Richard Swinburne on arguments for Atheism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 เม.ย. 2013
- Robert Kuhn interviews Richard Swinburne, Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford, who here has a try at the basic arguments for Atheism. This is a mirror which allows discussion. You may think my own questions are biased, but give them a read if you want - they are simply follow-up questions taking Richard's answers at face value. (And by all means ask your own questions of the professor in comments!)
I would have liked to ask:
0:11 Problem of Evil
- Would the absence of a God also allow evil, does it also let good things happen to evil people, and do you think a folded arms God like yours is identical to the absence of a God?
- Playing with the thought that there is no God, would we still be responsible for each other?
- Did God create our immune defense, and cancer, and too little Scientific knowledge to beat this unbeatable, shape-shifting disease to let enough people die until Science finds the cure, regardless of what good or evil acts they commit - including children who die of cancer?
1:05 God is hidden
- Would you say that are a believer at all, if you don't know in your heart that he's watching you?
- Would you say that once you are a believer, the threat of eternal torture gives you zero choice in choosing good over evil, unless you're a masochist?
- Would it not be a better world, if everyone was naturally good from actually knowing they'd be rewarded? Isn't God the tempter by making us capable of sin and then stay hidden? (Rhetorical)
- Gods of other religions are also hidden. Would you argue that they also exist, and if not, why the hell not?
- The roughly 2000 year period of zero major revelations is not proclaimed in holy scripture (and it's not due to committee summary dismissal of gospels). Would you say this is characteristic of ancient holy scriptures of various religions?
2:23 Disembodied minds and shit
- Yes, impossible thought experiments are easy to fantasize, Scifi authors have contributed their share. How long do you think this body with the empty skull would survive before receiving its half a brain?
- We have no motoric skills and certainly no personality when we are born. Who we are develop within our brains as we live our life. At exactly which moment does our soul get "lifted" from the body, and why is this also undetectable, like your God?
- As an equal thought experiment to yours, let's say a God-authorized tsunami killed the infant Hitler before he got his ideas. Surely he would be just as bad a person despite being unable to commit atrocities, because he has the same eternal soul. Would God accept his soul into heaven, and why, if it's the same eternal soul?
- Humans have brains. Dogs, primates, dolphins, and parrots can count, memorize words and concepts, and communicate with humans. You say humans have souls. If you say humans have souls and "animals" do not, why? Maybe they have semi-souls, like,um, Lucy?
- Would you say the argument "God is a spirit because we feel we have a spirit" is a strict argument or a non sequitur?
4:15 Violence in the Universe
- The Chelyabinsk meteor injured 1500 people, and you call bodies in space colliding a beautiful thing. I'm assuming then that you take it as absolute truth that there is zero conscious life outside the Earth. Because in the center of our galaxy, solar systems are getting all the life on them that has not yet been burned to a crisp shredded to pieces with their suns, as we speak. Are you incapable of understanding this, or do you consider them soul-less because God hasn't bothered to show up in one of their deserts?
5:21 Waste of space
- I understand your claim that everything outside Earth orbit is just an inanimate display of astrophysics, a passive painting made for us to just look at and enjoy, and thereby the claim there is only purpose for Earth and no purpose at all for the 100 billion galaxies, because they are not important. I would however like to ask you whether you have checked yourself for mental illness lately, or perhaps missed taking a prescripted psychofarmacological drug that you need, in saying this?
- I understand that you refer to the astrological belief when you say "The spheres that carried the planets around the Earth". I would like to ask you if you feel it's relevant to bring this falsity to the fore when asked a question about the Universe?
Cont'd... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I was going to respond to one person, but then I saw that a whole list of people were posting incoherent objections. Here's a tip, if you want to start arguing against philosophical propositions regarding God made by an imminent Oxford Professor, make sure you first understand them.
You can respond to me if you like. My arguments against the ones Swinburne present in this clip can be found in the description. For the arguments that didn't fit in the description, see the separate comments by me.
They are time-coded so that you can watch the question, hear the reply, and then read exactly what I think of his replies.
Just because he's an oxford professor doesn't make him correct. Richard Dawkins is also an Oxford Professor, so one of them is wrong and capable of being genius in some regards and brainwashed in others. I believe the brainwashed one is Richard Swinburne.
His first answer was just stupid and cruel, if you think about it. God gives us natural disasters and diseases to test us? Fuck that. He allows evil to occur because he gives us free will? First, that's just an excuse for why he's not down here waving his magic. Second, prove to me that you know what Gods plans are, what he thinks, his answers to our questions. Who gave you the right to speak for God? The Bible? Who can show me that the Bible is Gods words and not mans? I left religion at a very young age because I was never given answers to simple questions.
After the first response I honestly stopped watching.
***** His passion is biology I suppose, he's a leading authority on it. I think his work with evolution has connected him to the world of atheism, because most religious people are against it. Though there are some who believe in God and evolution, and more and more there are those with "semi-religions" who believe _there's something out there_ and adhere to no specific religious rules, the whole Bible, or the bible at all. I think by the time you believe in evolution, though, you should see all the faults of religion. Sadly that's not the case.
What faulty logic? Did I say anywhere "You must be an expert in a field to challenge leading opinions" ? I mean, that's kinda why I was arguing against OP. Besides, Most religious discussions *assume* God is real and go on from there. Dawkins (and myself) would probably consider this TH-cam video as useful as a holocaust denier video where all they do is come up with hypotheticals to how wwII could have _not_ happened.
Is Dawkins the best atheist? I don't think so. I only brought him up because he was an Oxford professor, and showed OP his/her logical fallacy. He is spreading the message though.
"if you want to start arguing against philosophical propositions regarding God made by an imminent Oxford Professor, make sure you first understand them. " But that's an argument from authority - & if you think about any of these arguments they actually don't make any sense at all. - If I'm wrong about that supply just ONE good reason for believing there's a god - Christian or otherwise, if you can. (You won't be able to without making a presupposition that a god is necessary but we don't know it is by any stretch of the imagination do we?)
Might want to try "eminent" others
Thanks for uploading this and the thought-provoking responses you wrote in the description. V. interesting and v. helpful!
"God allows tsunami's, earthquakes and disease for us to be":
a) courageous
b) patient
c) dead
Lmao!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
atheism allows it too 🐶
lol
@@markmarino5053 I think “naturalism” is the better word there.
But, yes, atheism does account for gratuitous evil.
However, atheism isn’t in direct contradiction with evil/suffering in the world and itself.
The Abrahamic religions have a much bigger challenged on their hands in explain why an all-loving, all-powerful god allows for so much suffering in the world he created.
@@FaptainCalcon750 th-cam.com/play/PLf0GqZvsd-6javvjQreHnY3D-T2wjLZni.html
For me, the problem of evil never really bothered my belief in the existence of God. The underlying premises of both the Jewish and Christian religions is predicated on the existence of evil and, thus, the need for a redemption of some kind (namely the coming of a Messiah).
They are also based on the premise that God is intrinsically good and pure and all powerful. A God that allows evil to exist fails to meet the criteria laid out in those religious dogmas. If the existence of evil doesn't cause a problem for your belief it is only because you've given it insufficient thought. But forget specific religious beliefs about God, the entire concept of omnipotence fails to get ever get off the ground for a plethora of reasons that have been very thoroughly articulated and are available for your assimilation with a few more keystrokes
"A God that allows evil to exist fails to meet the criteria laid out in those religious dogmas." How exactly? And, fyi, I've given this issue quite a bit of thought over the past number of years. I've read what philosophers on both sides of the fence have stated on the issue, as well as what theologians of all perspectives and backgrounds have articulated throughout the years. Chances are, you have nothing to say that I haven't heard many, many times already and hasn't been addressed by a fair share of pretty critical thinkers throughout the decades.
An all powerful and intrinsically good God fails as a concept. This is probably first explored in depth by Epicurus but if not he is at least the most famous. You will be the first person in history to form a logical answer to the riddle "From whence cometh Evil?" And I should love to hear it.
fullyawakened You still did not explain how, exactly. You're just making an assertion. And being the "first person in history to form a logical answer to the riddle "From whence cometh Evil?" is not only a gross overstatement, it's completely wrong. There have been many a philosopher in the past who has developed not just logical, but very interesting answers to that question. And I believe, if you want a pretty thorough treatment of Epicurus' "problem with evil," William Lane Craig shares a lot of insight to that argument.
I'm not going to type out the entire argument put forth by Epicurus. You can read it or not yourself. But I'm going to end the discussion here because if you take lines on morality and what it means to be good from people like WLC then I have nothing to say to you. His concept of good and morality is so heinous and repulsive and dishonest I wouldn't wipe my ass with it. As it stands, there is no answer that can be called logical or consistent to Epicurus' riddle if you are playing by the same rules of logic as the rest of the intellectual world. WLC has made it clear he cares only about shifting the goalpost to a hopeful final resting place where logic can never reach it. He's a shamefully disgraced man known as a pariah to all honest and moral people. Can't believe you mentioned him. Good luck
When proof is not required one can say almost anything and seem to make sense
look at all these biased objections
Ballin Paul how can objections be biased?
Objections can come from biased sources, they themselves cannot be biased.
He worded the "violence" argument very poorly. I think he meant the argument from hostility
Barely a minute in and I can't help but feel like he poorly addresses the issue of natural evil with his focus on how those who SURVIVE it 'respond'. I hardly think those who perish upon its impact (by a fast-acting or terminal disease, for instance, or drowning in a flood, being buried in an earthquake, burnt in a forest fire, etc) are able to show 'courage' in the same way as survivors might, nor do they have any time to respond and 'form their own character'. The experience would be wholly unpleasant, full stop.
What makes you think that natural evil couldn't be done solely for the sake of the survivors? Just as Swinburne ignores the dead, maybe God ignores the dead in measuring the value of natural evil. It doesn't matter how the natural evil affects those it kills if they are just collateral damage in the war to improve the characters of those who survive.
+Ansatz66 Those who die as a result of natural evil are human beings just like everyone else - just like the survivors. They aren't more sinful; more deserving of death. They are babies, children, adults, as well as animals of other species.
If the Christian God is able to ignore the dead as you say then I wouldn't consider that God to be omni-benevolent at all. In fact I think such selective care is disgusting, and would not stoop to give such a God the honour of my worship: if I were one of those who died, I would hardly feel the love of God on my side, and as a survivor I would be stricken so harshly with grief at the loss of the others that praising something who ignores that pain wouldn't even cross my mind.
I don't think turning a blind eye to innocent deaths is an all-loving thing to do, especially if that God were responsible for creating that very world for human life and is supposedly omnipotent. I won't get into arguments re: the Inconsistent Triad which have been done time and again, but I personally feel Swinburne's answer is callous at best.
Your responses to Dr. Swinburne's answers are hardly decent enough to surpass a minimally educated individual. Both the disturbing number of folks in your comment section ignorantly buying into them, and your own confidence in your points has forced me to form a response to a few of them.
The most prominent mistake in your questionnaire is that you do not seem to understand exactly what it takes to dissolve the majority of these supposed atheistic arguments. The problem of evil for example is not answered by way of personal reaction, it is rather an answer given to the atheist who falsely claims that the existence of God is made impossible, due to the existence of evil. That is the claim. In which case the theist is required to demonstrate how God and evil can coexist. Once done, it does not matter how you emotionally feel about the response given, its only requirement is that it dissolve the claimed conflict. After all it is the atheist that initially claims the conflict. If the theist can give just one possible (doesn’t even require plausibility) reason that God and evil can coexist, it logically follows that it is not “impossible”, in which case the atheist argument fails. There is no problem of evil.
Problem of Evil
Would the absence of a god allow evil? This is a silly claim, seeing that the theist believes that reality itself could not exist without God. Not to mention evil could not be defined without reference to God. On atheism good and evil are completely subjective. Morality is not grounded anywhere outside of personal human opinion. It is also a straw man to define God as folding His arms, or simply not caring. The theist does not claim such a thing. To the Christian, God is active in the world. He is active in your suffering, and He uses suffering to bring people closer to Him. I myself would not be a Christian had I never suffered. It seems to me that you admit this response works in eliminating the conflict between God and evil. You simply claim that another possible answer would be atheism. Although I do not believe that is the case, you at least eliminate the argument from evil by way of accepting both scenarios as possible. God created the immune system and He allows evil to occur given that He has a morally sufficient reason for allowing it to occur. He being all good, and all powerful, has then the authority to determine a morally sufficient reason for allowing suffering, and remain just in allowing it. You are again appealing to emotion, and not the logic of the argument. The atheistic argument from evil fails. Swinburne is correct.
God is hidden
Of course you can believe something without being certain of it. Are you 100% certain that darwinian evolution occurred? No, you are not. Yet nevertheless you believe in darwinian evolution. Are you 100% certain that your wife loves you (assuming you have one), no you aren’t. You may have good reason to believe in evolution, or good reason to believe that your wife loves you, but you are not certain. Human belief, as well as faith, is the only fact about human life, friend. The claim that you have zero choice in choosing heaven over hell is simply wrong. You do have choice. Person A may be on the verge of killing person B, and thence getting the death penalty because of his action, but that in no way negates his original free choice in committing the crime. The fact that some people end up in hell shows that we do indeed have a choice. Why do Christians not believe in others religion? Because when examined, only three major world religions stand out as empirically verifiable. And that is Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, as they are grounded in historic events. You seem to think that what Swinburne says here is all he has to say on the matter. There are good reasons for choosing Christianity over other world religions that you could easily observe for yourself. Though you seem to be ignorantly assuming that if the Christian God does not exist, then God does not exist. The title of this video is not (arguments against particular religions) it indicates arguing against the existence of God in general. Again the atheistic argument from hiddenness fails, due to its conflict being dissolved. God can exist, and remain hidden at times, and still exist.
Waste of space
Funny that here you didn’t even respond to main point made in his argument. That is a sure sign of intellectual dishonesty. Swinburne made the point that “waste of space” as you say, does not even relate to God. As God does not have a limited number of resources, in which case there is not such thing as “wasting space”. You are wrongly equating human experience with God, and in result stating a false premise. Not to mention that the universe isn’t really wasting space. If the universe were expanding any slower, or faster, the universe would not be life permitting (which it is by the way). This of course implies that the universe needs to keep growing at its current speed in order for life to remain livable in the universe. The argument from waste fails.
+Tom Winston +1 for sparing me the need to ask you to amaze us all with your own 'answers that surpasses individuals', as you wrote. I'm afraid I didn't read your comment past that. I posted this video to allow responses, so consider your opinion shared. At the time of posting, the honest, and in some institutions largely subscribed to, answers appeared offensively blunt to me, but today, I can appreciate them for their curt honesty, which remains their sole merit.
+Tom Winston "The problem of evil for example is not answered by way of personal reaction, it is rather an answer given to the atheist who falsely claims that the existence of God is made impossible."
Well said. All the atheistic arguments in the video obviously fail because they are each founded on some premise that might easily be false. The problem of evil assumes qualities of God that would make God not tolerate evil, but this is obviously false in the God of Christianity.
"To the Christian, God is active in the world. He is active in your suffering, and He uses suffering to bring people closer to Him. I myself would not be a Christian had I never suffered."
Even more than that, the very core of Christianity is founded in the intense suffering of one particular absolutely innocent person. God is a torturer. Evil is the furthest thing from evidence against the existence of God; in fact if there were no evil then we could be confident that the Christian God did not exist.
"God can exist, and remain hidden at times, and still exist."
Exactly. Some people have said that God wants a relationship with all of us, and in response to that one simply needs to point to the fact that God is hidden. Trying to twist that around into an argument against the existence of God is silly. Why assume that wanting a relationship with everyone is a requirement of God's existence? Maybe God just doesn't want a relationship with most people. We have telephones and email, so God is free to write or call. If God doesn't, the conclusion is just that God is satisfied with a more remote relationship.
"As God does not have a limited number of resources, in which case there is not such thing as 'wasting space'."
More to the point, all the argument of wasted space really says is that our universe does not have the look of a thing designed only for us. On the contrary, if we start with the assumption that the universe was intelligently designed then the natural guess would be that every star in the sky is home to another one of God's creatures much as our star is home to us. There's no obvious difference between our star and the other stars, so why should we suppose a difference in the purpose of those stars? In this case, obviously the vast distances between stars are there to prevent God's creatures from interacting.
Either way, it's totally irrelevant to God's existence.
"If the universe were expanding any slower, or faster, the universe would not be life permitting (which it is by the way)."
This is an odd digression toward atheism in an otherwise theistic comment. If you insist upon saying that God could not create life in a universe expanding slower or faster, then it falls to you to justify that claim. What force or higher power is limiting what God can do?
+Ansatz66 _"Well said. All the atheistic arguments in the video obviously fail because they are each founded on some premise that might easily be false. The problem of evil assumes qualities of God that would make God not tolerate evil, but this is obviously false in the God of Christianity."_
Nothing more hilarious than an atheist deciding the nature of God. Obviously God is a so wrong to tolerate rape. Not the rapist's fault but of God. Though he did distance away himself from us, because we screwed up, he must be ready in our service 24x7. And if he is not, we are to shame him. For his nature and his independence is open to enquiry by us, and his reasons and decisions are for us to dictate.
_"Even more than that, the very core of Christianity is founded in the
intense suffering of one particular absolutely innocent person. God is a torturer. Evil is the furthest thing from evidence against the
existence of God; in fact if there were no evil then we could be
confident that the Christian God did not exist."_
We must wear a garland of flowers, get piercings, say YOLO, carry the peace sign and become a hippie. No sacrifices. We hate them. Let us love and do drugs though. We do not understand why these soldiers go to war, why mothers sacrifice their lives for their children, why fathers work hard. Let us smoke weed and not encourage any self-sacrificial cult. Between I hate judges when they punish me for wrong, I think they are torturers and stuff goes bad when people sacrifice. Sacrifice is not my forte, so I get angry if this is presented as a virtue.
_"Exactly. Some people have said that God wants a relationship with all of us, and in response to that one simply needs to point to the fact that God is hidden. Trying to twist that around into an argument against the existence of God is silly. Why assume that wanting a relationship with everyone is a requirement of God's existence? Maybe God just doesn't want a relationship with most people. We have telephones and email, so God is free to write or call. If God doesn't, the conclusion is just that God is satisfied with a more remote relationship."_
Obviously I remember when I was young. My mom said to go and make friends. I asked wether they will want to be my friends. She said they would love to have a relationship with you. I said, 'Ok! Then they must come to me, at least call or email me.' I am alone from that day. I know they did not want a relationship.
Between do you know I want to befriend Morgan Freeman? He does not text me. So we haven't got anywhere.
_"More to the point, all the argument of wasted space really says is that our universe does not have the look of a thing designed only for us. On the contrary, if we start with the assumption that the universe was intelligently designed then the natural guess would be that every star in the sky is home to another one of God's creatures much as our star is home to us. There's no obvious difference between our star and the other stars, so why should we suppose a difference in the purpose of those stars? In this case, obviously the vast distances between stars are there to prevent God's creatures from interacting."_
My theist friend suggested I should read a bit of theology. I refused. Why need it? God is my homeboy. I know what he wants more than all the theologians combined. They spent centuries, millenias, studying God. Poor they! I could have told them in secs what my buddy is like.
_"This is an odd digression toward atheism in an otherwise theistic
comment. If you insist upon saying that God could not create life in a universe expanding slower or faster, then it falls to you to justify
that claim. What force or higher power is limiting what God can do?"_
Ummmm........... Plain Logic?
Anybody understood Dr. Swinburne's last words in this video? Swinburne was replying to the question of the Host's atheistic position, and I heard Swinburne reply with a "it doesn't work...". Is that what he said? The words are not that clear. Its sad that Dr. Swinburne sort of mumbles every time he speaks. His books are incredible but I can't hardly understand a word he speaks in his talks. He's one of my favorite living philosophers in the writing department. But his speech is almost unbearable(sadly). He should get a voicing coach to correct this. Or maybe its just me and my hearing. Thanks for the response.
Jim Wick what a bunch of nonsense, how did you manage to compress all those nonsensical claims in one comment?
The argument fot evil shows that the definition of god who is omnibenevolent and omnipotent is contradictory when taken into account our experience of the external world. There are no good 'possible' explanations given.
Darwinian evolution is not even comparable to god, because it is testable scientific theory that makes predictions that might disprove it along the way, while to my knowledge there is no god theory or god hypothesis that is capable of making predictions. And then you proceed by comparing belief in god with belief in your wife, which is really stupid. When we talk about belief in your wife, we are talking about how your past experience with her and how you feel towards her compels you to in some way to assume that she will choose certain actions in the future. When talking about belief in god, what we are really talking about is belief in the existence in god (the truth of this statement). Finally you cant believe in god the same way you believe your wife, because he might not exist and if he does exists then hiding makes this impossible.
There is a waste of space, physics doesn't prevent god from making seemingly physically impossible tasks, since according to theists he designed those laws, so he can change them in a way that space in the universe wouldn't be wasted. Plus we don't need space-time to exist, and proof for this is the existence of afterlife in heaven.
Robert Kuhn sounds pretty much like Darth Vader in this one :)
This is like watching a conversation between Darth Vader and Severus Snape
- Are you aware that your church is claiming copyright to the Nicene Creed, so that it's not available to online encyclopedias?
I would like to ask an obnoxious final question:
- I feel that it's right to section off Philosophy of Religion from Philosophy in the same way on-campus Christian Athletic Leagues are out of Athletic Leagues. Do you agree, and if so, do you think that's a good thing for you?
Sorry about the mess, read description then from bottom comment and up along the timeline.
The biggest issue i have with theism is that it makes a claim concerning the single most significant event that has every taken place (if you regard the begining of teh universe as chronologically present.) The issue with this is that its simply to far away, in both a literal and intelectual sense, to even begin to theorise about, let alone come to a conclusion on.
I guess this interview was held in some Eastern Orthodox cathedral.
It was likely held at Oxford, where I believe Professor Swinburne still teaches Philosophy of Religion.
About the brain splitting thought experiment: Why is it neccecary to talk in terms of personhood? Why isn't it enough just to say that a brain produces conciousness and when split each half still has the ability to produce conciousness? Asking which one is ME might just not be the right question to ask.
That is a scientific question. Philosophy isn't ready for that, until it embraces the thought that abstract concepts require a measurable concrete reality upon which to base meaning. It's quite clear to me that if such an experiment were viable - and it may be, due to advances in Neuroscience and not by way of eliminating philosophical or logical impossibilities - that both parts of the brain would remain conscious, to a lesser degree - unless Neuroscience (and not philosophical discussion) shows that consciousness is almost exclusively the property of one half of a brain, in which case further experiments could be derived where that half is divided and some measurable consciousness would remain in each part.
As for the classical cloning conundrum, it's not a conundrum to me. Clone a consciousness (in higher detail than normal imprinting is done today), and the simple result is that you have two cloned consciousnesses and two individuals, obviously worth treating as we treat identical twins today. It becomes quite easy to see clearly when you trade the impossibilities of "that which must be" - and the rhetoric surrounding it - for the obvious possibilities of extrapolating from what we can do today.
In short, Science is what turns thought experiments into actual experiments, Philosophy seems to want to keep them thought experiments.
As for the 'me' question, both consciousnesses would continually reply, "here!" when addressed, and would continue to experience for the remainder of their consciousnesses' life cycles, each diverging with the slight differences in sensory input, into non-clones - so that if asked, they would identify as having the same name and history, but as they experience, they would give differing accounts of recent history - certainly to the extent of abjectly different opinions and convictions. Perhaps depending on what show they watched last - unless it was a neutral and factual Scientific one and not a "vs" quickfire question session such as this one.
(09:05)...been religious wars. Your comment on that?
- ...Couldn't people not live up to their innate goodness without a God?
10:16 Religious creation accounts mismatch reality. Was it revelation, or just current astrology jotted down?
- Would you say that the church, after having established itself with its creeds and its interpretations, has not only endorsed descriptions of reality as false as the ones in holy scripture, but actively worked against better descriptions of reality?
...
The two brains argument seems very weak. For example, the person might not exist after the operation. Or, the person may have been copied so that two of the same person exist and diverging from the point of the split.
...
07:05 The more we discover about the Universe, the less purpose it reveals
- In the former question you proclaimed everything outside Earth orbit as a passive painting for us to just enjoy. Now you say there could be conscious life on other planets enjoying happiness for half a second. This ties in with the fourth question (violence in the Universe). Do you feel that when conscious, happy beings are destroyed by the billions when the Universe that God designed leads to these collisions...
This is ridiculos. How is someone with this mode of thinking get to be a professor at Oxford? Shouldn't there be tests to exclude such poor reasoning people?
There is something that I don't get in these arguments in favor of an all-mighty and all-good God facing the evil problem. We certainly think that Hitler was evil, right? But, couldn't we apply the same argument and say that it's possible that Hitler, like God, was just giving us the chance of exercising our free will or being braves or cowards when facing the slaughter the Nazis promoted.
Not really, no. God allows evil because he has morally sufficient reasons for doing so. He wants people to freely decide to worship him, which will bring an endless amount of good in an eternal life. Can Hitler offer that?
Gaudio Wind The difference is God does not cause evil, he allows it for a greater good.
Ali Shammary
But, addressing my point, would you say that the permission given by Hitler to slaughter Jewish people and other minorities was certainly an evil act?
I'm assuming God told him this? Sorry, there are so many issues with what he said.
From Swinburnes' most popular book 'Is There A God', 2010:
"Argument and counter-argument, qualification and amplification, can go on forever. But religion is not exceptional in this respect. With respect to any subject whatever, the discussion can go on forever. New experiments can always be done to test Quantum Theory, new interpretations can be proposed for old experiments, forever. And the same goes for interpretations ofhistory or theories of politics. BUT LIFE IS SHORT AND WE HAVE TO ACT on the basis of what such evidence as we have had time to investigate shows on balance to be probably true. We have to vote in elections without having had time to consider the merits of the political programmes of even the main candidates with respect to one or two planks of their programmes. And we have to build bridges and send rockets into space before we can look at all the arguments for and against whether our construction is safe-let alone be absolutely certain that it is. And in religion too we have to act (while allowing that, later in life, we may look again at the arguments). The conclusion of this book was that, on significant balance of probability, there is a God. If you accept it, it follows that you have certain duties. God has given us life and all the good things it contains, including above all the opportunities to mould our characters and help others. Great gratitude to God is abundantly appropriate. We should express it in worship and in helping to forward his purposes-which involves, as a preliminary step, making some effort to find out what they are. But duties are of limited extent (as we saw in Chapter 1); a moderate amount of worship and obedience might satisfy them. We could leave it at that. Yet, if we have any sense and any idealism, we cannot leave it at that. God in his perfect goodness will want to make the best of us: make saints of us and use us to make saints of others (not, of course, for his sake, but for ours and for theirs), give us deep understanding of himself (the all-good source of all being), and help us to interact with him. All that involves an unlimited commitment. But God respects us; he will not force these things on us-we can choose whether to seek them or not. If we do seek them, there are obvious obstacles in this world to achieving them (some of which I discussed in Chapter 6). The obstacles are necessary, partly in order to ensure that our commitment is genuine. But God has every reason in due course to remove those obstacles-to allow us to become the good people we seek to be, to give us the vision of himself-forever."
Checking our Science before sending men into space seems very successful. It's perfectly possible for everyone to vote on a party based on their program, more possible now than ever.
As for the rest it sounds like his voice in this interview, repeated.
As a shorthand, religions have hijacked duty, faith, morals, grief, marriage, and family ever since religions found great success in playing on our fears.
Apart from being the worst explanation of First Cause available, religion is fear-mongering. If you fear you will do harm without someone above the law to tell you it's wrong, get medical help.
This writing shouts of fear of the unknown - which is the *exact opposite* of faith. Perhaps religion once worked as a substitute for treatment of OCD, providing handy, ready-made "faith pills". Just something, something to believe in, when you yourself cannot and wrongly, audaciously, demand a guarantee from a life seemingly not catered to your absolute requests.
The free will argument to explain evil is quite poor. Basically, it says that one must be allowed to do harm in order to be free. This is beyond idiotic. Imagine someone is about to commit murder. There is a cop next to the victim. While the assassin is pushing the knife into the victim, the victim asks for help. The cop replies: "we live in a free society. In order to preserve freedom I must allow the assassin to kill you, I must allow him to do harm." After killing the first victim, the assassin moves to the next one. The cop watches the next victim and says "I could stop this, but, you know, we live in a free society and I must allow the assassin to do harm." As the late Hitchens would say, only religion can make you say such evil things.
Surely there are even Christians who watch this and are not convinced of these responses by Swinburne. How is this man an Oxford professor? Why does Harvard have a divinity school? Academia continues to fail us on this issue of religion.
Slickman Dune Why not?
+Slickman Dune Surely there are also atheists who are not convinced by all (or perhaps even most) of the types of arguments that atheist philosophers make when building their case for atheism. Does it follow from this that the such atheists are not worthy of being university professors?
