In his book Facing Evil, a book that addresses many of the themes with which I am concerned here, John Kekes remarks that ‘Christianity is another way of succumbing to false hope’. This book, though not a point by point response to Kekes (to whom I shall refer only occasionally), aims to refute that contention – not just to deny it, or to represent another point of view, but to refute it, and to do so in a way that makes my reasoning as transparently open to criticism as I can make it. There is no better task that philosophy can perform, in my view, than to construct clear and rigorous arguments about perennially important topics.

‘Refute’ overstates the case perhaps. To be realistic, my aim is the slightly more modest one of providing compelling (admittedly not conclusive) reasons for thinking Kekes's view to be false. The way in which I propose to do so, however, cannot claim any fundamental originality. With considerable adaptation and extension, the elements of the line of thought I shall pursue are to be found in Kant's second Critique, the Critique of Practical Reason. My argument is essentially a version of his so-called ‘moral argument for the existence of God’.