Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736)
Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham
Careful to a fault, and never once raises his voice to make a point land harder.
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
A long, patient book, built to be worked through rather than skimmed for a line.
It does not soften revealed religion’s difficulties. It shows the natural world a reader already trusts is carrying the very same kind, which is a harder blow than a direct rebuttal.
Butler concedes every objection he can find before answering it — there is very little left for a reader to bring that the book has not already granted.
Middling. It is slow going by design, but apologists still borrow its method.
Joseph Butler wrote the Analogy against the deists of his day, Tindal chief among them. He did not start from a different place. He used the deists’ own method, reasoning from how nature works. The parts of Christianity they called strange, he showed, have matches in the natural world they already trusted.
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 34 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 41 | Affirm | — | Status | — | — | 1 |
| 44 | The Same Objections, Answered The Same Way | Natural Theology | Argument | 100 | 95% | 10 |
| 46 | Probability, The Guide of Life | Natural Theology | Argument | 82 | 100% | 15 |
| 50 | A Presumption of Millions to One | Rationality | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 58 | Considered Separately, Joined Together | Natural Theology | Argument | 90 | 100% | 10 |
| 66 | The United Force of the Whole | Rationality | Argument | 92 | 100% | 10 |
How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.
Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.
In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.
“We see no more reason why the frame and course of nature should be such a scheme, than why Christianity should... Christianity would be liable to the like objections, as the frame of nature.”
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Part II, Ch. IV, public domain.public domain
In the gameButler answered Tindal without making revelation look tidier than nature. The gaps, delays and roundabout ways that trouble people in revealed religion show up in nature too, and Tindal never doubted nature.
Butler never denies the difficulties. He asks why nature gets a pass from the exact same standard Tindal is using to convict revelation.
The Vicar calls revelation superfluous because it carries difficulties nature does not. Butler shows nature carries the very same difficulties, and the Vicar has never once doubted the sunrise over it.
The Vicar calls revelation superfluous because it carries difficulties nature does not. Butler shows nature carries the very same difficulties, and the Vicar has never once doubted the sunrise over it.
“Nothing which is the possible object of knowledge... can be probable to an infinite intelligence... But to us, probability is the very guide of life.”
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Introduction, public domain.public domain
In the gameButler starts by admitting that only an infinite mind has certainty. A prince raised in the tropics could reason from a lifetime of evidence that ice cannot exist, and still be wrong. Finite creatures must act on the best evidence they have.
Butler admits that we reason by probability, not certainty, in everything we do. On that same footing, a revelation that adds to natural religion is no less reasonable than nature itself.
Butler admits that we live by probability, not certainty. By that same standard, the Vicar cannot rule out that God has said more than nature says.
Butler admits that we live by probability, not certainty. By that same standard, the Vicar cannot rule out that God has said more than nature says.
“There is a presumption of millions to one, against the story of Cæsar, or of any other man. For suppose a number of common facts so and so circumstanced, of which we had no kind of proof, should happen to come into one’s thoughts; every one would, without any possible doubt, conclude them to be false.”
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Part II, Ch. II, public domain.public domain
In the gameBefore you hear the evidence, every particular fact is wildly unlikely — Caesar included. Butler grants that freely and then asks the only question that was ever in dispute: how much MORE unlikely a miracle is than any other unheard-of event, and whether the proof offered is enough to carry it.
Spinoza rules the miracle out before any witness speaks, because it would contradict the order God decreed. Butler grants the presumption and asks for its size: every particular fact is improbable to millions to one before its proof, and proof is what overcomes it.
“The proof of revelation is not some direct and express things only, but a great variety of circumstantial things also; and that though each of these direct and circumstantial things is indeed to be considered separately, yet they are afterwards to be joined together; for that the proper force of the evidence consists in the result of those several things, considered in their respects to each other, and united into one view.”
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Part II, Ch. VII, public domain — opening capital ours; the clause runs on from the sentence before it.public domain
In the gameButler asks for both halves of the work. Examine each claim on its own, then put them back together, because the strength of the case is in how they fit, which no single piece can show.
Newman quotes Butler on this point in the Grammar of Assent: the truth of religion, like the truth of common matters, is judged by the whole evidence taken together.
Strauss takes the Gospels a paragraph at a time, and paragraph by paragraph each one can be explained away. Butler asks for the second half of the work: examine them separately, then put them back, because the force of the case is in how they stand to one another.
“For it is easy to show, in a short and lively manner, that such and such things are liable to objection, that this and another thing is of little weight in itself; but impossible to show, in like manner, the united force of the whole argument in one view.”
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Part II, Ch. VIII, public domain.public domain
In the gameButler names the advantage the other side has in any short exchange, and it is not an advantage in truth. An objection fits in a sentence. The thing it is an objection to does not.
Every seam in the Pentateuch fits in a sentence and the book it is a seam in does not. Butler named the advantage that gives in any short exchange, and it is an advantage in convenience rather than in truth.
Newman calls Butler the great master of this kind of reasoning, where many small probabilities add up.
The specific move or chapter of Scripture that cuts through this one, and why. The number is how much harder it hits than usual — ×4 is four times the normal force.
Newman reasons from many small probabilities, and he calls Butler the great master of that kind of reasoning.
Newman builds the Grammar of Assent on ground Butler cleared, and he quotes the Analogy on the weight of probability.
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in English.
“Nothing which is the possible object of knowledge... can be probable to an infinite intelligence... But to us, probability is the very guide of life.”
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Introduction, public domain.
“We see no more reason why the frame and course of nature should be such a scheme, than why Christianity should... Christianity would be liable to the like objections, as the frame of nature.”
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion (1736), Part II, Ch. IV, public domain.
Written against the deists of Butler’s own day — Tindal chief among them, three years after Christianity as Old as the Creation.
It does not out-argue deism from a different starting point. It accepts the deist’s own method — reasoning from the constitution and course of nature — and shows that the features of revealed religion a deist calls arbitrary already sit, unremarked, inside the nature he has never doubted.