Prothero also contradicts Swami Sivananda, who said, “The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same.” To which Prothero replies, “This is a lovely sentiment, but it is untrue, disrespectful, and dangerous.” The only way towards cooperation is through understanding our real differences.ĭifferent religions are responding to different problems, says Prothero, and therefore each religion offers a different solution. In the very first paragraph of his book, Prothero says that Smith is wrong, because the world’s major religions have quite different goals. We want different religions to share a common goal, to make it easier to work towards interreligious cooperation.īoston University religion scholar Stephen Prothero’s new book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World-and Why Their Differences Matter, bluntly refutes the notion that all religions share a fundamental goal. We tend to be religious pluralists who want to promote dialogue and cooperation between religions. “All religions are one,” said poet William Blake Huston Smith, the well-known philosopher of religions, said, “It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge.” Many of us Unitarian Universalists want to believe just this.

God is not one stephen prothero pdf