How Confident Should the Religious Believer Be in the Face of Religious Pluralism?

Abstract

Chapter 3 explores the prospects for resisting the sorts of arguments in which religious diversity or disagreement seem to support skepticism regarding justified (or rational) religious belief. Those religious believers who would resist can (i) argue that the principles that convict the faithful of irrationality overreach, and would establish a more widespread skepticism about rational belief; (ii) downgrade their disagreeing interlocutor(s); (iii) appeal to epistemic permissivism; or (iv) argue that the believer is no worse off, epistemically speaking, than the atheist or agnostic non-believer. After presenting what the present author regards as the best version of the argument from diversity or disagreement, the chapter argues that any believer who hopes for truth will not get much solace from any of these responses.