This from a U. K. reader:
In your 'Maverick Philosopher' blog post on Friday 16th October, you address Carlo Strenger's Guardian article 'Atheism: Class is a distraction' and I think you have done the author a disservice.
You rightly point out that the argument "All Religions contradict one another, therefore no religion is correct" is a decidedly poor one. This is not however, what the author is trying to say.
"According to the Pew survey, 85% of humanity is religious in some way, and that's probably a low estimate, since nobody knows the true figures about China. This doesn't mean that religion is true (it can't, because religions contradict each other), but that there are strong cognitive and motivational factors that give religions an evolutionary advantage in the market of ideas. A scientific worldview is cognitively and emotionally more difficult, and hence at a disadvantage."
Strenger's point is not that 'because religions contradict each other, no religion can be true' but that given these contradictions, one cannot use the fact that 85% of the world's population are religious as support for religion's truth. If 85% of the world's population believe that humans cause global warming, that, at least prima facie, provides support for the theory. If however every one of that 85% has a different and non-compatible version of the theory then the fact is meaningless in this regard. Strenger goes on to use this statistic to support his view that religion has an easier time in the 'market of ideas'.
This is a charitable and creative interpretation of Stenger's meaning, and it may well be what he had in mind, though it is not quite what his words say. In any case, let's be charitable and construe Stenger's meaning as my U. K. correspondent does. Accordingly, the fact (assuming it is one) that 85% of the world's population is religious does not support the view that religion is true because the various religions contradict one another.
But what is meant by 'religion is true'? Religion is an abstraction; in concrete reality there are a large number of religions. 'Religion is true' could mean that (a) every religion is true; that (b) some one particular religion is true ; that (c) some religion or other is true; or that (d) one or more propositions that capture the essence of all religions are true.
Now it is obvious that the fact that 85% of the world's population is religious does not support the view that every religion is true. But then no reasonable person would suggest such a thing. So we can exclude (a). If this is what Stenger has in mind, then he is beating a dead horse.
It is also clear that the fact in question does not support the view that some one particular religion is true, Theravada Buddhism for example. But then no reasonable person would take it mean such a thing. So (b) ought to be excluded as well.
Does the fact that 85% of the world's population is religious support the view that some religion or other is true? Well, it might, especially if we take 'some religion or other' to range over both extant (actual) religions and possible religions. The fact that religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices are widespread in time and space does lend some inductive support to the thesis that some religion or other, a religion yet to be worked out perhaps, is true.
My last suggestion is that 'Religion is true' could be taken to mean that one or more propositions that capture the essence of all extant religions are true. I grant that it is not obvious that religions share a common essence. It may be that the various religions are related by Wittgensteinian 'family resemblances.' And so it is not clear that there is a set of propositions that all religions worthy of the name give expression to. But it is arguable that there is such a set. The fact that 85% of the world's population is religious would then provide some support for the truth of the propositions in this set.