The Analogy of Religion
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.
- Catch rate
- 61 / 255
- Base research
- 246
- Stat total
- 338
Base stats
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.
Why these numbers
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.
Slow going by design. C. S. Lewis and John Warwick Montgomery both still reach for its method two centuries later.
Cited for this book
Written against the deists of Butler’s own day — Tindal chief among them, three years after Christianity as Old as the Creation — the Analogy does not try to 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 very features of revealed religion a deist calls arbitrary or obscure already sit, unremarked, inside the natural world he has never doubted. If that did not disqualify nature, Butler asks, why should it disqualify revelation?
Moves learned
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 | Probability, The Guide of Life | Natural Theology | Argument | 82 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 34 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 44 | The Same Objections, Answered The Same Way | Natural Theology | Argument | 100 | 95% | 10 |
Read it: Probability, the Guide of Life
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.