ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the common view that the epistemic respectability of religious belief is undermined by the wide diversity in the form and content of religious belief over different historical epochs and geographical areas. A number of arguments for this view are critically evaluated, including the argument from inconsistency of different religious belief systems and the argument from the contingency of religious allegiance. The second half of the chapter compares the situation with respect to religious belief and scientific belief: in the latter case, unlike the former, there is a hope that contrasting theories will eventually converge on the truth, constrained by “the way things are”; but the implausibility of such a hope in the religious case threatens the idea that religious belief could aspire to the status of knowledge. The chapter concludes by arguing that even if this problem can be resolved on a theoretical level, a practical problem remains for the believer about how the specific commitment that is necessary for a religion to flourish can be combined with a respect for different but equally powerful commitments expressed in divergent faiths – commitments that one recognizes could very well have been one’s own had things been different.
