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This book assesses the worth of arguments for and against the existence of God. Evidence confirms (makes more probable) an explanatory hypothesis in so far as (1) given the hypothesis the evidence is to be expected, that is the hypothesis makes the evidence probable, (2) the evidence is not otherwise to be expected, (3) the hypothesis is simple, and (4) it fits with background knowledge (i.e., knowledge about how things behave in neighbouring fields of enquiry). When we are assessing hypotheses (such as theism, the hypothesis that there is a God) purporting to explain everything, there will be no background knowledge. Theism is a very simple hypothesis. If there is a God, there is some reason to expect that he will create a universe, with laws of nature, leading to the evolution of humans (bodies connected to souls), who often have experiences which seem to them experiences of God. It is most improbable that all this evidence would exist if there was no God. Taken together therefore all this evidence makes it probable that there is a God. The occurrence of evil, whether produced by humans or natural processes, does not significantly diminish that probability.

This is a study of the key features of the moral psychology and metaethics of three important medieval Jewish philosophers, Saadia Gaon, Bahya ibn Pakuda, and Moses Maimonides. They are selected because of the depth and subtlety of their thought and because of their relevance to central, enduring issues in moral philosophy. The book examines their views of freedom of the will, the virtues, the rationality of moral requirements, and the relation between rational justification and revelation. Their appropriations of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian thought are explicated, showing how their theistic commitments make crucial differences to moral psychology and moral epistemology. All three thinkers developed rationalistic philosophies and sought to show how Judaism does not include doctrines in conflict with reason. Maimonides receives the fullest attention, given that he articulated the most systematic and influential accounts of the main issues. While explicating the main claims and arguments of these thinkers, the book also shows the respects in which their thought remains relevant to several important issues and debates in moral philosophy. These thinkers' views of ‘the reasons of the commandments’ (in Torah) include resources for a sophisticated moral epistemology of tradition. The points of contact and contrast between medieval Jewish moral thought and the practical wisdom approach to moral theory and also natural law approaches are examined in detail.

The problem of evil remains a perennial challenge to theistic belief. However, one aspect of this challenge has been largely unexplored by theists — the problem of non-human animal pain and suffering. This problem has become even more vexing in the last century as theists have come to accept that non-human animals capable of pain and suffering have inhabited the earth for hundreds of millions of years, struggling to survive in the face of disease, deprivation, and predation. Evil of this sort might not be especially problematic if standard theodices offered by theists could be applied here as well. Unfortunately, those explanations seem impotent in this domain. This book explores the special challenge to theism raised by non-human animals pain and suffering and explores four broad-ranging explanations aimed at responding to the challenge.

This book presents an historical and critical interpretation of Hume's rejection of the existence of a deity with moral attributes. It argues that in Hume's view no first cause or designer responsible for the ordered universe could possibly have moral attributes; nor could the existence (or non-existence) of such a being have any real implications for human practice or conduct. Hume's case for this ‘moral atheism’ is a central plank of both his naturalistic agenda in metaphysics and his secularizing program in moral theory. It complements his wider critique of traditional theism, and threatens to rule out any religion that would make claims on moral practice. This book situates Hume's commitment to moral atheism in its historical and philosophical context, offers a systematic interpretation of his case for divine amorality, and shows how Hume can endorse moral atheism while maintaining his sceptical attitude toward traditional forms of cosmological and theological speculation.

This book is a speculative philosophical theology based on three themes: that a version of materialism is a help, not a hindrance, in philosophical theology; that God develops; and that this development is kenotic, an abandonment of power. The materialism considered in this work is non-reductive: of metaphysical necessity, the mental supervenes on the physical. Materialism leads to the thesis that the primordial God is metaphysically necessary, the limiting case of supervenience. It is speculated that the brain-analogue of the primordial God consists of all the possibilities for creation. It is also speculated that God changes. In the beginning there was a God which loved no one and which was not lovable, but was all-powerful and all-knowing. A sequence of acts resulted in a community of divine love, the Holy Trinity, and a world with many creatures who were autonomous agents. God loved us so much that one Divine Person became fully human and was willing to suffer to show us divine love. This is the kenotic development of God from Pure Will to Unbounded Love. In addition, kenosis provides a new resource for understanding evil. The Primordial God is good but in an inhuman way; why should anyone expect otherwise? But as a result of God's kenotic development, God is now like a loving parent, as the great monotheistic religions teach.

This book brings together chapters addressing the role of images and imagination recruited in the perennial debates surrounding nature, mind, and God. The debate between ‘new atheists’ and religious apologists today is often hostile. This book sets a new tone by locating the debate between theism and naturalism (most ‘new atheists’ are self-described ‘naturalists’) in the broader context of reflection on imagination and aesthetics. The eleven chapters are about the power of imagination and the role of aesthetics in deciding between worldviews or philosophies of nature. This book represents a variety of points of view, including the philosophy of religion and of science, art history, and visual art.

In our experience so far, the universe has worked in remarkably regular ways, and these regularities call for explanation. One way of accounting for them would be to suppose that things have been kept regular by laws of nature, construed as forms of natural necessity, and if we can make sense of there being such laws, this mode of explanation is the most plausible one. Another attractive feature of it is that, if it is accepted, it points the way to a solution to the problem of induction; for, assuming that the relevant laws are uniform across space and time, we know that the way things turn out in the unexamined cases, will conform, in the nomologically relevant respects, to the way they have turned out in the examined cases. If nomological explanations are excluded, the only alternative way of accounting for the regularities, with any prospect of acceptability, would be theistic. Can we, then, make sense of there being laws of the relevant sort? Only, I think, by construing a law as what is created by the causal imposing of a regularity on the universe as a regularity. But the only plausible account of such causal imposing would be theistic. So, whatever explanatory role, if any, we assign to laws, there is a strong case for the acceptance of theism. Once theism is accepted, there are further reasons for insisting that the God it postulates imposes regularities on the universe in a law‐creating way.

