Product Description

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne argues compellingly that the existence of the universe, its law-governed nature and fine-tuning, human consciousness and moral awareness, and evidence of miracles and religious experience, all taken together (and despite the occurrence of pain and suffering), make it likely that there is a God.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2415269 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 376 pages

Review
`Review from previous edition This impressive book ... deserves the serious attention of theologians ... Anyone seriously interested in philosophy of religion or systematic theology should read it. ' Basil Mitchell, Journal of Theological Studies

`It is ... the best and most philosophically interesting among recent defences of theism.' Elonore Stump, The Thomist

`He has ... set a highwater mark for inductive discussion of the existence of God.' Richard E. Creel, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

`A first-rate contribution to philosophical theology.' William Rowe, Philosophical Books

About the Author
Richard Swinburne is formerly Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, University of Oxford.

Customer Reviews

A Classic of Natural Theology
Swinburne is perhaps the leading figure in contemporary natural theology and _The Existence of God_ is his most important work. In it, he employs the tools of modern confirmation theory to develop a sustained argument for theism.

Swinburne views himself as part of the long tradition of Christian evidentialism that seeks to give rational reasons for belief in God. However, unlike, say, Anselm, Aquinas, or Paley, Swinburne thinks that every deductive argument for theism rests on premises that could rationally be rejected by the skeptic. Thus his arguments are inductive; he treats theism as a large-scale explanatory theory on a par with, say, quantum theory or Newton's theory of motion. He takes several classical arguments (the cosmological and teleological arguments, the argument from religious experience, etc.) and recasts them in terms of Bayesian probability theory, arguing that each of them confirms God's existence, i.e. raises the probability that He exists.

This is, I think, a brilliant strategy: it means that Swinburne's case does not rest on the cogency of any one argument and that none of his arguments depends on such controversial grounds as the principle of sufficient reaon or the claim that existence is a "real predicate." Rather, his premises generally reflect obvious features of the world (such as its existence and complexity) together with a set of widely accepted principles of scientific reasoning. Moreover, he establishes a rational framework applicable to any inductive arguments for theism, making it easier for other philosophers of religion to offer their own inductive arguments. (I'm surprised more of them have not done so!)

Of course, the book is open to criticism. Many of Swinburne's claims are idiosyncratic, for instance, his claim that at every moment God chooses to exist at the subsequent moment. But nothing critical rests on these oddities. More vexing is the dreaded "problem of the priors" besetting Bayesian reasoning in general. His assignment of probabilities to certain propositions might be unsatisfying to the skeptic, to say the least. But here Swinburne is aided by the modesty of his goal: he merely aims to show that it is more likely that God exists than that He does not. His assigments of priors, I think, almost always errs on the side of caution.

Presuppositionalists, Wittgensteinians, fundamentalists, and other fideists will hate this book, as will knee-jerk atheists. Thinking atheists and theists who value reason will appreciate it, even when they do not accept its conclusions. All should read it.

Ok, But Better is Available
Published in 2004 this is an updated version of the "The Existence of God" - originally released in the 1970's. Unlike many updates, however, that incorporate relatively minor changes this text has a significant amount of new and reworked material. Through examination of arguments for and against theism Swinburne makes a cumulative probabilistic argument for the existence of God. I offer the following thoughts for potential buyers.

The text provides a solid examination of the classic arguments for and against the existence of God. At the outset Swinburne lays out some of the basics of philosophical argumentation, i.e. what is an inductive argument, what is a deductive argument, etc. This approach may be helpful to readers new to philosophical discussion. I also thought the discussion of the argument from evil and the hiddeness of God to be quite well handled. His discussion of the other arguments, while not bad, were not noteworthy. I say this not because of the author's particular views (indeed I think share many of them) but, rather because of approach. His arguments seemed to oscilate between being excessiving accommodating to popular thought and being theologically bloated and rambling. While Swinburne has his followers, his writing is not at the level of a Craig or Plantinga.

With respect to shortcomings, I was surprised by the amount of typos that I noticed - this type of editorial minutia is not normally my forte. Also from a general perspective the text struck me as a bit too self-referential. In light of the tremendous amount of excellent contemporary material in this area it came across as either a bit lazy or even egotistical. Although by no means a terrible book, my strongest impression was - why? Swinburne does not say anything that has not already been said better by others.

Overall, I am not disappointed to have this book in my collection and I would not discourage anyone from picking it up. Readers new to this area would be better advised to start with one of the several great debate books co-authored by Craig (the ones with Flew and Synott-Armstrong are especially strong) and then some of the tremendous works by Plantinga.

An Interestingly Argued but Implausable Defense of Theism
British philosophy professor Richard Swinburne offers what is quite possibly the most sustained attempt to argue for God's existence since the middle ages. Formally a philosopher of science, Swinburne avoids many of the absurdities that characterize many recent defenses of theism. He is clearly familiar with logic and the tools of analytic philosophy and presents some interesting versions of several classic arguments.

His strategy is to argue that no single argument is cogent in isolation but that when several arguments are examined together their combined weight makes God's existence more probable than not.

While the work will be of interest to anyone seriously interested in the philosophy of religion, Swinburne's presentation contains some major difficulties. For one thing, many of his arguments proceed from the premise that certain aspects of our universe (for example, that it is orderly) are unlikely to have arisen in the absence of a divine cause. I find it difficult to see how he can determine a priori (that is, independent of experience) what sort of universe one might expect to have arisen on its own. Moreover, Swinburne's defense of these claims frequently consists of nothing more than pointing out that alternative universes are conceivable. Given the many well known problems with concervability as a guide to possibility as well as our current state of uncertainty with respect to the untimate fabric of the universe, such arguments seem very weak indeed. I, for one, find such dubious starting points and glib defenses to be a major flaw in Swinburne's whole project.