Naturally I agree, but Kumar (like most religious fanatics) seems to have a different take on what reliability is and how it is achieved. Religious belief is axiomatic among fanatics, so the provenance of the information believed is either never discussed or is taken as further axiomatically reliable. "It's the Word of God!" tacitly accepting that God exists and does what's attributed to him. Among religious fanatics, propositional knowledge acquired via the religious channel is considered qualitatively superior to empirical understanding. (In American Fundamentalism, especially lately, empirical knowledge is often characterized as a purposeful attack on faith.) It's considered qualitatively superior because it is not subject to uncertainties arising from observation and analysis; it is "pure" dispensed wisdom from an implicitly trusted source. At no time, it seems, does the underlying reliability (or even existence) of the source come into question.
We tell young children not to play in the streets. To justify this, we don't appeal to reason and ask them to rationally suppose cause (fast moving cars) and effect (injury or death). We rather give them a propositional command and tell them the reason is, essentially, "Because I said so." Because the child's caregiver is seen as an undisputed authority, the admonition takes on the value of fact. Fundamentalist religion relies upon the grown-up version of that. "Don't eat meat." "Why not?" "Because it's against nature." "Oh, okay." As long as the person telling you it's against nature has sufficient stature in your eyes -- e.g., because he claims to speak for God, or because he is claimed to have reached a state of nirvana -- you will accept the propositional knowledge. And if you are steeped in a lifestyle that relies upon that, you will come to regard that propositional knowledge as having greater authority and reliability, precisely because it suborns the sources of uncertainty that are, instead, made quite evident in empirical methods (i.e., so they can be controlled for).
The child eventually learns why it's dangerous to go out into the street. He draws the cause-and-effect inferences that let him venture into the street while exercising suitable caution and judgment informed by facts he has observed, such as people crossing the street and not getting run over. This allows him to reap the benefits of things that lie beyond the street. Nevertheless, people are still run over by cars. This is because even with the best attention to surroundings there is still some risk. Just because the only way to eliminate the consequences of that risk altogether is to retreat back to the propositional space doesn't make that the best overall course of action. What we've learned in this debate is that one can never mitigate all risk, and that if we attempt to do so by draconian and ascetic means, we just end up missing benefits, the lack of which also constitutes a negative consequence. Kumar is living in the fantasy world that falsely promises nirvana if one simply accepts the propositional extremes.
And I can confidently say "fantasy world" because his approach to science and other discernible fact is essentially to deny that anyone is crossing streets, ever, even when the activity is plainly visible. His inviolable propositional belief states that entering the street is bad, hence facts which seem to suggest otherwise must "somehow" have another explanation. When one's devotion to propositional knowledge becomes a filter that rejects fact, one has ceased in any way to be rational. As Peregrinus notes above, Kumar may reject empirically derived fact because he simply doesn't comprehend any mode of acquiring reasonably reliable knowledge beyond the "Because Mahavira says so" religious decree. Hence he doesn't understand how anything could be as "reliable" as dispensed wisdom -- a state of mind made possible by cherry-picking available fact.