+HaecceitasQuidditas Universities and colleges vary in their quality. My statement doesn't imply that this professor is not worthy of teaching at any college. I think this guy would fit well in a theology school of his particular version of Christianity. However, I do mean to imply that the role of schools, particularly noteworthy schools such as Oxford and Harvard, is to impart to its students a method or principle (or, perhaps, a set of principles) that when one communicates his or her ideas, those ideas should be grounded in measurable, unbiased, and evidence-laden ways if at all possible. In other words, graduates and professors of these schools, in my opinion, should be veritable masters of logic. I suspect you may disagree with this statement, but belief in a god or gods and an afterlife and other things which cannot be measured, identified, or even proved in an unbiased way--that is to show that these things exist regardless of who you are, when you are, what language you speak,what your culture believes, etc--is illogical. That is my criticism of academia.
To your other point about the difference of opinion among atheists, I completely agree that all atheists don't use the same arguments and are not convinced by the same arguments because atheists, like everyone else, have mostly unique experiences. These experiences are a combination of their environment, the information they have or don't have, and their relative ability to process this cocktail.
P.S. Maybe this wasn't your intention, but I also gathered from the last part of your statement something I hear believers do a lot. It is the tendency to group atheists together as though we are--well a group like Mormons or Scientologists. To help illustrate what I mean, replace all the instances of the word atheist or atheists in your statement with the phrase non-stampcollector.
Thank you for responding to my post.
(07:05)... of billions of solar systems, it's God being passive or God having planned ahead?
- Do you feel that God has led you to perfect goodness in saying such is a beautiful thing?
08:17 Many vastly different religions saying they're true, so which one is it, if any?
- I understand your saying we have a great choice, namely to "not bother with those other religions". Do you feel that's an argument for not bothering with yours, and if not, do you feel the lack of objective arguments for ...
(08:17) ...yours should make you question yours, and if not, why the hell not?
09:05 Religious wars
- So you agree that even with the threat of eternal hell which Christians face but Atheists do not, Christians have not only misbehaved, but there is no guarantee they'll behave infuture. This isn't news, of course, but if religion's claim of superior morality isn't to be dismissed out of hand, there should be fewer religious wars than Atheist wars. Almost all wars throughout history have...
How privileged Swinburne is to know the mind of his God.
It's a pity that the rest of us don't share his divine conduit. And it puts us in a difficult position... since there are others who also seem to speak for the same God and yet espouse different views, while the majority of us have absolutely no means of discerning who is right.
So it seems the only logical means of living and working together is to set aside individual claims of divine knowledge and develop secular solutions to our shared problems in the only realm which we can all agree exists... the natural world.
While I recognize that the problem of evil in and of itself isn't an argument against the existence of God (since it is not logically contradictory for such a being to allow evil and suffering), I find Swinburne's answers on this question wholly unconvincing and more than a little insulting. I am both a believer and a Christian, but the problem of evil, it seems to me, is an insuperable problem this side of the eschaton. Bleating on about free will or, worse yet, God "giving us the chance to respond courageously and with love" in the face of natural evils is horrific. This is a question that drove me away from the faith for many years, and it isn't one that I have come to terms with as yet. It haunts me. It pains me. And it almost certainly will continue to do so for the rest of my life.
Steven, I think it's very common for *anyone* who reflects on life to carry doubts - not just in any religious beliefs but held beliefs in general. I think this is the level at which real philosophy (even spirituality) begins, and it's a very sensible place to start looking for meaningful answers for yourself.
In this interview, given the straight questions and Swinburne's position, he must give the usual answers to most of the traditional questions doubters have had over the millennia. It is simply what he teaches to students of Philosophy of Religion and he can give no conflicting answers.
If you're interested in Moral Philosophy, I think the question of "Why do good things happen to bad people" is even more enticing than the Problem of Evil (in the context of the God Creator as an axiom given without the burden of proof).
He doesn't understand the first argument, to no surprise since it wasn't presented at all:
People claim god is both omni-benevolent, omni-potent, omni-scient and a lot more.
However:
If god Is omni-benevolent, he would have to act in order to remove suffering.
If god is omni-potent, he would be able to remove suffering.
So ether god is not omni-benevolent or he is not omni-potent.
When he uses the free will argument, he ignores the fact that god cannot be omni-scient if we have free will, since free will would mean we have an actual choice, and omni-science include knowing the future, which mean there is no choice.
I can explain this further if needed.
If of cause we toss away the idea of god being omni-scient, then of cause we could use the free will argument, but then god is taking a gamble about whether the suffering can resolve in any kind of good. which mean god is risking our well being, without being sure there is any gain at all.
that is the points raised by the argument.
Not this soft ball stuff he did.
He does understand. Of course he does. He is an oxford professor who would have studied these arguments in detail - and he is a well known christian apologetic!!
You claimed that God cannot be omniscient whilst we have free will (problem of divine foreknowledge) but some believe that foreknowledge is compatible with free will, primarily due to the fact that God is outside of time. (Look this problem up on the Stanford philosophy website, it gives a thorough explanation.
To be honest, God's omniscience has not much to do with the problem presented by the logical deductive reasoning argued by Epicurus and others anyway so this isn't a good counter argument.
BTW Its of COURSE not of cause?!
***** Can you please explain how you can be "outside of time"?
Because as far as i can see that is just useless words.
(and maybe you could give a link to the Stanford philosophy website on this since you are the one using it as a reference)
Of course you are correct that god's omniscience does not have much to do with the original argument, but nether does the free will argument.
And thanks for the grammar correction, English is not me first languish so i am a bit sloppy.
Can't help but wonder what you thinking "?!" should mean here.
After all you were just trying to point out something that could be corrected right?
derpion derpson Are you familiar with the work of Alvin Plantinga?
Epistemophilos some of it, but if you could be more specific we could get to a point
Epistemophilos also it would be nice if you could make sure it is actually addressing the point i raised and not just a "wave of the hand" dismisal of it.
Well, a theist philosopher would claim that the nature of whole setup is one of an experiment.
"I'll stay right here where you can't see me, you do whatever you like, " says God, "and when you're dead and can't right any wrongs anymore, I'll tell you if you passed the test. All that hangs in the balance is eternal bliss or eternal torture, so I think not revealing myself or say which God I am, so that you can follow the correct moral laws, is perfectly justifiable."
Yeah. :)
Swinburns view on the bible I would have to disagree with. The christian church does not find its authority in creeds but in the word of God alone. That is even written in some of the creeds lol.
Evidence should trump personal prejudice. The universe had a beginning and appears to be intelligently designed. Man exists, but fossil evidence for his evolution does not exist. We make moral arguments for right and wrong, but the universe is amoral.
As some sort of qualified direct reply: If the Universe had a beginning, Science are the ones who are still finding out how. Religion just has no chance and I wish you would look to Scientific answers instead. Man and a lot of animals similar to him have evolved, and there is plenty of fossil evidence that the Maker didn't put inside rocks for Science to discover 2000 years after man found out how to make scribbles on something semi-permanent. The evolutionary evidence suggests all kinds of designs; some smart, some niched, some that are still all right, and the other designs died out. After that you stopped making sense, so I have no reply to that. Be well.
Lack ok knowledge folks doesn't make you a idiot.
The part of tsunami et similia gave me the sensation to vomit from my ears...... Absurd and disturbing
His argument for immaterial soul at 2:44 is so painfully bad, he seems to have trouble saying it.
+ast453000 It is contrived, like all thought experiments. Why not ask some Scientist to plop the *front* half into one skull and the back half into another and "just make it work" instead of becoming a slab of useless biomatter? Because he knows enough to know that the brain has a divide along one axis and not the other, and that Neuroscience can work miracles, but not enough to brave the potential truth that the brain is the whole of your person. By distancing himself from biological and neuroscientific knowledge, he has concluded ahead of time that no miracle can make the thought experiment valid for the other axis.
When hearing defenses of immaterialism, you often end up with these psychoanalyses. This is an interesting fact, but will not on its own defend materialism or disprove immaterialism.
A red thread appears that whatever the soul is, believers will not define it beyond what they need in order for your person to survive death. It's like they don't care about any of their own concept's properties as long as it's a fix for the big one.
Now, at the time, I posted a video going offline, and found these answers easy to criticize. Since then, though, my appreciation has grown for those who actually give answers that are open to thought at all. In that way, I think there's a kind of bravery there, and I like Swinburne for that now, more than I did initially. If you agree with this, you should consider thumbing it up for candor.
One humorous point I did not make then was that the answers reflect the traditional ones from Oxford and Berkeley, but is now updated to include things like tsunamis and objects in space, so as to not appear too outmoded. :)
I found it quite gross the way Swinburne tittered as he disabuses us of the idea that the revelation is the bible. Why titter? Protestant theology from Calvin to nineteenth century proponents such as Thornwell, B.B.Warfield and the Hodges, and ever since, took the bible to be the inspired, inerrant word of God. I say this as a secular, philosophical deconstructionist, and do not therefore support this high view of scripture, but it is dishonest for Swinburne (for whom, incidentally, any sweetness or likeableness of character is, at least for me, as appropriately hidden as the existence of his god) to field his conclusion in place of the public, self-understanding of Christian faith down the centuries. And in the context of the more or less settled issue of the absence of integrity in the motivations, findings and decrees of church councils and synods, Swinburne, unwittingly, surely further vitiates the already herculean task of a theistic defence.
My philosophy of religion tutor was taught by this man. He is my graduate-grandad haha.
Genius fellow.
I connect Philosophy of Religion directly to Christian universities - I think there should be just Philosophy and just universities. But if he still teaches at Oxford, that in itself is admirable.
This is all couched as debunking evidence of the non-existence of god. This is entirely wrong. The onus for proof is on those asserting the existence of god. This can be summed up as providing god as the universal explanation for everything we don’t yet understand. Unfortunately for theists, science’s progress is limiting the amount of stuff that can be placed at the door of god.
Theists can't judge the morality of holy books, unless the theist already understands morality. Cart before horse......Mike drop.
Saying there is objective morality, is like saying there is objective art, or objective beauty. Bad understand of language and meaning.
Postulating a god because we have a soul? Thinking of life we have to understand the obvious of two parts, physical and spiritual? Lol. BS.
This is the reason for the question about the mind/body separation: we don't know of this in nature, just as we don't know of things to exist/not exist. The separation idea was introduced millennia ago, not only in religion, but also in folklore. My view is that this was to help with mourning and precedes religion by hundreds of thousands of years.
The problem with all these arguments is that they are hypothetical. For example, the first response. "God allows evil because he allows us a free choice..." Well, anybody can say that. Why doesn't God visit Earth? He's on vacation.
If this guy can be an Oxford professor, I feel better about my goals of becoming an electrical engineer.
***** The question was sardonic and I guess that's true; I'm taking a circuits analysis course right now. And I'm only in my 2nd year. I don't see your point though. But let's focus on my original comment.
Why are some questions bad when it comes to religion? Because they have no known answer. Religious people may once and a while come up with hypotheticals and that satisfies them. If a untestable answer satisfies you, then I can't help you.
***** Well if you look at quantum mechanics, that's not the case at all. There's all sorts of unpredictabilities and unusual behavior of quarks.
Isaac Newton was the first to combine science and mathematics the right way, and I suppose it has been the best paradigm of physics since we have been doing science. I wouldn't call this faith, though. I would say we are lucky to live in a universe that is almost perfect, though we discovering more that this is not the case. I think without this order we would not even be alive to admire it, for life and evolution require some stability. Perhaps there are other universes where _everything_ is unpredictable. The order in our universe is not an assumption, hope, or faith for science, it comes from everyday experience. I think Michio Kaku said that he asks his doctoral students to calculate the probability that the atoms in a person will just break apart randomly and fall to the floor, and students of quantum mechanics can find this out.
***** Well if you've ever read books on quantum mechanics (or watched a PBS doc) you'll know that it challenges our ideas of traditional science, and you said tradition science required faith.
