Relativism and Objectivity

     The essence of Relativism is that one person's opinion is just as good as another's even though the two are mutually exclusive.  Lately, some Liberal clergymen, joining other liberals in their bonding with Islam, have been opining that 'all religions are basically the same and they all have the same purpose'.  This remarkable idea is symptomatic of a dreadful moral and intellectual poison --- that of Relativism, which denies all objective truth on the claim of "tolerance", perhaps the most misunderstood word in the English language.  It is easily provable that the various religions of the world are incompatible with one another, though they may coincide at certain points.   If Judaism is true then Christianity is not true, or not entirely true, and if Islam emobodies the ultimate truth then  Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Budhism does not.  Any two or more of these may contain similar concepts on certain points but they are inconsistent in their final conclusions.  In other words, any one of them could theoretically be true but no two of them could.  If you seek the truth you must pick one to exclusion of the others or opt for some other choice, such as agnosticism or atheism.  Furthermore,  to deny objective truth, to claim that any viewpoint is as good as another --- in religion, baseball or anything else --- requires the conclusion that that claim itself is not objectively true.  If any opinion is as good as any other, why should we be influenced by anyone else's opinion on anything?  And if the response is "well of course I wouldn't go that far" the respondent in all honesty should be able to explain when he would and when he would not "go that far".  In the end he will be backed into a corner because he will either affirm the existence of objective truth, including the "truth" which tells him that everything is relative, of which he should now start to see the absurdity, or he will admit that even that claim is relative and his argument has defeated itself.  In other words, a relativist destroys the basis on which his relativism rests.  At that point anyone should logically lose the slightest interest in anything he says unless it is a mere personal preference, such as a preference for one flavor of ice cream over another.  The only way out of this conundrum for the relativist is the assertion that his truth is entitled to a privileged position in the hiercarchy of opinion.  Someone else may wish to continue the discussion after that but I opt out.