Mill’s argument against religious knowledge

In On Liberty, Mill says that ‘the same causes which make…[a person]a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin’.Despite Mill’s not having drawn it out, there is an argument implicit in hiscomments that is germane to both externalist and internalist understandings of theepistemic justification of religious beliefs, even though some of these understandingswould not wish to use the term ‘epistemic justification’ to refer to whatever it is thatthey suggest must be added to true belief for it to count as knowledge. In this paper,we shall articulate this argument; examine how it challenges those religiousbelievers who would wish to claim their religious beliefs as knowledge; and considerwhat they may do to meet this challenge