About those mountain tops...............................

     A universalist model envisions novelty and common destination at the same time.  It is the "many paths up the same mountain to a shared summit" relativist schema.  This model recognizes distinctiveness among the many  paths and they all ultimately end up at the same place.  The arrival, though, is understood irrespective of individual paths.  The problem with this model is that it often minimizes the distinction between the different paths that actually have different aims and ends;  their systems actually participate in different concentric circles.  These different points on different circumferences might not necessarily contradict one another, such as enlightenment in the Buddhist path and salvation in the Christian one, but they do have contrasting notions of history, the purpose of human existence, and the nature of reality itself.  A lazy universalism might draw the conclusion that they are all basically the same when it is more accurate to say that their different paths lead to different mountain tops.
-Timothy Carson,  The Square Root of God:  Mathematical Metaphors and Spiritual Tangents