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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2007
In response to Michael Bradley, I summarize my account of the criteria by which the various data of natural theology increase the probability of theism and together make it probable. I explain the sense in which a simpler theory leaves less to be explained, justify my claim that God's perfect goodness is entailed by his other divine properties, and show that not merely is theism simpler than Bradley's ‘Epicurean hypothesis’, but that the ‘mixed’ data of natural theology are more to be expected given theism than given the ‘Epicurean hypothesis’.
1. All references to my own writing are to the second edition of The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), unless stated otherwise. All the references to Bradley, are to his ‘Hume's chief objection to natural theology’, Religious Studies, 43 (2007), 249–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2. See my Is There A God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 68 cited by Bradley in his n. 13 (see 269).
3. See my The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), especially the Appendix.
4. If there are two or more equal best actions, that is ones which are equally good but such that there is no available better action, the balance of reason dictates only that one should do one of these actions, not which one one should do. I discuss the more complicated situation where the range of choice open to an agent is that of an infinite series of actions, each (except the first) better than the previous one and no best, on my 104–105.
5. The points which I have just made were made more clearly than in the second edition of The Existence of God, in an earlier work of mine, The Evolution of the Soul (rev. edn Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 115–118. Any unclarity in the second edition of The Existence of God arose because I simply repeated there without change several paragraphs from the first edition which were not very clear.
6. See my 146 for my objection to disjunctions of less simple hypotheses.