| The Existence of God | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 14 reviews)
Sales Rank: 239452
Category: Book
Author: Richard Swinburne
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 376
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0199271682
Dewey Decimal Number: 212.1
EAN: 9780199271689
ASIN: 0199271682
Publication Date: June 3, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 God and Ogd October 15, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
What did the author intend by naming his book "The Existence of God"? Most reviewers who thought this was a well argued book did not see the fundamental flaw which renders every one of his arguments meaningless. Most, if not all, of the arguments are not new and they have all been refuted in substance elsewhere by philosphers. I shall thus only comment on the fundamental flaw (which has also not escape rational thinkers). It was plain that the object of the book was show by means of "philosophical" arguments that "God" exists; and, implicitly, that theists can take comfort that they can now use this book to deny that their belief in "God" was only an article of faith that cannot be proven. If this was meant to be a philosophical approach, and the arguments are philosophical arguments, the author, if he were a philosopher, would begain by defining the object that is being proved. Nowhere in this book has the author defined "God". Nowhere does he say that "By 'God' I meant that it is (a), (b), and (c), and I shall now proceed to prove (a), (b), and (c). Without defining "God", the author's entire inductive argument, for example, can just as well prove the existence of "Ogd". He did mention that God was "omniscient and perfectly good", but these are just descriptions of attributes and fall short of definition of what "God" is. Was God a person? It is not explained how attributes exist without a person. Was the person of God a puff of smoke or an invisible, formless spirit, and if so, what is an "invisible, formless spirit"? Was God male or female or both? Does he speak, and if so, in which language or every language on earth, or a language not known to man? Can God speak if he has no voicebox? If he has a voice box, would he have a stomach? If he has one, what does he do with it? These questions cannot be avoided if one wishes to prove the existence of a being. Definition comes before proof.
 Proofs of God's Existence Questionable August 24, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
There are several criticism of any proof of a Christian God, or any religion's God that any thoughtful person should be aware of.
1. Any proof or verification of the existence of God would be true of any religion and not dependent on a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or even Hindu interpretation. Amusingly something that continually gets overlooked is if there is a proof of a God, it that doesn't disprove the existence of other Gods, which humanity is rife with. Buddhism even demonstrates that a belief in the existence of a God is totally unnecessary for a religion. So whether a God exists or not is stunningly irrelevant to any religion! Of course, I don't expect monotheists to agree with me.
2. But the word "proof" bothers me. A proof is something that is not dependent on any observations. It is, by I. Kant's categories dependent on 'a priori' reasoning, the same that would be used to prove a math or logic problem, for example. So Richard Swinburne's dependence on probability, which is, by its nature, dependent on observation and a posteriori reasoning, could never provide a "proof", but only, at best, a scientific verification. But a scienfitic verification is only possible if he were able to provide a testable hypothesis which could then be testable. Richard fails to do that. He provides no test or test results. His reasoning is circular. He wants God to exist therefore the evidence he selectively looks at using probability convinces him of God's existence. The difficulty with that is that it is no proof or verification at all. Belief can never be the starting point of a proof. If his argument were valid it could also be used to "prove" the existence of an omnipotent Unicorn. If you are going to use probability, where is the measurable evidence for the existence of God? You still have to be able to measure God. Where is the God? Point to God. (If you cannot do that you have just blown Swinburne's argument out of the water.)
Probability has also been used by fundamentalist in their attempts to "prove" that evolution is impossible because it is too improbable. Sort of a reversal of Swinburne's attempt to prove God is probable, therefore possible, therefore must exist. The fact that the DNA mechanism for evolution is well known, that even random mutations in genes over very long periods of time can be shown to produce new species, and the fact that we do have the resultant variety of species, apparently is not understood by them. If something exists, it is 100% probable no matter what their flawed probability logic tells them. And you can point to the species, you can measure them.
The fundamentalist's delimma illustrates the same problem that Swinburne has. Probability is really most useful for predicting future events and less so for past events or determining existence of entities.
3. Finally, there really needs to be an end put to the so called "proofs" of God's existence for several reasons. Not only is it as likely as the proofs of unicorns, in the deepest sense of any religious belief, it is an insult to the very concept of God. If there is a God, God doesn't exist! What I mean by that is that things that exist are objects. When you are obsessed with the existence of God you are turning God into an object. Sort of a philosophical version of an idol. We can verify that objects exist because we can measure their attributes. In other words, existence is simply what we say if something has attributes. How do you know something exists? By observing its attributes. If it doesn't have attributes that can be measured it may be a concept or a thought but it is not an object that exists independent of your mind. Saying that "God is Love" is not declaring an attribute as it must be a measurable attribute, and supposedly God's love is beyond imagination. Anyone who thinks that love is an easy thing to measure has never loved.