This book studies the nature of religious faith, investigating what makes it reasonable. Religious belief needs to meet and sustain philosophical scrutiny just as any other type of belief does; nothing about religion purchases immunity from this. But at the same time religious epistemology must also respect the contours of religion, the distinctiveness of the subject-matter of religious belief. The book looks sympathetically at two currently prominent ways of defending the rationality of religious belief: ‘Reformed’ epistemology and the cumulative case for theism. It argues that the reasonableness of faith depends not only on beliefs about the world but also on beliefs about oneself (for instance about what one wants, about one's hopes and fears) and on what one is willing to trust. The book goes on to look at the relations between belief and trust, and between faith and virtue, and concludes with an exploration of one particular type of belief about oneself, the belief that one is oneself a believer.

Unless he has very strong reason for supposing that there is a God, a theist needs a theodicy (or at least needs to begin to develop one) in order justifiably to believe that there is a God. Part 2 of this book describes the good goals that God might be seeking to produce in his Universe—beauty; creatures having knowledge (in a largely internalist sense), having their good desires satisfied, with a free will to do actions that promote each others’ well‐being, being of use to others, and worshipping God. Part 3 shows how the possibility of moral evil, and the actual occurrence of natural evil (providing knowledge of possible good and bad actions, and the scope for good response) are necessary to secure these ends. God has the right to allow some creatures to suffer for the benefit of others, so long as he compensates them in this life or after death. The expected value of allowing the evils in order to achieve the good goals is positive.

Proposes an abstract conception of God, which identifies the will of God with the basic facts about good and bad. I argue that this conception does justice both to the nature of goodness and to the sovereignty of God. And, while it is does not represent God as a person, it allows for the attribution to him of properties that form the key elements of many people's conception of God. I argue that a belief in God, so conceived, is a natural extension of ordinary scientific outlook and a belief in objective value. I defend this belief in objective value and claim that it is reasonable to explain the existence of the world in terms of such value. In the latter part of the book, I discuss the problem of evil, and the question of whether there are good reasons for believing in miracles. Finally, I discuss the value of rational belief in God.

Investigates whether the claim that there is a God can be spelt out in a coherent way. Part 1 analyses how we can show some claim to be coherent or incoherent. God is supposed to be a personal being, omnipresent, perfectly free and creator of the universe, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, and eternal. Part 2 analyses how these divine properties can be understood in a coherent and mutually consistent way. Part 3 considers divine necessity and claims that God's existence necessarily must be understood as this being the ultimate brute fact on which all else depends, but his having the divine properties necessarily must be understood as his having these properties being logically necessary for his existence. The final chapter argues that, if a God of the kind analysed in earlier chapters exists, he is worthy of worship.

This book offers an argument for theism. It claims only purposive accounts of the universe can do justice to our pre-philosophical moral commitment to objective moral truth and explain the human acquisition of belief-generating and belief-evaluating capacities which track such truth.This book begins with a defence of moral realism, arguing for its ‘deliberative indispensability’. It claims that the practical deliberation human beings engage in on a daily basis only makes sense if they take themselves to be aiming at a normative truth — that is to say, a truth which goes beyond their own sentiments or the conventions of their culture. Furthermore, when humans engage in practical deliberation, they necessarily take their processes of reasoning to have some ability to track the truth.The central argument of the book builds on this first claim: arguing that we need an explanation as well as a justification of our cognitive capacities with respect to moral truth. It claims that evolutionary biology is not able to generate the kind of explanation which is required — and, in consequence, that all secular philosophical accounts are forced either to abandon moral objectivism or to render the human capacity for moral knowledge inexplicable. This case is made with discussions of a wide range of moral philosophers including Simon Blackburn, Thomas Scanlon, Philippa Foot, and John McDowell. The book concludes by arguing that only purposive accounts of the universe (such as theism and Platonism) can account for human moral knowledge. Among such purposive accounts, it makes the case for theism as the most satisfying, intelligible explanation of our capacity for moral knowledge.

Can it be justifiable to commit oneself ‘by faith’ to a religious claim when its truth lacks adequate support from one's total available evidence? After critiquing both Wittgensteinian and Reformed epistemologies of religious belief, this book defends a modest fideism that understands theistic commitment as involving ‘doxastic venture’ in the face of evidential ambiguity: practical commitment to propositions held to be true through ‘passional’ causes (causes other than the recognition of evidence of or for their truth). It is argued that the justifiability of religious faith-ventures is ultimately a moral issue — although such ventures can be morally justifiable only if they accord with the proper exercise of our rational epistemic capacities. The book canvasses issues concerning the ethics of belief and doxastic voluntarism. William James's ‘justification of faith’ in The Will to Believe is extended by requiring that justifiable faith-ventures should be morally acceptable both in motivation and content. The book conducts an extended debate between fideists and ‘hard line’ evidentialists, who maintain that religious faith-ventures are never justifiable. It concludes that, although neither fideists nor evidentialists can succeed in establishing their opponents' irrationality, fideism may nevertheless be morally preferable, as a less dogmatic, more self-accepting, even a more loving, position than its evidentialist rival.