I asked yesterday about Xenophanes' argument (is there one?), because it seems to me that the fragments are today standardly taken to express an indifference argument, but I don't see that that is the only, or most plausible, alternative.
The indifference argument would be: different kinds of creatures represent the (bodily form) of the gods differently; there is no reason for preferring one such representation than another; thus, no such representation should be affirmed.
First, if that's the sort of argument that Xenophanes had in mind, he would never have presented the argument in a cross-species form-- because it would have struck his audience as absurd to say there was no reason to prefer what humans suppose over what oxen and lions might suppose! At least, this would be far from a natural claim to make.
Second, as put forward with regard to different groups of human beings, the argument is too sophisticated: one has to assume that each culture and racial group is on a level with every other, which is an egalitarianism that would have been more problematic for Xenophanes' audience than any theological conclusion he would have wanted to establish.
The truth is, we impute this indifference argument to Xenophanes because we find it easy to accept. We ourselves presuppose equality of cultures, and we presuppose, too, an innate tendency to 'paint the world with our own thoughts' (a la Hume and Freud), and so, from variations of the sort that Xenophanes describes, we quickly conclude that the differences point to the essentially subjective origin of the phenomena.
The move is well displayed by McKirahan's commentary. This is the argument as he reconstructs it:
...we Greeks think the gods have the appearance of Greeks, yet all other peoples portray the gods as having the distinctive characteristics of themselves; but a god cannot simultaneously have the characteristics of all human peoples, and there is no reason to prefer one anthropomorphic account to another. More radically, [Xenophanes] challenges the very conception of anthropomorphic gods. In this case too, the belief stems from humans projecting their own nature onto the divine.
I guess I want to say that this reconstruction stems from modern scholars' projecting assumptions that they find plausible onto Xenophanes.
I'll say tomorrow what looks to me an argument that has a better chance of being what Xenophanes actually thought.