Religion v. Philosophy

Does our educational understand that the above are not synonyms? Given their worldview, I doubt it. To set the record straight:

A philosophy is a set of ideas. Those ideas may be right, value-neutrel, or wrong. Those ideas are often designed to function within a certain religion, but in many cases are used in the context of another religion. An indeterminate number of philosophies may be correct.

A religion is a set of ideas and beliefs about the nature of the physical universe and/or things spiritual. Religions usually claim to be inspired by a higher being and to be absolutely correct. Most religions are mutually exclusive; very, very few can be correct at one time.

Tolerance is respect for others' beliefs, both philosophical and religious. Pluralism is a branch of secular humanism - which is a religion - and is also a facet of many philosophies. The fundament of pluralism is the idea that most religions are equal in their correctness. That sounds nice, but if you look at it logically, it's self-contradictory. Traditional Islam, for instance, states that there is One God, and those who are enemies of God will be punished in the afterlife. That belief is radically different from, say, Hinduism, and is not pluralistic. IF the pluralist philosophy is correct, then Islam would be equally true. However, Islam's own unacceptance of other religions means that they both can't be right! So pluralism essentially rejects any religion that does not accept pluralism as a facet of its own.

Some will object to my use of the two main terms, and will define them differently. The terminology is not important - so change the words if it's giving you an ulcer. But for all the rejection of objective truth in our intellectual culture, really they are just rejecting some notions of objective truth and replacing the latter with their own objective notions. Whether the universe exists in a void, a multi- or uni-theistic sphere, or something entirely different, things are, and must be in some context. Saying there is nothing but the universe is a positive statement of religion as well as of philosophy and is contradictory to theistic religions as well as others.

I hope I'm making some kind of sense here... in the past two quarters I've witnessed the intellectual bankruptcy of Northeasterns Philosophy and Religion Department. I know I probably have a lot of the technical terminology wrong, but I also know when I am and when I am not pushing my own religion. My professors don't seem to understand that their belief system is the equal to my mine in religiosity, and they are extremely condescending to anyone who holds a different set of religious beliefs. If I did that when explaining Christianity I would probably be burned at the stake of political correctness, here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts!