Richard Swinburne

If there is a God who wants us to become saints worthy of the beatific vision, he will provide us with information how to do so -- that is, with a propositional revelation. The revelation will not be too evident -- in order that we may choose whether or not to search it out and tell others about it -- and its interpretation for new centuries and cultures will require a church. The tests of a genuine revelation are its consonance with our knowledge of God obtained by other routes, and some sort of miraculous foundation.

THE FREEWILL DEFENCE IS DESIGNED TO SHOW THAT THE EXISTENCE OF MORAL EVIL (I.E., EVIL PRODUCED BY MEN) IS COMPATIBLE WITH THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. TO DO THIS IT MUST CLAIM THAT IT IS GOOD THAT MEN HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BRING ABOUT EITHER GOOD OR EVIL. TO HAVE THIS OPPORTUNITY, THEY MUST KNOW HOW TO BRING ABOUT EVIL. GOD COULD TELL THEM, BUT THAT WOULD MAKE HIS PRESENCE SO MANIFEST AS TO IMPAIR THEIR FREEDOM. THE ONLY OTHER WAY IN WHICH THEY COULD ACQUIRE THAT KNOWLEDGE IS BY SEEING THAT CERTAIN NATURAL PROCESSES BRING ABOUT EVIL EFFECTS. BUT THAT MEANS THAT THERE MUST BE NATURAL EVIL IF MEN ARE TO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BRING ABOUT MORAL EVIL.

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.

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