Goodness of Human Nature

• Butler believed by acting morally, man was following nature. He saw human nature as hierarchically structured with conscience at the top. Through he sometimes wrote that the conscience is the voice of God, he mostly viewed it as a universal "organ" of man, thus acting immorally is unnatural since morality is a fundamental aspect of human nature. This belief stemmed from observations on the preponderance of agreement on standards of behavior in the civilized world.
  
  

Self Love Versus Benevolence

• Butler saw the conflict between self-love and altruism as illusory -- that benevolence is a part of people's everyday life, whether intentional or not. Louisiana State professor Terry Harris writes, Butler defined self-love as "the effort to control and manage passions so that the individual can live happily -- in virtue rather than in vice" and benevolence as the focus "on the individual's relationship to society." Therefore, "a person who is benevolent will help others to live happily. Whether... arising from self-love or...from benevolence, virtuous actions are" natural behavior, he says.
  
  

Afterlife

• The first part of Butler's most famous work "Analogy of Religion," argues in favor of the afterlife as incentive to live with a conscience. He believes the expectation of a future life to be the foundation of all man's hopes and fears. Part of this belief stems from his realization that the world as is does not seem based on underlying principles of justice, and the best solution to this issue based on his belief in Christianity and the foundational moral order of the universe is that morality is rewarded in a future life.
  
  

Christianity

• The second half of the "Analogy" sought to demonstrate the naturalness of revealed religion and morality against the claims of Deists. He argues mortal man cannot judge the morality of Revelation. He further argues that all living creatures owing their survival to the nurturing mediation of others argues in favor of Jesus as mediator between God and man. He believes the universe is fundamentally built on loving mediation and that this is the incentive to live virtuously.