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Author | Richard Swinburne |
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Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Subject | the existence of God, philosophy of religion, theology, rational theism |
Genre | treatise |
Publisher | first edition Oxford University Press, second edition Clarendon Press |
Published in English | First edition: 1979 Reissued with appendices: 1991 Second edition: 2004 |
Pages | viii + 363 |
ISBN | 0-19-927167-4 |
The Existence of God is a 1979 book by British philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne, [1] [2] claiming the existence of the Abrahamic God on rational grounds. The argument rests on an updated version of natural theology with biological evolution using scientific inference, mathematical probability theory, such as Bayes' theorem, and of inductive logic. [3] In 2004, a second edition was released under the same title. [4] [5] [6] [7]
Swinburne discusses the intrinsic probability of theism, with an everlastingly omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly free [lower-alpha 1] God. He states various reasons for the existence of God, such as cosmological and teleological arguments, arguments from the consciousness of the higher vertebrates including humans, morality, providence, history, miracles and religious experience. Swinburne claims that the occurrence of evil does not diminish the probability of God, and that the hiddenness of God can be explained by his allowing free choice to humans. He concludes that on balance it is more probable than not that God exists, with a probability larger than 0.5, on a scale of 0.0 (impossible) to 1.0 (absolutely sure).
Swinburne summarised the same argument in his later and shorter book Is There a God? , omitting the use of Bayes' theorem and inductive logic, but including a discussion of multiple universes and cosmological inflation in the 2010 edition. [4] [9] [10]
Central to the argument of Swinburne is the use of inductive logic. He defines a correct C-inductive argument as an argument where the premisses merely add to the probability of the conclusion, and a stronger correct P-inductive argument when the premisses make the conclusion probable with a probability larger than ½. [11]
Swinburne applies mathematical conditional probability logic to various hypotheses related to the existence of God and defines
The notation is used for the conditional probability of an event occurring given that another event occurred previously. This is also termed the posterior probability of given .
The probability of the present evidence given background knowledge can be written as the sum of the evidence with God existing (, e and h) and the evidence without God (, e and not h): [12]
Application of Bayes' theorem to , the probability of the God hypothesis given evidence and background knowledge , results in [13]
The probability of a universe of our kind, as evidenced by without a single omnipotent god () can written as the sum of the probabilities of several optional hypotheses without a god, i = 1, 2, 3:
The sum of probabilities becomes [14]
Swinburne then claims to refute these three hypotheses:
Admittedly this hypothesis can explain the present state of affairs in the universe - the evidence - without the need of a God, that means the probability is 1.0: .
However, Swinburne estimates that the probability given the background knowledge is infinitesimally low.
Then the sum of probabilities of the various hypotheses without God [16]
So , the posterior probability of theism or God on the evidence considered with background knowledge , will be ½ or more, by a "correct P-inductive argument". Swinburne states that it is impossible to give exact numerical values for the probabilities used.
Swinburne concludes that deductive proofs of God fail, but claims that on the basis of the above P-inductive argument theism is probably true. He notes that in his calculation the evidence from religious experience and historical evidence of life, death and resurrection of Jesus were ignored: its addition would be sufficient to make theism overall probable with a probability larger than ½. [17]
In 2005 Joshua Golding reviewed The Existence of God and noted that the lack of justification for the afterlife leads to skepticism about whether God exists due to the problem of evil. The principle of credulity cannot be relied on without caution. Golding would prefer an a priori proof that God exists, a better inductive argument for God's existence, or an argument assuming for practical purposes, that God exists. [18]
Dutch philosopher Herman Philipse (Utrecht University) debated Swinburne in front of an academic audience at Amsterdam in 2017. [19] He praised Swinburne for attempting a scientific approach to the probablity of God's existence, at variance with Dutch theologians who refused rational arguments. A large number of points were raised, for instance Philipse claimed that a religious explanation for the universe presupposes a finite history. A class of cyclical "bouncing universe" theories, which could be tested, features an infinite history of the universe. According to Philipse's 2012 book God in the Age of Science? attributing mental properties to a being requires observing its bodily behaviour, so God could not be bodiless. Swinburne replied that universe itself can be viewed as God's body. According to Philipse, a hypothesis is tested scientifically not only for simplicity, but also for accordance with extensive background knowledge. Furthermore, Bayesian statistics cannot be applied if God is unfathomable.
