372 NOTEScomprehensive and economical explanation, from a religious point of view, of the facts of the
history of religions. A proffered ‘best explanation’ is not a proof, because it is always open to
someone else to come forward and offer what they believe is a better explanation. And so the
right response of someone who does not like my proposed explanation is not to complain
that it is not proved but to work out a viable alternative.” I reject this notion of what “the
right” response is. If I propose that the reason why our friend is putting cherry pies into the
dishwasher is that she thinks the pies are prime numbers, you do not have to offer another
hypothesis in order to show that my explanation would not work. Prime numbers aren’t
things you can move around.
10 The terms “nice” and “morally nice” serve merely as place-holders for substantive accounts
of moral virtue. RP thinks there is deep moral agreement between religious traditions. If one
looks at more than overt behavior, this is dubious. It also apparently thinks that morality
does not significantly change with changes in metaphysics; this too is highly dubious.
11 Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions, op. cit., p.118.
12 This is argued in some detail in the present author’s The Epistemology of Religious Experience
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
13 Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions, op. cit., p. 62.
14 Ibid., p. 71.
15 Ibid., p. 69.
16 Ibid., pp. 62, 63.
17 Ibid., p. 67.
18 A monotheistic doctrine on which human persons are created in God’s image can allow that
a concept can be human and reliable. So can a view in which the idea of revelation is taken
seriously. But RP filters these out.
19 One could simply say that logic generates terms – say, predicates – not properties. Then the
predicates are such that a predicate F corresponds to a property if a sentence of the form “X
is F” is true. On a widely accepted account, terms replacing “X” in “There is an X” and “For
all X” refer to things and terms replacing “F” in “There is an x such that Fx” and “For all x,
Fx” are true or false of things. It does not matter to my argument whether or not we speak
of terms or properties; it can be cast in either manner.
20 Professor Hick’s way of speaking, and mine here as well, is in various ways shorthand for a
more careful account. For example: (i) a formal system of logic is not a system of propositions,
but of prepositional functions – “There is an x such that Fx” and “For all x, Fx” are neither
true nor false; they are but logical skeletons of existential and universal propositions,
respectively; (ii) hence such things as “For all X, X = X” and “For all x, Fx or not-Fx” are
neither true nor false; (iii) the interpretation of a formal system applies it to propositions, and
logic applies to things via applying to propositions true or false of those things.
21 Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions, op. cit., p. 60.
22 Ibid., p. 63.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., p. 67.
25 I’ve made the point in print twice without its importance being noted. The admission it refers
to is itself enough to refute RP.
26 Strictly, I suppose, we’d have one genus – happy properties – with two species: happy properties
that are generable from logic, and happy properties that are not. I leave it to the reader to
work out the rephrasing of my argument that this point would require.
27 Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions, op. cit., p. 62.
28 When Professor Hick says that religious experience is a response to the transcendent
Real, he means it is not merely a projection by us. The Real contributes something and
we contribute something.