Swinburne: On Arguments for God's Existence

Visiting Scholar Richard Swinburne discusses God's Existence with CCT Associate Director Steve Porter.

[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."

[billybee]

too good.... good. even his feeble voice could not hide the greatness of his reasoning power.

[KevmanX]

Never ceases to amaze me how, even when a person of high intelligence presents a solid case for the existence of God, that you still find atheists in the comments section denying it, even though they themselves do not have nearly the same accolades as the person speaking.

[kravitzn]

The trouble with his argument is that the god hypothesis could be applied equally well to a chaotic universe. The answer "because god wanted it that way" can be used to explain nearly anything: if the universe were chaotic, the theist would say "These things are the workings of god and are not to be understood by man". It also seems strange that, having specially ordered things, he would violate or perturb this order with miracles. Theism does not predict order to the exclusion of disorder.

[stephanmarcus]

If all particles behaved exactly the same under all circumstances the universe would have expanded from the big bang in a perfectly uniform manner. The universe has discernible features only because particle interactions are probabilistic and non-linear.
What scientific evidence does any theologian have for the their sweeping statements about the motivation, aims and objectives of god?

[rawirongamer]

You can't prove god with arguements you need Evidence! I ask you how would you prove that your friend is real?

[QuisSeperabit]

The problem with your rebuttal is that if the Universe were disorderly there would be no theists to make any postulations about the orderliness of the Universe or otherwise. Sentient life, or biological life itself for that matter, is only possible because the constants that he discusses are fixed. As to miracles, when God disrupts the natural order of things He does so for specific reasons. In the case of the NT miracles the miracles were intended to authenticate the message.

[kravitzn]

So, rather than say "no we wouldn't, because our theists' reasoning is not so trivial" you respond "no we wouldn't, silly, because if that were true there would be no theists." The problem with talking about god's actions with a theist, is that they presume/assume that they are justified, or say that they are justified by definition. I think it shows a sloppiness to need to go back in and tweak rather than having it be perfect ab initio.

[celestialteapot]

We don't know why things are the way they are so it must have needed God to make it this way, oh dear. Thank you, God, for making me an atheist.

[mansouribnalandalus]

VirtualC :" God in the narrow sense but God in the major sense of all godly properties".
"God" word is a partuclar property, so your "major sens" is just confusion between properties. God is not the first name of the Creator.

[flowwiththeuniverse]

i can understand order, cause and effect. however i have trouble with so much human and animal cruelty and suffering!!!!

[mansouribnalandalus]

Failed.
Try again. Ask for help too.

[YOSUP]

Exactly how could natural selection take place in a universe where cause and effect are not consistent? It would be much more miraculous for us to find ourselves living in a universe without the laws of cause and effect needed to generate natural selection, so that argument fails.

[themetsfan]

Swinburne's approach, while admirable, is not the best way to argue for the existence of God. The "cumulative case" argument for God is not particularly interesting, at least philosophically. The more interesting way is to argue for a metaphysical system and then follow that system to its inevitable conclusions. This is why Aquinas' argumentation is far more solid.

[Quiestre]

A lot of assumptions are made here.

First that humans are important.
Second that an orderly universe should follow to a god. 
Unlikeliness doesn't prove gods existence. Even if it is unlikely that the universe is as it is, it does not logically follow that therefor a god must exist.

not only that, but that that god also cares about humans.

Besides it just pushes the question. If the change the orderly universe exist is so low it needs a god, then the question goes towards god now. How can a god exist that creates such an orderly universe, that is even more unlikely.

Also maybe the physical "laws" just cannot be any other way. It's the only way they work, or else a universe couldn't exist and it would still be just a singularity.

So even with a multiverse theory, maybe only universes like ours can exist. And since we are here observing the universe we can conclude that this is at least one way for it to exist.

Evidence for god, as to be evidence for god, and not for other things to then slap a god on.

[suomynona]

Ok, why does he assume that the multiverse is governed by strict laws but begins his argument by questioning the universe's laws for being strict and unchanging? (this is a rhetorical question by the way. The answer is because his arguement holds no water)

[mansouribnalandalus]

Try linguistic, not philosophy without roots.
". To be a theist you don't have to believe in God"
What means God ?
A word is a characteristic, this is why your post have no sens.

[ngh]

multiverse theory, is like lottery balls: the numbers rotated in a sphere that is spun by an engine created by man, in a room, build by some construction worker designed by certain engineer - all of them humans. then there is one person who presses the button to release one ball out of rotation. This system is designed by human beings. if universes were the balls then human beings are Gods. The designer of lottery machine is God and other workers in the lottery machine are the angles

[MiravusVideos]

What Swinburn states at 1:33 to 1:48 (that if the creation of the universe were the result of random chance, then the laws of physics would operate differently from day to day and place to place) is both incorrect and belies an almost inexcusable ignorance of the science of the matter. If this in any way a pivotal piece of evidence in his argument, it is rightly doomed to failure.

His whole argument in general is just begging the question. If our universe is orderly, then god exists; the universe is orderly, therefore god exists - this just defines god in such a way that it necessarily exists. This should be utterly unconvincing to anyone who desires a rigorously verified, sound, reasonable argument.

[julianjanssen]

Ascribing a teleology to regularities in the universe is wholly unnecessary. Jesus Christ...