Abstract

various arguments for the existence of God have risen and fallen over the centuries, but the one that has perhaps fallen furthest is the argument from the universal consent of mankind. Put simply, the argument went as follows: near enough everyone, in near enough every nation, in near enough every historical era, has believed in God; therefore, God must exist. Or, as it was summarized in the strikingly Lincolnesque terms of Diderot’s Encyclopédie: “You can fool some of the people, or fool all of them in certain places and certain times, but not all people in all places and in all ages.”1 Universal agreement in the truth of a certain proposition was taken by many as a sufficient demonstration of that truth. This..