So when is the last time that God was measured? The simplist concept of God is that God is beyond being measured, beyond being an object, and consequently, beyond being at all in the sense of existing. The very core concept of God excludes existence. (Pretending God is a Being "outside" of time is nothing more than a slight of hand and not very honest. You cannot "Be" and be outside of time.) For those who are truly religious, beyond the knee-jerk, superficial Sundy Schoolers, those who have confronted the dark night of their belief and realized, e.g., Mother Theresa, there is nothing to substantiate their belief, just the emptiness and the darkness of the unknown, that should be a solace because it means that the God they worship is beyond the God of any scripture, and all the terrible things that humans attribute to God in them, beyond the sado-masochistic authoritarianism of all monotheistic or polytheistic Gods, beyond a God who would torture someone for eternity for not being submissive, or tantalize the libidos of sexually uptight men with a finite number of virgins to ravage in heaven, and even beyond the believer's personal flaws and limited imaginations.
So any "proof" of God's existence is treating God as an object.
Someone in the theological field who is confronted with the issue of proofs of God might want to read this book, after all it is the best available. But don't expect that issue to have been settled by this book and try to realize that beliefs are not going to ever be the sucessful subject of the scientific method of probability, just as science is not something that can be usurped by religion.
Indecipherable August 25, 2007
2 out of 21 found this review helpful
I went to graduate school and I say with all honesty that this is one of the most self conscious, indecipherable pile of erudite gibberish I've seen in quite a while. If you can read this book for more than fifteen minutes, there IS a God.
Not worth the effort November 10, 2006
9 out of 35 found this review helpful
I found the book disappointing in that it depends on the interpretation of experience being a legitimate means of proving the existence of a deity. I don't need this book for that. Also the christological bent of this author is offputting, giving the sense that he's not able to step back far enough to sense whether his views are in truth as objective as he pretends them to be, or as I sense them to be, subjective wishful thinking.
 A Rigorous Defense of Christian Theism October 1, 2006
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
Beginning with a discussion of Bayes' Probability Theorem, inductive reasoning, and the nature and justification of explanation, Swinburne goes on to posit the intrinsic probability of theism as being the explanation for life, the universe, and everything. He does this by distinguishing between scientific and personal explanations and finding no satisfactory scientific explanation for the universe. He then applies Ockham's Razor to the personal explanations, and finds the God of Judaism, Christianity,and Islam to be the most intrisically probable personal explanation.
From the beginning of intrinsic probability, Swinburne then considers and assesses the values of various arguments to theism. He dismisses some out of hand, such as Pascal's Wager and the argument from morality, and assigns weight to the other arguments. He finds good cosmological and teleological arguments, as well as good arguments from consciousness and providence. He then addresses the strongest argument against theism: the Problem of Evil, and concludes the study with arguments from history, miracles, and religious experience. The balance of probability is that it is somewhat more likely that God exists than otherwise.
Swinburne's dismissal of morality as a good argument to the existence of God is somewhat out of tune with his endorsement of the beauty of the universe as a good argument to the existence of God. Morality, understood as spiritual beauty, is at least as good (or bad) an argument to God as physical beauty.
Swinburne's argument against the Problem of Evil is probably the weakest portion of the book. Spiritual evil is easily handled. If you're going to give humans free choice, then some of them are going to choose evil. But the argument that natural evil (in the form of earthquakes, etc.) is necessary so that humans can display their good character is, to say the least, weak. A better explanation seems to be that a universe of good without evil is a logical impossibility (like a square circle or a four-sided triangle), and that even an omnipotent God cannot create a logical impossibility.
The Appendices speak to the Trinity, the argument to design, and Plantinga's critique of evolution. The validity of the doctrine of the Trinity should not be judged solely on Swinburne's abbreviated explanation. He wrote a complete book on the subject, "The Christian God," which should be consulted before dismissing the arguments he makes here. Having said that, his short discussion of the Trinity is not as intellectually satisfying as other portions of the book, and it sounds very much like the position of Michael Servetus, who got himself burned at the stake for voicing similar views during the Reformation.
Swinburne's analysis of Plantinga's critique of evolution is interesting. Plantinga seemingly argues that evolution is impossible without the directing hand of God, a position similar to Bergson's position in "Creative Evolution." (Bergson argued for an "elan vital" rather than God as the creative force behind evolution). Plantinga thus argues that this necessity for God disproves evolution. Swinburne turns Plantinga's argument around and argues that the fact of evolution is proof of God's existence.
This book is not an easy read, but if you're interested in a rigorous philosophical justification of Christian theism, it's worth reading.
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