*By anonymous request, Goldschmidt’s image has been replaced by a photo of George Clooney.
In a recent article, I laid out a Bayesian case for Hinduism. Briefly, my argument was that—in broad strokes—Hinduism is right about: the existence of God, the existence of gods, the truth of reincarnation, ethical vegetarianism, Karma-conditional-on-theism, the soul theory of personal identity, the importance of ritualism, and the pre-existence of souls, and wins extra Bayes-brownies for being so very old, large, and accommodating.
Side story: in a recent impromptu talk at the 2024 Emergent Ventures unconference in Arlington, VA, Matthew Adelstein and I defended this case. Our talk was titled, “God Exists, and Hinduism is True”. Matthew defended the first claim, I defended the second.
The premise of the unconference was that maybe eight or so talks would happen in different rooms all at once, and people would mill in and out of talks on a whim. Tyler Cowen, the man behind the program, insisted there was nothing rude about jumping ship midway.
Our talk got off to a promising start, and peaked at about 15+ people in the breakout room; but, understandably, as the objections grew knottier and the Bayes machine went br-r-r, the brave hangers-on dwindled to 5. To retain these faithful disciples, I switched gears and interspersed the section of the talk on the argument from miracles with a number of actual miracles—a couple of card tricks, and a party trick involving me snorting a Tic Tac and then pulling said Tic Tac out of my eye—miracles which, I argued, were better predicted on Hinduism than on Christianity.
Anyway, meanwhile on Facebook, philosopher Tyron Goldschmidt made some interesting points about my article. I agree with everything he says, so I include his comment for your perusal:
I'm not sure that the evidence in the article is so distinctive, or that other religions won't have an advantage on other claims or on their own evidence. Briefly, on the points in your article in order:
1. Christianity and Islam are even bigger than Hinduism, while Judaism predicts that it will remain small and scattered until Jews return to Israel.
2. Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism and other religions are only slightly younger than Hinduism.
3. Buddhism and Druzism teach reincarnation, as do some forms of Judaism.
4. Other religions can be open to religious experiences across other faiths, and might take experiences of minor deities to be experiences of angels or demons.
5. Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and other religions also have a simple fundamental reality.
6. Jainism is also vegetarian, other religions do have rules against cruelty to animals, and ethical vegetarianism is less plausible than that e.g. factory farming is wrong.
7. Theism is shared by Judaism, Christianity, Islam and many other religions.
8. Preexistence is shared by Buddhism and Druzism, and as a minor idea in some versions of Judaism too.
9. Sikhism, Judaism and Islam and many other religions are also ritualistic.
10. Other religions have their share of stories, can also treat them a profound myths, and some can countenance minor deities as angels or demons.
You might say that Hinduism has the best combination of 1-10. But it doesn't seem to have a big advantage to me, and other religions can appeal to their own particular evidence as an advantage: Islam will appeal e.g. to the early spread of Islam; Christianity e.g. to resurrection witnesses; Judaism e.g. to mass revelation; and so on. To be sure, none of this means that the central doctrines you've outlines aren't plausible, but I'm not sure how far they get the audience to Hinduism.
I have two questions, related to this point of yours:
"[Hinduism] isn’t an exclusivist religion (traditionally understood), meaning it predicts that Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Mormons would genuinely come into contact with the divine during their devotional practices."
1. Is there Hindu literature arguing for the truth of Hinduism in a philosophical way? (Since it's not exclusivist, I'd expect there to be less of a need to proselytize and so less apologetic literature of this kind.)
2. Since Hinduism is not exclusivist, to what extent can it countenance the narratives (e.g. resurrection of Jesus, revelation to Mohammed) of other religions, including exclusivist religions? (How would the exclusivist teachings of other religions then be accommodated?)
These points are well taken, and I agree with the basic methodology: to argue for Hinduism over and above other world religions, I have to argue that Hinduism has the best ratio when it comes to the lines of evidence I gave (plus, perhaps, some other lines of evidence I didn’t consider). And to reject my argument, non-Hindus should either reject the evidence in question, or appeal to other lines of evidence favouring their religion in particular, or evidence against Hinduism in particular.
On (1), I don’t know the answer; my understanding is that there hasn’t yet been a comprehensive, Swinburne-style case for Hinduism, but that there is literature—both modern and pre-modern—arguing for particular Hindu beliefs.
On (2), the answer will vary from case to case, but here’s how I think about the issue. Suppose a Hindu thinks there’s decently good historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, and wants to affirm that the resurrection happened while still denying Christianity. If that’s the goal, Hindus will probably have to accept a fairly narrow view of gospel reliability on which they shore up enough evidence to support a bodily resurrection in 33 A.D., but not enough evidence that Jesus taught theological doctrines—on his own authority, and the authority of his signs and wonders—that explicitly contradict Hinduism. If the Hindu accepts both that Jesus resurrected and that he taught things that contradict Hinduism, the resurrection will be a problem for Hinduism. Similar reasoning applies to the miracle evidence for other religions.
Do you have any thoughts on the Bahai faith? It seems to do even better on the inclusivism point that Hinduism.
That being said, I think the point about Hinduism's ability to accommodate exclusivist religions is really important: it doesn't do much good to say that Hinduism can accept the legitimacy of Jesus and Muhammad if it's going to require denying most of what they said! I think a desire to play up the inclusivism of Eastern religion actually contributes to a lot of the weird "hey did you know Jesus went to India once" stuff that you find online (particular in New Age circles).
Also, I'm not sure that Hinduism predicts that Mormons would come into contact with the divine via their worship services. Mormons don't believe in the God of traditional theism, so it's hard to regard their worship as a means of contacting him (unless you think God somehow condescends to reveal himself in these contexts, or something like that).
I don't know much about Hinduism, but I'm not sure why it would be an issue for Jesus to have some legitimate miracles, but also have some teachings that were contrary to Hinduism.
Even Christianity is not (always) so exclusive that it would deny that God has ever revealed himself in other times and places. For instance, it wasn't unheard of during the patristic era to view certain Greek philosophers of the past as sort of honorary Christians, or analogous to the Prophets in their own cultural contexts, even if they had some teachings that were contrary to Christianity.
I imagine different branches of Hinduism would react differently, of course, but I don't immediately see why it would have to be an issue unless Jesus' teachings were understood as not furthering the truth in his time and place in some important way.