ABSTRACT

Price presents two different versions of the design argument in his writings. The first type is an argument from design occurring in his Being and Attributes of the Deity and in the Four Dissertations, and the second type is the argument to design found in the Review. Price expresses surprise at the evident human obsession with miraculous events, which ignores contemplation of the normal functioning of nature. The result is a natural theology that arises to a significant extent from a Platonically inspired account of divine action and creation. The arguments about design and contingency are thus primarily ethical arguments and they rest on an ontology of a divinised cosmos. Natural theology and ethics are inextricably linked, and the belief that reason can attain fundamental truths about God is grounded in a basic theological commitment to a divinised ethically significant universe.