Richard Swinburne

In his ’Logic and Theism’ Sobel claims that the allocation of prior probabilities to theories is a purely subjective matter. I claim that there are objective criteria for determining prior probabilities of theories (dependent on their simplicity and scope); and if there were not, science would be a totally irrational activity. I reject Sobel’s main criticism of my own cumulative argument for the existence of God that I argue illegitimately from each datum raising the probability of theism to the conjunction of all data raising that probability, since I explicitly adopted a procedure which does not commit that fallacy.

Jeremy Gwiazda has criticized my claim that God, understood as an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly free person is a person ’of the simplest possible kind’ on the grounds that omnipotence, etc., as spelled out by me are omnipotence, etc., of restricted kinds, and so less simple forms of these properties than maximal forms would be. However, the account which I gave of these properties in ’The Christian God’ (although not in ’The Coherence of Theism’) shows that, when they are defined in certain ways, they all follow from one property of ’pure, limitless, intentional power’. I argue here that a person who has these properties so defined is a person ’of the simplest possible kind’

In purporting to explain the occurrence of some event or process we cite the causal factors which, we assert, brought it about or keeps it in being. The explanation is a true one if those factors did indeed bring it about or keep it in being. In discussing explanation I shall henceforward concern myself only with true explanations. I believe that there are two distinct kinds of way in which causal factors operate in the world, two distinct kinds of causality, and so two distinct kinds of explanation. For historical reasons, I shall call these kinds of causality and explanations ‘scientific’ and ‘personal’; but I do not imply that there is anything unscientific in a wide sense in invoking personal explanation.

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 gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion.

Armstrong's theory of laws of nature as relations between universals gives an initially plausible account of why the causal powers of substances are bound together only in certain ways, so that the world is a very regular place. But its resulting theory of causation cannot account for intentional causation, since this involves an agent trying to do something, and trying is causing. This kind of causation is thus a state of an agent and does not involve the operation of a law. It is simpler to suppose that non-intentional causing is also causing by substances (and not events) in virtue of their powers to act. That raises again the question of why their powers are bound together only in certain ways. The most probable answer is that God, the simplest kind of person there could be, brings this about because it is necessary for the existence of finite rational creatures such as ourselves.

Richard Swinburne presents a powerful new case for substance dualism and for libertarian free will. He argues that pure mental events (including conscious events) are distinct from physical events and interact with them, and claims that no result from neuroscience or any other science could show that interaction does not take place. Swinburne goes on to argue for agent causation, and claims that it is we, and not our intentions, that cause our brain events. It is metaphysically possible that each of us could acquire a new brain or continue to exist without a brain; and so we are essentially souls. Brain events and conscious events are so different from each other that it would not be possible to establish a scientific theory which would predict what each of us would do in situations of moral conflict. Hence, we should believe that things are as they seem to be: that we make choices independently of the causes which influence us. It follows that we are morally responsible for our actions.

EVENTS CONSIST IN THE INSTANTIATION OF PROPERTIES IN SUBSTANCES. TWO WORDS WHICH RIGIDLY DESIGNATE PROPERTIES, PICK OUT THE SAME PROPERTIES, NOT JUST BECAUSE THE TWO PROPERTIES HAVE THE SAME CAUSES OR EFFECTS, BUT IF AND ONLY IF THE WORDS MEAN THE SAME. IT FOLLOWS THAT HAVING A RED AFTER IMAGE AND HAVING C-FIBRES FIRE ARE DIFFERENT PROPERTIES. ALTHOUGH THE INSTANTIATION OF TWO DIFFERENT PROPERTIES IN A SUBSTANCE MAY CONSTITUTE THE SAME EVENT, THAT WILL BE SO ONLY IF (IN GOLDMAN’S TERMINOLOGY) THE INSTANTIATION OF THE ONE LEVEL-GENERATES THE INSTANTIATION OF THE OTHER. THIS DOES NOT HOLD IN THE CASE OF MENTAL AND BRAIN EVENTS

THERE IS A CLEAR DISTINCTION BETWEEN ANALYTIC AND SYNTHETIC SENTENCES IF WE DEFINE AN ANALYTIC SENTENCE AS ONE WHICH ENTAILS A SELF-CONTRADICTION. THE PAPER SHOWS THAT ALTHOUGH THIS DEFINES "ANALYTIC" BY TERMS WHICH ARE THEMSELVES ALSO MODAL TERMS, THESE LATTER TERMS CAN BE EXPLAINED BY DEFINITIONS USING LESS TECHNICAL TERMS AND BY EXAMPLES, IN SUCH A WAY AS TO GIVE "ANALYTIC" AS CLEAR A MEANING AS IS POSSESSED BY MOST OTHER TERMS OF OUR LANGUAGE. THE FACT THAT THERE ARE BORDER-LINE CASES OF ANALYTIC SENTENCES, AND THAT APPARENTLY SOME OBVIOUS CASES OF ANALYTIC SENTENCES TURN OUT TO BE SYNTHETIC IS NO GOOD OBJECTION TO THE CLARITY OF THE DISTINCTION. IF WE DEFINE AN ANALYTIC SENTENCE AS ONE REDUCIBLE TO A TRUTH OF LOGIC BY SUBSTITUTION OF SYNONYMS, THIS DEFINITION PICKS OUT A DIFFERENT CLASS OF SENTENCES AS ANALYTIC, BUT IT ALSO ALLOWS US TO MAKE A CLEAR DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE ANALYTIC AND THE SYNTHETIC.

The hypothesis that Jesus rose bodily from the dead is rendered probable in so far as: (1) evidence makes it probable that there is a God, (2) God has reason to become incarnate - to provide atonement for our sins, to identify with our suffering, and to reveal teaching (and so to lead a particular kind of human life, including teaching that he was divine and making atonement, a life culminated by a super-miracle such as his resurrection from the dead), (3) there is evidence of a modest degree of probability to be expected if Jesus was the only prophet in human history who led a life of the above kind, which was culminated in the right sort of way. So, given other evidence that there is a God (and a priori reason to suppose that he would become incarnate),and other evidence about the life of Jesus and other prophets, only a modest amount of historical witness testimony to the Resurrection is necessary in order to show that it occurred

The central doctrine of Christianity is that God intervened in human history in the person of Jesus Christ in a unique way; and that quickly became understood as the doctrine that in Jesus Christ God became man. In AD 451 the Council of Chalcedon formulated that doctrine in a precise way utilizing the current philosophical terminology, which provided a standard for the orthodoxy of subsequent thought on this issue. It affirmed its belief in ‘our Lord Jesus Christ, … truly God and truly man, … in two natures … the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person’. One individual, one thing that is; and being a rational individual, one person. An individual's nature are those general properties which make it the sort of individual it is. The nature of my desk is to be a solid material object of a certain shape; the nature of the oak tree in the wood is to take in water and light, and to grow into a characteristic shape with characteristic leaves and give off oxygen. Chalcedon affirmed that the one individual Jesus Christ had a divine nature, was God that is; and it assumed that the divine nature was an essential nature.