Professor Richard Swinburne | Religion Does Have A Place In Public Life (6/8) | Oxford Union

27th February, 2020.
Oxford Union on Twitter: @OxfordUnion

The Motion: This House Believes That Religion Has No Place In Public Life.

The motion was defeated.

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[tln_]

It is amazing that Swinburne is still alive.

[board]

amazing speaker, hope i meet him someday before he goes

[nathanwood]

I think the opposition is asking religious people to not do something that they themselves are already doing. They are asking religious people to not attempt to publicly realize their vision for society because that vision is predicated on believing certain things about the spiritual. But secular people believe that the public sector should be secular as a result of their own beliefs about the spiritual, namely that it does not exist. This is *not* an attempt to be fair to all religious parties, all of which are exclusive when it comes to certain outcomes, by favoring none of them. Secularism is also an exclusive party which cannot agree with religions as to those same outcomes - it is just another faction of belief. Secularism has no more right to being the de facto arbiter of public order than any other worldview.

[itsallminor]

Excellent. Thank you for refusing to put down the torch sir. And at 85 years old none the less.

[afsaljamal]

From Swinburnes' most popular book 'Is There A God', 2010:

"Argument and counter-argument, qualification and amplification, can go on forever. But religion is not exceptional in this respect. With respect to any subject whatever, the discussion can go on forever. New experiments can always be done to test Quantum Theory, new interpretations can be proposed for old experiments, forever. And the same goes for interpretations ofhistory or theories of politics. BUT LIFE IS SHORT AND WE HAVE TO ACT on the basis of what such evidence as we have had time to investigate shows on balance to be probably true. We have to vote in elections without having had time to consider the merits of the political programmes of even the main candidates with respect to one or two planks of their programmes. And we have to build bridges and send rockets into space before we can look at all the arguments for and against whether our construction is safe—let alone be absolutely certain that it is. And in religion too we have to act (while allowing that, later in life, we may look again at the arguments). The conclusion of this book was that, on significant balance of probability, there is a God. If you accept it, it follows that you have certain duties. God has given us life and all the good things it contains, including above all the opportunities to mould our characters and help others. Great gratitude to God is abundantly appropriate. We should express it in worship and in helping to forward his purposes—which involves, as a preliminary step, making some effort to find out what they are. But duties are of limited extent (as we saw in Chapter 1); a moderate amount of worship and obedience might satisfy them. We could leave it at that. Yet, if we have any sense and any idealism, we cannot leave it at that. God in his perfect goodness will want to make the best of us: make saints of us and use us to make saints of others (not, of course, for his sake, but for ours and for theirs), give us deep understanding of himself (the all-good source of all being), and help us to interact with him. All that involves an unlimited commitment. But God respects us; he will not force these things on us—we can choose whether to seek them or not. If we do seek them, there are obvious obstacles in this world to achieving them (some of which I discussed in Chapter 6). The obstacles are necessary, partly in order to ensure that our commitment is genuine. But God has every reason in due course to remove those obstacles—to allow us to become the good people we seek to be, to give us the vision of himself—forever."

[DaveH-oueh]

Awesome. I am loving this. I hope to visit both countries. So research at Lund University and cross over to Switzerland to do a comparative study. Thank you ❤

[kuroryudairyu]

Even if i still like Swinburne, though i must say that he considers real proved the resurrection of Jesus, not considering that resurrection and other religions happenings in Christianity are mere copies of previous religious myths

[thomasseichter]

If you refer to Jesus moral teachings I don't think you are right to cherry pick those you agree with and ignore those that are obviously immoral.
If your proposition is, Jesus told us what god wants then you have to accept stoning a women for adultery is an adequate punishment.

[MarcosPaulo-udpt]

AMAZING! CONGRATULATIONS PROFESSOR! GOD BLESS US...

[AmitabhKalla_pushtiras]

What is the word religion here refers to?
Because 80 % Indians don't have any religion Hindu don't believe in any religion but instead of religion we strongly follow are not believers but yes spiritualism is important aspect of Indian public

[euanthompson]

Swinburn makes an interesting argument by pointing out that banning arguments because one party doesn't understand them is a recipe for disaster.
However, I believe this may have been better served by applying it in a reverse of the current conversation.
The af would not accept that because Swinburn doesn't understand their "scientific" reasoning for x they can't use that reasoning.

All in all, there isn't much to say, it was a pretty well thought out argument for the neg.

[andymccoy]

In the symbol of western Christianity why would we debate our values with non believers

[TONYxndHAWK]

It’s unfortunate that we have to be reminded about the true oppressors of the 20th century with the rise of socialism/communism

[Gelth]

Professor Swinburne stands atop a scaffolding of twigs with no ability to hold or carry any weight. Simply put alot of this is true with nothing to back it lol.

[lincolnsetter]

Professor Richard Swinburne: You're not entiltled.
SJW: WHAT?!?


Great point.

[maria]

You don't have to totally ban religion from public life, only the there Abrahamic religions.
That would solve every problem not only in England but globally!
The Devine always should be a part of social life but not represented by the abominations that are the monotheistic, misogynistic, divisive religions