world, and our indebtedness to whatever gives us all we have and are. Although in the ancient world it was possible to worship many gods at once, today most religions are exclusive, claiming absolute allegiance and offering an ethical framework along with ritual practices. That is why this definition of religion – of an ultimate bond of allegiance – is the most helpful for engaging with today’s situation.

To believe something does not only mean to think it true in your head. It means to follow the implications of that belief in your behaviour and life decisions, even when it costs and means doing things you’d rather not do.

If we understand religion as our whole-life commitment to what is of ultimate value and importance, it becomes obvious that for those who are deeply religious, their religion is all-encompassing and transforms how they think and act in every part of life. That is why asking about the truth of a religion is not a fun pastime for idle curiosity. It changes your behaviour. To believe something does not only mean to think it true in your head. It means to follow the implications of that belief in your behaviour and life decisions, even when it costs and means doing things you’re rather not do. We all have skin in the game when it comes to religion.

But how can we commit to a single religion when there are so many options that seem equally plausible? In other words, how do I seek the truth, and how do I know it’s the truth when I’ve found it? Let us begin with three common approaches to religious pluralism in contemporary society.

The elephant and the mountain

A popular model imagines each religion as a blind man touching a different part of an elephant. One says the elephant is like a snake, another that it is like a wall, and another that it is like a tail. They disagree over what the elephant is like, because each of them has only part of the truth, and none of them can see the whole truth.

A similar image is that of a mountain, with the truth at the top, and each religion seen as a path up the mountain. Each of us must pursue the truth as it seems to us, and the closer we get to the truth, the closer we will come to each other, until we reach the top together.

The main problem with this way of thinking about multiple religions is that both analogies – the elephant and the mountain – assume that it’s possible to have a perspective that is superior to any existing religion. If you can see the elephant, then you are not yourself one of the blind men; by implication you have far greater insight than them. If you can see the paths up the mountain, then you can’t be on any of them. The adopter of the analogy sees themselves as more enlightened and closer to the truth than any of the particular religions. This means unconsciously assuming a privileged (and rather patronising) super-religious point of view that surveys all the religions from a non-committed standpoint. But this is simply to create a new religion and to evaluate all the existing religions in light of it. It is the religious equivalent of doing what is done in technology that this XKCD comic makes fun of:

How Standards Proliferate

This view also assumes that all the manifold teachings of every religion are compatible and non-contradictory, which seems a stretch. To be sure, many aspects of religious practice are often seen as equivalent cultural expressions – priests, rabbis, imams, and gurus being roughly equivalent, or churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues, or the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita. Even these ‘equivalences’ turn out to be far more complicated than a superficial glance imagines. More obviously, the ethical teachings for life-guidance contain incompatible ideas. You can only really see the incompatibility if you’re trying to live according to these teachings. Then you will find that it's impossible to follow all of them at once. To switch to politics as an example, should Marxism, Nazism, and Capitalism all be seen as paths up the same mountain? Are these political models all like blind men or ways up a mountain? The near-universal repulsion to this idea is the root of Godwin’s Law (i.e. if there’s anything we all agree on, it’s that Nazism is bad). If the elephant/mountain analogy doesn’t work for politics, why would we assume that it works for religions? We can only assume that if we think ourselves in a position to judge all religions by some standard external to any of them. Where did we get that standard from? Each religion claims to be such a standard itself. To make the point really clear: even Nazism is only bad in light of a particular set of religious and ethical commitments, and only those commitments can provide the reasons for why Nazism is bad.

For a religious practitioner – for anyone who has left the comfortable ivory-tower armchair of comparative religion and is seeking serious guidance on how to live and understand the world – this super-religious position is not an option. The only thing we can do is to take a position concerning these questions, which is to be one of the paths, be one of the blind men, and no longer pretend to have any superior viewpoint.

The pick-n-mix buffet

I would summarise this view as saying, in essence, “I don’t think any one religion has the whole truth. They all have some things right and some things wrong. I pick the bits that are good about each religion and kinda go my own way.”

This view has soared to great popularity in recent decades. It seems eminently reasonable and mature, and by contrast, to imagine that one religion happens to have everything right seems naïvely narrow-minded. Isn’t it better to filter each religion for what’s best about it?