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. It can be categorized as an indifference or absence of firm beliefs in theistic religions and atheism on that basis. Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist."
The teleological argument is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world which looks designed is evidence of an intelligent creator.
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The raven paradox, also known as Hempel's paradox, Hempel's ravens, or rarely the paradox of indoor ornithology, is a paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for the truth of a statement. Observing objects that are neither black nor ravens may formally increase the likelihood that all ravens are black even though, intuitively, these observations are unrelated.
The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) is the argument that attempts to prove the existence of the Christian God by arguing that logic, morals, and science ultimately presuppose a supreme being and that the Christian God must therefore be the source of logic and morals.
Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, and especially in mathematical statistics. Bayesian updating is particularly important in the dynamic analysis of a sequence of data. Bayesian inference has found application in a wide range of activities, including science, engineering, philosophy, medicine, sport, and law. In the philosophy of decision theory, Bayesian inference is closely related to subjective probability, often called "Bayesian probability".
Richard Granville Swinburne is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. He aroused much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion, a trilogy of books consisting of The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason.
The characterization of the universe as finely tuned suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that the observed values are, for some reason, improbable. If the values of any of certain free parameters in contemporary physical theories had differed only slightly from those observed, the evolution of the universe would have proceeded very differently and life as it is understood may not have been possible.
The existence of God is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized as logical, empirical, metaphysical, subjective or scientific. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God or deities involves the disciplines of epistemology and ontology and the theory of value.
Criticism of atheism is criticism of the concepts, validity, or impact of atheism, including associated political and social implications. Criticisms include positions based on the history of science, philosophical and logical criticisms, findings in both the natural and social sciences, theistic apologetic arguments, arguments pertaining to ethics and morality, the effects of atheism on the individual, or the assumptions that underpin atheism.
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic thought, a god is "a spirit or being believed to control some part of the universe or life and often worshipped for doing so, or something that represents this spirit or being". Belief in the existence of at least one god is called theism.
The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God. It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 of his 2006 book The God Delusion, "Why there almost certainly is no God".
Herman Philipse is a professor of philosophy at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Philipse taught at Leiden University from 1986 until 2003 where he obtained his doctorate in 1983.
The argument from beauty is an argument for the existence of a realm of immaterial ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of God, that roughly states that the elegance of the laws of physics or the elegant laws of mathematics is evidence of a creator deity who has arranged these things to be beautiful and not ugly.
The argument from religious experience is an argument for the existence of God. It holds that the best explanation for religious experiences is that they constitute genuine experience or perception of a divine reality. Various reasons have been offered for and against accepting this contention.
The argument from consciousness is an argument for the existence of God that claims that human consciousness cannot be explained by the physical mechanisms of the human body and brain, therefore asserting that there must be non-physical aspects to human consciousness. This is held as indirect evidence of God, given that notions about souls and the afterlife in Christianity and Islam would be consistent with such a claim.
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.
Philosophical theism is the belief that the Supreme Being exists independent of the teaching or revelation of any particular religion. It represents belief in God entirely without doctrine, except for that which can be discerned by reason and the contemplation of natural laws. Some philosophical theists are persuaded of God's existence by philosophical arguments, while others consider themselves to have a religious faith that need not be, or could not be, supported by rational argument.
God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason is a 2012 book by the Dutch philosopher Herman Philipse, written in English and published in the United Kingdom. Philipse found his Atheist Manifesto (1995) to be too hastily and superficially written, and decided to set up a more complete work to systematically refute all the arguments for the existence of God and adherence to any form of theism.
Is There a God? is a 1996 book by British philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne, claiming the existence of the Abrahamic God. The argument rests on an updated version of natural theology with biological evolution and Big Bang theory using scientific inference. In 2010, a revised version of the original book was released under the same title.
This outline will be followed by an examination of the major structural flaws that I think make Swinburne's argument less rational and rigorous than it appears on a casual reading. (In fact, a serious reasoning blunder seems to derail his project from ever attaining the intended conclusion.) Finally, I attempt to show that even if we ignore Swinburne's reasoning errors and take his conclusion at face value, a confirmed but astute theist could not derive much consolation from it.