De falsa religione. Der Beitrag der Religionskritik zur pluralistischen Religionstheorie

The theory of religious pluralism assumes that several religions can lay claim to truth at the same time. However, this must not lead to an arbitrariness that simply allows everything that can somehow be described as religious to apply without restriction. In order to avoid such an »anything goes« approach, the pluralistic theory of religion must specify criteria for distinguishing between true and false religion. In this study, various criteria are discussed and evaluated as insufficient. Following Luther and Wittgenstein, two new criteria for identifying false religion are then proposed: 1.) false religion is one-sidedly eudemonistic. 2.) false religion confuses religion and science. In summary, false religion can therefore be described as a supposed science of happiness which, in contrast to true religion, prevents a real encounter with transcendence.