The argument from inconsistent revelations, also known as the avoiding the wrong hell problem, is an argument against the existence of God.
I wouldn't so much call it an argument against the existence of God as an argument in favour of the philosophical ineptitude of its proponents (the French, especially, being terribad philosophers, are quite fond of it).
It asserts that it is unlikely that God exists because many theologians and faithful adherents have produced conflicting and mutually exclusive revelations.
So if I take some cubic zirconia and a diamond and put them all in a bag, the diamond ceases to be a diamond because of the presence of the zirconia?
The argument states that since a person not privy to revelation must either accept it or reject it based solely upon the authority of its proponent [...]
This is certainly not the Christian position.
[...] and there is no way for a mere mortal to resolve these conflicting claims by investigation [...]
Debatable, but let us say that, even conceding that this would be true of intellectual enquiry, it is not necessarily true of other methods of truth-apprehension.
[...] it is prudent to reserve one's judgment.
Surely a costs/benefits analysis would be a wiser course than mere reluctance to take a position? If god A says you will be condemned to eternal pain and agony whether you actively deny his revelation or merely reserve judgment and god B says we'll all receive eternal reward whether we subscribe to his revalation or not, surely it would be better to go with god A? It's a modified Paschal's wager, I know, but I feel the argument is stupid enough to validate it.
If it were to be assumed that:
The existence of some god is certain,
There is some number (n) of distinct, mutually exclusive interpretations of that god one could believe in,
There is no way to tell which one, if any, were true a priori
then the probability of having chosen to practice the correct religion (through upbringing or by making Pascal's Wager) cannot be greater than 1⁄n. Therefore, if there are only two distinct faiths, the probability that a person who chooses to believe in either faith has chosen the correct one is 1 in 2 (50% or 1⁄2). Four distinct faiths would result in the probability dropping to 1 in 4 (25% or 1⁄4), and so on.
Since there are hundreds of religions in existence, the probability, a priori, of any one of them being true to the exclusion of all others is less than one percent.
This "proof" raises so many epistemological questions ...
