The diversity of religious opinion shows, he says, that the source, whatever it is, of religious opinion is unreliable. Consider whatever cognitive processes it is that produce religious opinion: since those processes produce such a variety of mutually conflicting opinion, much or most of what they produce is false. Hence, those sources must be considered unreliable. And if they are unreliable, Kitcher thinks, the opinions they produce are almost certainly false: "Secularist doubt is prompted by probing the processes that generate specific beliefs about the transcendent. Those processes are so unreliable that all of the conflicting specific religious doctrines are, almost certainly, false" (19).
William James would certainly find it peculiar to argue that the variety of religious experience is proof that religious doctrines are almost certainly false. Moreover, underlying the diversity is some very significant unity. One suspects that the Buddha would be in agreement with Lao Tzu and Heraclitus regarding, respectively, the Tao and the Logos. As D. T. Suzuki pointed out, Meister Eckhart seems to have hit on something remarkably similar to Zen entirely on his own. In fact, the mystics seem almost entirely in agreement with each other.
And paraphrasing Chesterton, the fact that other religions exist aside from Christianity isn't proof of anything but mankind constantly understanding there is a supernatural and responding.
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