In this article I critically analyse both Alexander Khramov’s way of ‘neutralising’ religiousdiversity in favour of theism and his conviction that this ‘neutralisation’ itself is in the inte-rests of theism. In contrast, I demonstrate that the proposed attempt to scientifically disman-tle polytheistic religious experience can just as easily be turned to dismantle monotheisticexperience, and a parallel is drawn with the old simple-minded use of the concept of euhe-merism to expose paganism. However, I consider the much more balanced W. Alston’s em-barrassment because of the lack of independent weights for comparative weighing of Chris-tian and non-Christian religious perceptions as a consequence of scientism (and perhaps po-litical correctness). I offer many examples of how people make judgements about thingsother than religion with good reason and without ‘independent sources’, which for thesecases simply do not exist, and for comparative procedures I propose instead of scientific as-sociations artistic associations and what Immanuel Kant called ‘judgements of taste’. I con-clude with some speculations as to what the answer to the ‘challenge of pluralism’ might befrom the standpoint of a theism based on Scripture and Tradition.
Vladimir Shokhin (Wed,) studied this question.