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To be justified, a belief must be ‘based’ on its grounds. For an externalist, being based on grounds is being ‘caused’ by these grounds (by a non‐deviant route). For an internalist (normally), a belief is said to be based on basic beliefs. But then, the believer would need to believe that his belief is caused and/or rendered probable by the basic beliefs; and then maybe actual causing is not even necessary. Further, basic beliefs need to be understood rather as basic propositions that come to the believer with different degrees of prior probability, which measure their initial strengths—only some of these are sufficiently strong to form beliefs. Some actual basic propositions are, for a priori reasons, not rightly basic (e.g. because they are beliefs in a logically impossible proposition). But in general (following the Principle of Credulity), a basic proposition, of whatever strength, is (to that strength) rightly basic.

An analysis of three problems for Richard Swinburne’s Bayesian cumulative case strategy in natural theology shows why he needs to shift the burden of proof to the unbeliever. Allegedly, this shift is accomplished by the argument from religious experience, which is based upon the Principle of Credulity and the Principle of Testimony. However, the Principle of Credulity does not apply to religious experiences, and genuine perceptual of-God experiences are impossible. Furthermore, if monotheism were true, most religious experiences (of other gods than God) would be deceptive, so that religious experience in general would be highly unreliable. Swinburne does not succeed to neutralize other defeaters of the argument from religious experience either, so that one cannot shift the burden of proof to unbelievers. It is concluded that Swinburne’s cumulative case for the existence of God fails, and that it is unlikely that anyone else will succeed in arguing convincingly that God exists.

This chapter draws all of the threads of the book together and insists that the story of Prince Rupert's ‘necromantic dogge’ should not be dismissed as mere drollery: as an amusing but essentially trivial side-show. Instead, it argues, that story has much wider ramifications, not only alerting us to the sheer cunning and skill with which both Royalist and Parliamentarian propagandists strove to exploit popular witch-belief in support of their own causes, but also providing us with a wholly new perspective on the ways in which popular and elite ideas about politics, religion and the supernatural converged and reacted with each other during the 1640s. [105 words]

The third section of the book, “Junk and Art,” focuses on a problem that twentieth-century critics insisted was distinctly and depressingly modern. According to Aldous Huxley in 1934, recent technological “advances” in catering to “an enormous public” meant that “in all the arts the output of trash is both absolutely and relatively greater than it was in the past.” But chapter 5, “Mocked with Art,” demonstrates how Shakespeare and his rival dramatist Ben Jonson were themselves obsessed with the question whether it was ever possible to pursue artistic distinction while at the same time catering to “the rude multitude.”