***** Well if turned out the laws were undependable, I'd be "Ah, shucks. Oh well I'm hungry I'll go to taco bell." Science is made of the truth, not the other way around. The scientist can be wrong, but the science is objective. We do not have *faith* science works: it's profitable and beneficial to life!! We just do it because we can, not because we have "faith" it'll work. It's the complete opposite of religion.
***** Nope, doesn't require faith. I don't know how to make that any clearer.
Faith is just brainwashing disguised as something "beautiful"
Swineburne does a good job shifting the conversation away from the most simple question:
What rational is there to believe any God exists?
Fact is, neither Mr. Swineburne nor any other theist can give a satisfactory answer for this question.
Well, the adjustment someone coming from just reasoning and Philosophy has to make, is that some other philosophers have God as an established premise in argument. It's not productive to take the premise on board, nor argue the premise. Hence, "We don't do God" (and the prevalence of "religious schools of Philosophy").
Here, Swinburne addresses the arguments (i.e. the arguments from discussion without the premise), from his first premise. It should be seen in that light. Inevitably, it forces him to guess some reasons on God's behalf, and that in itself is informative, as other believers won't invent the same reasons. This is likely the driving force of religious differences within one that you choose (f.ex., Christianity), but I appreciate his frank answers.
That's not to say believers don't shift the conversation away to concepts established within their religion. Some do, some resort to vague deism, some shift it to just beyond the frontier of Science, which has shown itself to be a recipe for disaster (for them, progress for the rest of us).
I don't really care where you come from though. If you're assuming something is a part of reality as apposed to merely fiction, you're talking rationalism which is the use of science and philosophy to best model reality. Either there's at least one good rationale for that assumption or there's not, and if not, it's not any more valuable than discussion of events in Lord of the Rings. So the question remains:
What rationale is there to believe God exists?
[9:15] World has different religions. No, not at all correct. All religions have two interpretations (1) money power interpretation, which is the mainstream interpretation and (2) Vedic interpretation, which is based on the laws of nature.
Vedas describe the following laws of nature: Soul Theory, Yoga, yogic meditation, and yogic power, Reincarnation, Destiny, Eternal Recurrence, Memory in the nature, etc. All of these laws can be found in all religions. You can find destiny in Bible. High level yogic powers are in Judaism. There are many high level yogis all over the world. Reincarnation was there in Bible but was removed at some later date. Such influences prove that there was a time when Vedas were known all over the world. Take a look at theoryofsouls.wordpress.com/ for more details.
Money power interpretation has to be false. That is because money is false, since money is not an object of nature. How can you create anything true using something false like money? You cannot. Thus even all of science is wrong. But engineering is not, because engineering uses objects of nature.
This guy is not searching for truth him and this program is about trying to bring Theism and Christianity into disrepute. But Richard is too powerful for him.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn is actually searching for truth, as his hundreds of interviews of believers and Scientists show. And, he lets every interviewee speak their mind. As a result, here Swinburne must give the answers he believes accorded to the truth handed him.
Now, if Swinburne's answers were powerful, they would convince hearts and minds, but yours is one of extremely few comments in support of such a view.
I uploaded this because I found his answers extremely weak to the point of offending every thinking human, but I quickly understood that he answers as he must.
What answers do you find powerful in this interview?
oh jesus he's English...no why we should know better
+Ben .Codrington At least we still have Dawkins
It is painful to watch him make these inane responses and not have the interviewer ask the obvious rebuttals to them but instead move on to the next subject.
+itsjustameme Why don't you give us the obvious rebuttals here in the combox then?
3:00-3:05
"bits taken from your clone "
Why the hell isn't this guy in a psychiatric ward?
+Jay D You'd have to commit the majority of professional philosophers to psychiatric wards if their use of practically impossible thought experiments counts as a valid reason to do so.
+HaecceitasQuidditas I don't disagree, there are a lot of crazy people out there. Especially those high in religiosity.
+Jay D I think here he is referring to John Hick's replica theory in 'Death and Eternal Life' It's about if you were to disappear and reappear in another country people would still say it's you and what makes up the soul like is it memories and that would differentiate us from our exact replica clone but idk i'm just guessing.
Cool so he might be talking about teleportation, so much better..
If someone teleported then ofcourse it would still be them, and what makes up the 'soul' is the human nervous system and brain.
Differentiating from an exact clone is a major oxymoron.
Swinburne: The Christian Dawkins lol
No
Watch the video with fresh logics on Atheism--
th-cam.com/video/8q5zA_cECdE/w-d-xo.html
Some time machine must have brought him from the Middle Ages into the 21st century.
terrible arguments from swineburne
This comment section is cancerous.
I was going to reply something about free speech, how the comment section on TH-cam is even for simple, innocent, likeable videos, etc. But I don't need to do that, because what I really think is that most responses are actually better than most videos.
I think this is because you sort of have to have the interest in philosophical questions like the ones here to seek this video out. Obviously a few will be personally offended just by watching the video, as for the innocent videos I mention. This is a much more serious topic, so generally I'm pretty happy about the responses.
ew
i am so glad i am an atheist . Seeing through his bullshit is priceless.
+zakaria touati
I am so glad I'm not a theist. Seeing him try to respond to all these problems and not being able to comment on his obvious lack of a coherent answer was painful. This guy is supposed to be one of Christianity's heavy hitters is he?
Interesting. I take it your not much of a philosopher, because philosophers hardly ever just ride other professional philosophers off as full of shit. I take it that by bull shit you mean false or unwarranted? If so, can you provide an argument to show that his responses are false or unwarranted? And can you then continue to show your argument against his responses are probably true and warranted? I would have a more open mind, I assume you don't because open minded and informed persons usually show more humility after engaging with the scholarly work put forward by theists and atheists.
you demonstrate intellectual arrogance at its peak
Perhaps I do, maybe you're right. However, I think it is far more arrogant and close minded for someone to simply resort to name calling when one lack's an argument.
David Clark are you replying to me because i was referring to the OG comment. I just dislike it when people think they 'see through' religion like they are these ultimate minds and know everything about the complexity of the world