ABSTRACT
Jonathan Israel is right that ideas are important. They are not mere epiphenomena but rather they shape our values and are at once both ethical and political. Their effects are real and tangible. The history of philosophy is important for determining the nature and future shape of the philosophy of religion. The natural theology of the Cambridge Platonists, Price and Wollstonecraft appreciated that a universe arising purely by chance could contain no real moral value and could not harbour truth. Natural theology should have two main aims as Pamela Sue Anderson proposes: a commitment to the reality of truth and goodness and the capacity to subject the models of self, nature and divinity to reflective scrutiny. Both of these aims are present to some extent in the philosophy of religion of the natural theologians, and they highlight how essential it is that analytic philosophy of religion and its resultant natural theology be reconceived.
