 Lawns do not, of course, have four sides of equal length and in saying (11) the speaker does not mean that the audience was not making any noise whatsoever. According to modern pragmatic theories of interpretation (such as Sperber &amp; Wilson 1986; Carston 2002; Recanti 2004), constituent expressions or concepts undergo an ad hoc modification prompted by the context in which they are uttered and understood. For instance, (10) might involve a loosening of the concept SQUARE, i.e., SQUARE* that includes not just objects that are square but also objects (like lawns) that look square or are approximately square. Akin to Swinburne’s account of rule modification in analogy, the condition that squares have four sides of equal length and internal angles of ninety degrees is relaxed. Understood in this way, however, analogy is not distinctive of religious discourse but a prevalent characteristic of normal communication. When God is the subject matter, expressions undergo a suitable ad hoc loosening as part of normal, literal communication.