Here are two examples of the Indirect Way (modus tollens) used to reason about the fact of religious diversity. First, a laboriously expressed argument by the philosopher Paul Churchland (Matter and Consciousness, 2nd ed., p. 15):
History aside, the almost universal opinion that one’s own religious convictions are the reasoned outcome of a dispassionate evaluation of all the major alternatives is almost demonstrably false for humanity in general. If that really were the genesis of most people’s convictions, then one would expect the major faiths to be distributed more or less randomly or evenly over the globe. But in fact they show a very strong tendency to cluster: Christianity is centered in Europe and the Americas, Islam in Africa and the Middle East, Hinduism in India, and Buddhism in the Orient.
Second, a more pithily expressed argument, related by R.R. Palmer, in A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., p. 301:
The king of Siam, when asked by a missionary to turn Christian, replied that divine Providence, had it wished a single religion to prevail in the world, could easily have so arranged it.
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