But this view also has a problem. A religion claims to be a guide to understanding what is good and bad in the first place. If each of us were able to judge good and bad reliably and consistently for ourselves, there would be no different religions in the first place – they would never have existed. This pick-n-mix approach assumes the opposite: that I already have the truth, and am therefore able to recognise its presence or absence in the world’s religions. This view hasn’t got past the first hurdle of cultural relativity, which is to understand that all knowledge is situated in a particular culture and moment in history. The holder of this view, like the holder of the previous view, has created a new religion for themselves, with a single member who is also its high priest.

Each of the major religious traditions developed over thousands of years, and contains great riches and wisdom from across many ages and cultures. They deserve respect at the very least. What makes any 21st century individual think that they have deeper insight into the truth than any of these great, long traditions of belief and lifestyle? It would be better to belong wholly to any of them, to submit to its teachings even when they are uncomfortable and conflict with contemporary wisdom, than to take this supremely arrogant standpoint of claiming to be the judge of them all.

Can you belong to more than one religion?

This is another common question for those who engage with the question of religious pluralism. It is worth taking seriously because there are people who mean it sincerely and are not just spectators who judge from a distance. I have a friend who tried for a long time to be a faithful Buddhist and Christian at the same time. He emphasised the overlap between the two, especially in the emphasis on compassion, self-denial, and not belonging to the world. He drew on the spiritual resources of both as much as he could, and tried to find ways of reconciling apparent contradictions between them. But one day he realised that this wasn’t working for him, although he couldn’t quite explain why. He was feeling torn between the two, as he tried to go deeper into each. Why is it that I feel compelled to pursue one at the expense of the other, he asked me? This is the answer I gave.

Suppose you went to the Buddha and asked him ‘what do you think of Jesus and of following Jesus?’ And suppose the Buddha said, ‘Jesus is great! What a great idea for you to follow him!’ And suppose you took the Buddha’s advice and chose to follow Jesus. What would be the basis for your trust in Jesus? It would be a consequence of a prior trust in the judgment of the Buddha. Or suppose the opposite: that you went to Jesus and asked him, ‘what do you think of the Buddha?’ and Jesus said, ‘The Buddha is a wonderful example of the values of the Kingdom of Heaven. He is worth listening to.’ You would then learn from the spiritual wisdom of the Buddha, but only because Jesus suggested it. In both cases one is the supreme judge who judges the other, even if that judgment is positive.

There can only ever be one supreme judge in your life, where the buck truly stops. There can only be one final arbitrator, because no matter how similar any two may seem, eventually there will come a place where they tug in different directions. For many people, that supreme judge is really themselves, even if they’re not aware of it. But to belong to a religion means to have submitted to that religion as the supreme judge of reality, which entails subordinating your judgment to the judgment of that religion.

Now, if all the above is correct, then the question of religious pluralism cannot be approached or evaluated from a transcendent non-committed position. Even non-religion turns out to be using a standard of truth and goodness to judge other positions. There is no ‘neutral’ way of evaluating or positioning the diverse religions in relation to each other. The only way to do it is from a particular religion. What, then, is the Christian approach to other religions? How should Christians think about them? That will be the topic of a second article.

Interview

Belief

Creed

Leading

S&U interviews

18 June 2025

9 min read

The quantum of leadership: how to flourish in science

Resolving the big questions - a conversation with Andrew Briggs, quantum technology pioneer.

Pawel Puczkarski and Michał Łuczewski

Pawel is a fellow at Oxford University. Michał is a sociologist at the University of Warsaw.

A professor stands next to experimental equipment.

Andrew Briggs beside quantum research equipment.

Professor Andrew Briggs has been at the forefront of quantum technology for decades, pioneering the use of AI and machine learning in quantum computing. Two technologies that will shape our world.

Andrew has been a leader in a demanding and cutting-edge academic field. In this interview the Oxford-based academic shares his insights on how to lead scientific endeavours and flourish in life.

Pawel Puczkarski: We meet on Northmoor Road, which, more than any other street, embodies the spirit of Oxford.

