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A review of Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God.
2003-01-04
At first approach, Swinburne's presentation of the various arguments for the existence of god gives an impression of honesty and intelligence. This is the sort of theism which merits a little respect. Send the creationists back to their fetishised scriptures and tell the priests to go drink some of that symbolic blood they value so highly. Then invite Dr. Swinburne over for tea and conversation. But be prepared to exercise your neurons.
The author devotes the initial quarter (at least) of his book to a presentation of the logic and probability theory which will be his tools. He rarely even mentions the god hypothesis throughout this preparatory material. When he finally gets to the matter at hand, he first discusses the intrinsic (or "prior") probability and explanatory power of theism. In subsequent chapters he presents several classic arguments: cosmological; teleological; arguments from consciousness, morality and providence; and arguments from history, miracles and religious experience. He discusses in some detail the problem of evil (whose contribution to the probability of theism has, in his opinion, a net value of zero).
Finally in the second of two appendices, he discusses the modern argument from the fine-tuning of the universe, an approach which has enjoyed some recent popularity (and inspired a few vapid reports in the mass media). Swinburne's opinion is that this line of reasoning significantly enhances the probability of the god hypothesis. This assessment makes sense only when one considers the weakness of preceding arguments.
Swinburne has the humility -- and the common sense -- not to seek absolute proof. His goal is to collect together several weaker arguments, each of which is sufficient, he argues, to increment slightly the probability of theism, and which taken together would make the existence of god more probable than not.
It seems fairly evident to me that an argument from the occurrence of all the phenomena which I have described to the existence of God is not a good deductive argument... The reason is simply that a description of a world in which all the phenomena described occur, but there is no God seems, with apparent obviousness, to be a coherent description, to contain no buried self-contradiction.
More formally, Swinburne identifies three types of argument:
Deductive arguments are those which make the conclusions certain (probability = 1) if the premisses are accepted. Such arguments are, like the holy grail, rather difficult to come by. Inductive arguments, on the other hand, confirm or support the conclusion in some way without making it absolutely certain. In particular, a P-inductive argument makes the conclusion more probable than not (i.e. probability > 1/2). C-inductive arguments are even weaker and serve only to make the conclusion somewhat more probable than it would otherwise have been (without necessarily shoving it over the 50% mark).
Swinburne's program is to accumulate a sufficient quantity of C-inductive arguments for theism, each of which will, he hopes, offer some support to his hypothesis, so that, taken together, they will collectively constitute a good P-inductive argument, thus making the probability of the god hypothesis greater than one half. Whether he succeeds in achieving this is another matter.
Unfortunately, Swinburne's logical explanations are often highly formalised using mathematical notation yet written in prose form. His text would have been much more readable if he had chosen either to forgo the formalism and stick to simple prose, or, on the other hand, to adopt a completely mathematical format. The choice of a hybrid format serves only to render some of the text painfully opaque.
The author of this work is, like any philosopher worthy of the title, scientifically literate. He often refers to facts and theories from physics, chemistry, biology, etc. For example:
All the evidence accumulated by scientists over the past 200 years shows overwhelmingly that present-day intelligent organisms (i.e. human and animal bodies) evolved gradually from inanimate matter in accord with scientific laws over thousands of millions of years. So God did not produce intelligent organisms directly.
Nevertheless, our Christian friend eventually leaves the real world behind and appears to float, perhaps through some hole in the ozone layer, into a never-never-land populated with angels -- good and bad -- and other spirits. It is in this ethereal realm that he considers the afterlife (an integral part of his theory of evil), "redemptive incarnation" (the resurrection myth) and similar aspects of theistic mythology.
Does Swinburne succeed in his endeavour to erect a rational foundation on which to rest his theism? He puts much emphasis on the so-called simplicity of the god hypothesis. He thus asserts that the existence of god is the simplest reasonable hypothesis explaining the character of our universe. He also rejects the possibility of any impersonal explanation (that is, in his terminology, "scientific explanation") of the origin of our universe. An omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, personal god is thus the simplest remaining hypothesis. In answer to this extraordinary claim, let us just say that Swinburne's idea of "simplicity" is rather, well, complicated. In his assertion of the god hypothesis, he attaches much importance to religious experience, a phenomenon which is easily explained by very mundane social and psychological factors.
Swinburne also makes extensive use of the parent or father metaphor in his discussion of the behaviour and attitude of his hypothetical god, especially in his justification of evil as a tool by which his god allows humanity to learn morality. He thus confirms, implicitly, the well-known observation made by generations of non-believers that god is merely a projection of the father figure, with the nexus of diverse feelings of respect, fear, submission, love, need, etc., which such a figure invokes.
Swinburne talks at length about morality and immorality, good and evil, without adequately defining what these terms mean. He frequently associates these questions with concepts such as temptation and sacrifice, thus slipping into a Christian interpretation of morality without explanation or justification.
Is this book worth reading? For the atheist who would like a summary of popular theistic arguments for reference purposes, this volume is a good candidate. Theists may read Swinburne in the hope of bolstering their belief by attempting to place it on a rational foundation, but what really stands out in this book is just how weak that foundation is. The only line of reasoning which appears to have any hope of convincing anyone is the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe -- a modern incarnation of the design argument -- and even that is shaky. [1]
While reading this book on a public conveyance, I noticed that the person sitting next to me was leafing through a science magazine containing many spectacular photographs taken recently by the Hubble telescope. If the argument from design interests you (whether or not you think it has any merit), you might be better off spending your time with such a scientific publication rather than Swinburne. Contemplating and reading about such amazing astronomical photos would be more educational, and certainly more entertaining.
On the other hand, creationists, biblical literalists and similar idiots (I use the word advisedly) should be strongly encouraged to read this book. They might be thus motivated to put their brains in gear for once. A thinking theist is preferable to an ignorant theist.
There is one valuable insight which I obtained from this book but which I doubt very much Swinburne intended. When discussing the nature of his hypothetical god, he asserts that an agent who is both absolutely free (omnipotent) and absolutely knowledgeable (omniscient) would necessarily be absolutely good, because he (sic) would have complete knowledge of all possible actions and the power to perform the "best" one. In other words, freedom + knowledge = good. (Let us set aside for the moment the sticky question of how to define "good," "best," etc.) If we scale this principle down to us mere mortals, with our very limited knowledge and power, we obtain a simple optimistic program for social progress. By working to increase both the intelligence and the freedom of human beings in general, we enhance our ability to make reasoned, informed choices. The formidable challenges faced by humanity now and in the future make such an ability extremely important.
Review by David Rand
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