Hugh Rice explains why belief in God need not be seen as a strange or irrational kind of belief, but can be a natural extension of our ordinary ways of thinking. He suggests that we should think of God in an abstract way, and he offers a satisfying account of the relationship between God and goodness. Anyone interested in the nature of God and the basis of religious belief will enjoy this book.

There is a familiar argument based on the principle that the past is fixed that, if God foreknows what I will do, I do not have the power to act otherwise. So, there is a problem about reconciling divine omniscience with the power to do otherwise. However the problem posed by the argument does not provide a good reason for adopting the view that God is outside time. In particular, arguments for the fixity of the past, if successful, either establish (...) His timelessness independently of the problem, or mean that the problem could not be solved by adopting the view that He is timeless. (Published Online April 7 2006). (shrink)

Argues that the ordinary scientific outlook is not characterized by the sort of metaphysical hygiene and epistemological security that are sometimes thought of as the goals of empiricism. It is committed to a belief in order; it is committed to a belief in rationality—that some reasons for beliefs are good reasons, and some bad; it is committed to explanation. These commitments, I shall be arguing, provide a foundation for a belief in God.

The main line of Lewis's account of causation is in terms of chains of counterfactual dependence. According to his original account, a causal chain is a sequence of two or more events, with counterfactual dependence at each step; and one event is a cause of another if there is a causal chain from one to the other. But some awkward cases involving redundant causation lead him to introduce the notion of quasi-dependence. Laurie Paul has suggested a way of dealing with (...) one important class of these cases in terms of dependence proper. I shall suggest a different way of dealing with this class of cases; I shall also suggest that it is possible to deal with other awkward cases too in terms of dependence proper. (shrink)

Argues that objective value is capable of explaining, not just our believing this or that, but also the very existence of order. The natural order exists because it is good that it should do so. This idea, I claim, is a natural extension of ordinary thinking. I also argue that the explanation of the existence of the world directly in terms of goodness is to be preferred to an account that introduces a mediating God, who creates the world because he (...) perceives that it would be good that such a world should exist; and further, that it is reasonable to prefer it to an account according to which the existence of the world has no explanation. (shrink)

Can belief in God can be meritorious if not epistemically rational in the ordinary way? I argue that the primary condition to be met if a belief is to be meritoriousis that it is based on a good reason, and that to believe that something is so on the grounds that it would be good if it were can be to believe for a good reason.In particular I argue that to believe in God on the grounds that it would be (...) good if He existed can be to believe for a good reason, and that such a belief can,therefore, be meritorious. (shrink)

Discusses the relationship between God and morality. I argue that the most satisfying view identifies the will of God with the basic facts about goodness. This, I claim, yields an abstract conception of God, according to which to say that the world exists because it is good is to say that it was created by God. I argue further that God, so conceived, can be thought of, not only as the creator of the world, but as reacting to the world, (...) as possessing knowledge, and as loving. I reject, however, the identification of duty with the content on divine commands. (shrink)

The introduction explains the aim of the book and provides an outline of its contents.

Hugh Rice; IV*—Practical Reasoning as Reasoning, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 49–64, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

Discusses the relation between miracles and the laws of nature and the question of whether we could have a good reason to believe in miracles—i.e. to believe that God directly intervenes in the world. I argue that such divine intervention would not be necessary, since God could achieve his purposes through his original act of creation, but that it might, nonetheless, be good that he should respond to his creatures. I also note that, on the abstract conception of God proposed, (...) God will constantly affect the workings of the world through our perception of his will. (shrink)

Hume thought that people's ‘beliefs’ about morality were really just feelings. I argue that people have genuine beliefs about good and bad, right and wrong. I consider arguments against the existence of objective value based on its alleged epistemological and metaphysical oddity, and the existence of disagreements. I argue that these moves can be countered, and, in particular, that for the most part such arguments would tell equally against the existence of objectively good reasons for belief.

Argues that rational belief is important in so far as we are interested in the truth, and that deference to authority does not provide an attractive alternative. Also argues that it cannot be made out that it would be good to have an irrational belief in God by appealing to the importance of trust or, as Pascal's wager does, to the good consequences of belief in God, if he exists. I go on to consider the value of belief in God, (...) when conceived in the way proposed. I conclude that, valuable as this may be, what is most valuable is the knowledge of God's will; because that is knowledge of what is good and what is bad. (shrink)

Concerned with the question of how our beliefs in necessary truths can be reasonable. In the course of considering this general question, I argue that our belief in objective value—that some things are good and others bad—commits us to the view that such beliefs are capable of being reliable, at least to some extent. And this belief in reliability, in its turn, commits us to the idea that value can make a difference; that the fact that it would be good (...) that something should be so, for instance, can have a bearing on the ways things are—by having a bearing on what beliefs we form. So objective goodness can explain. (shrink)

Discusses the problem of evil, and, in particular, the question whether the world could have been created by God, when he is conceived in the way I have proposed. I consider the way in which the existence of free will might make the existence of evil in a good world inevitable, and whether the existence of free will is essential to any solution. I also consider the problem posed by unintended evil and the existence of terrible lives.

Linda Zagzebski has recently argued that there is a conflict between a common view of the asymmetry of time and various other metaphysical hypotheses. She identifies conflicts in the case of the modal arrow of time and in the case of the causal arrow of time. In the case of the modal arrow I argue that on one view there is no conflict and that on another the principle should be abandoned that there are entailments between propositions about the past (...) and the future. In the case of the causal arrow I argue that the conflict can be avoided by the adoption of a suitable closure principle. (shrink)