Michał Łuczewski: I sense here the presence of all souls.

Andew Briggs: Indeed! The Tolkien family first lived at number 22 before moving next door to number 20. Just opposite, in the garden shed of number 27, is where Sir Martin Wood built the first magnets for what was to become Oxford Instruments. Another neighbour was Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in under four minutes.

MŁ: High culture, big business, top sports. What about science?

AB: Just across the street, Sir Rudolf Peierls spent his final years. He transformed our understanding of nearly every application of quantum theory, including materials science and nuclear energy. Nearby, Erwin Schrödinger was living at number 12 when he received the news that he had won the Nobel Prize; he later moved to number 24. It was also here that he conceived his famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, which illustrated the fundamental insight of quantum physics—that quantum objects can exist in two states at once. The inspiration for the fictitious cat—both dead and alive—was quite alive. Schrödinger’s own cat was allegedly called Milton

MŁ: What is your main driver in your manifold leadership roles?

AB: The desire to contribute. And pure curiosity. I am absolutely fascinated by big questions.

PP: What’s the biggest question that remains for you unanswered?

AB: I suppose it might be, “How can I be more loving?”

MŁ: That’s a big question, how about big answers?

AB: One thing I’ve learned over time is the ability to live with unresolved big questions while maintaining the curiosity to understand them better. Take quantum physics. Among scientists, there’s still no agreement on what exactly happens during the act of measuring a quantum system. And measurement is the most basic thing we do in experimental science. So, are we being intellectually irresponsible? Now take prayer. I don’t think there’s consensus among people who pray about what exactly happens when they do. I certainly don’t yet have a fully satisfactory answer. But I long for better understanding. Quantum technologies have too much potential to walk away from the mystery. Likewise, prayer is too important to abandon simply because I don’t fully comprehend it.

MŁ: What is your own understanding of prayer, then?

AB: Prayer is about developing a relationship with God, just as conversation is part of building relationships with people. Of course, relationships involve more than conversation. But if you never talk to someone, you’re probably missing out on something. There are many ways to engage God. It is our love for God and our experience of His love. Being kind to people is part of our love relationship with God.

MŁ: How come such a hard-nosed scientist like you speaks about God so openly?

PP: It brings to mind a story that stretches across more than a century. In 1874, physicist James Clerk Maxwell founded the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Carved on its entrance doors, he placed a passage from Psalm 111 in Latin.

AB: As the first Cavendish Professor, Maxwell personally oversaw every aspect of the lab's creation. He was a man of deep Christian faith.

PP: Fast forward to 1973—you, as a young research student, proposed to the departmental committee carving the same quote in English above the entrance to the new Cavendish Laboratory: 'The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein'.

AB: To the Head of Department’s surprise, the committee not only did not reject my audacious idea, but they enthusiastically supported it.

MŁ: Another half-century passed…

AB: And that quote still serves as a motto for the next generation—it suggests that those inside the laboratory are discovering how God makes the world work, and that this pursuit is deeply joyful. Science is a God-given resource for faith and for the work of the Church. If the Church is here to serve the world, it must engage with the world as it is. For example, during the pandemic, scientific knowledge was essential in caring for people at risk. Conversely, faith offers wisdom and a voice in public discourse.

MŁ: What does leadership personally mean for you?

AB: Leadership, whatever its tools or styles, is ultimately about choosing what values to lead with. You can exercise leadership in many areas. Each of us does it in our own way, within our sphere of influence, using our unique talents. I'm distinguishing between the tools of leadership—whether oratory, intellect, money, or whatever—and the deeper question of which direction you want to lead. The real question is: What kind of leadership will you exercise?

MŁ: Is that where my responsibility lies?

AB: Yes, and to implement that responsibility using whatever talents and opportunities we have. If you're a professor at Oxford, you have to excel in your field. But Oxford is full of opportunities beyond academia, and I feel both a responsibility and a pleasure in engaging with the wider implications of my work.

PP: You were deeply involved in the rapid development of quantum technologies and quantum information processing, within the evolving landscape of Oxford itself. We're no longer solely a research university. There's been a growing emphasis on scientific entrepreneurship and spinning out companies.

