ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the existing evidence about context, structure and content of the lectures on natural theology. It tackles Adam Smith's discussion of a traditional topic, the proofs of God's existence. The chapter reconstructs Smith's 'consideration' of the proofs of God's attributes. It reviews one more piece of Smith's analysis of psychological tendencies at the root of religion, namely those yielding philosophical monotheism, the doctrine of Plato, the Stoics, as well as of modern teachers of natural theology. The chapter considers the moral attributes either of invisible beings or God. The invisible beings act on no more respectable criterion than anger or caprice. The god on the one hand is the source of impartial moral laws and on the other is of both good and evil in the world. Polytheism requires a view of the moral qualities possessed by the imagined invisible beings as would be more consistent with the moral sentiments.
