Philosophy and Theology

Volume 26, Issue 1, 2014

An Examination of C. Stephen Evans’s “Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments”

In his excellent book Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments, C. Stephen Evans argues that what underlies the classical theistic arguments are theistic natural signs. The awareness of our own contingency underlies the cosmological argument, beneficial order underlies the teleological argument, our experience of feeling moral obligations underlies the moral argument, and the intrinsic value of human beings underlies the axiological argument. Natural signs point to an entity without forcing belief in this entity upon the perceiver. Therefore, natural signs can be interpreted in different ways. Understanding the classical theistic arguments as an expression of underlying theistic natural signs explains why the reactions to the arguments have been so different.