AB: You're absolutely right–it's been a significant cultural shift at the university. In 2021, in my lab we realized that many people wanted to use our techniques, but we had reached the limit of our capacity to help others from our own resources. As academics, we love collaborating and helping, but we hadn’t even begun to meet the commercial need. So, we worked with Said Business School to conduct market research, which confirmed there was a viable market. That’s when we spun out the company, QuantrolOx.

MŁ: In his recent book From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks argues that our careers will end much sooner than we expect and asks how we should prepare for that. It seems you’ve figured that out. You seem to go from strength to strength.

AB: Arthur is a valued friend. He spoke at the U.S. launch of the Human Flourishing book in Harvard. And was kind enough to host the U.S. launch of Penultimate Curiosity, the book I co-authored with the eminent artist, Roger Wagner.

PP: I see his painting behind us.

AB: Yes, Roger used to have his studio in this house. As you might have noticed, Arthur has been lately placing more and more emphasis on the role of faith for human happiness.

MŁ: Through his works, Brooks has been undergoing a kind of spiritual conversion. He makes it clear now that the goal of life is happiness and human flourishing, which starts with meaningful work, friends, family and most importantly - faith. For him personally means renewing his Catholic faith daily, moment by moment.

AB: And he’s been speaking about that in a way that is completely genuine and comes from the heart.

MŁ: I think there’s a similar kind of scholarly conversion in your life, where Christian renewal meets the Greek ideal of kalokagathia—the unity of the transcendentals, also reflected in your books. Penultimate Curiosity explores beauty. It Keeps Me Seeking explores truth. Citizenship in a Networked Age explores justice. And beauty, truth, and justice find their unity in your last book: Human Flourishing. How do you see your life?

AB: I want to keep contributing for as long as I have the energy and the wherewithal. But life is nonlinear and stochastic.

MŁ: Professor, pray elaborate!

AB: We make choices and we are subject to events each of which could have been otherwise, and the consequences are often out of all proportion to the causal factors. Randomness is fundamental in quantum theory where the uncertainty is very mathematically rigorously described. I sometimes wonder if today’s rising generation struggles with stress because they expect too much control over their own destiny.

MŁ: No doubt.

AB: And that’s where Providence comes in. What traditional spiritual English calls Providence—from the same root as to provide—is, I believe, essential to making sense of a world that is both stochastic and nonlinear. This confidence in Providence, in the idea that we can navigate a world that is chaotic and still thrive, is profoundly important. If you look at the Gospels, when Jesus called people to follow him, they took a risk. They could have been wrong, following someone who was a spoof, but they made a decision—and it turned out to be a good one. And I think it's true of deciding to follow Jesus Christ. Could I be wrong? I suppose so. I don't think I am, but I could be. I don’t have certainty, but I choose.

MŁ: And how do you know it?

AB: Think of flying. You prepare as much as you can, but unexpected situations always arise. Air traffic control sometimes tells you what to do, but mostly, they ask what your intention is. You can’t hesitate when you're flying a plane. You can't just say, well, I'm not going to decide. That's not an option. You try to make them safe choices. You try to make them wise choices. But you have to make choices. Same with life. Thinking is good. But thought must lead to action. Some say I live my life by my transferable flying skills!

MŁ: And your final destination?

AB: Heaven, I hope. I believe this life isn’t all there is. I believe in a future with Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—free from pain and suffering. The risk is to focus too much on going to heaven. I think the emphasis should actually be on the other direction: heaven coming to us. 'Thy Kingdom come!' That gives dignity to this world.

MŁ: This conversation was a foretaste of a heavenly banquet!

AB: More like Spanish tapas—small plates, not a grand feast.

PP: A series of little courses?

AB: Exactly. And when you write this up, make it look like there was a plan.

MŁ: In your nonlinear, stochastic life, we’ve already found a hidden pattern. A kind of Da Vinci Code of Andrew Briggs.

AB: And the code is…?

PP: Have you ever thought about combining your book titles into a life motto? Imagine it inscribed over your Northmoor Road house: Penultimate Curiosity… Keeps Me Seeking… Human Flourishing.

AB: Perfect! I love it. That’s my code.

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