Swinburne's book is essential reading. I originally bought the book to see how he deviates away from the Thomistic doctrines of Analogy. I was very glad to see that his tough minded philosophical explications of God-Talk are defensible without much fallback to analogy(or from what he says). From my perspective, Swinburne is tops in the Philosophy of Religion.

This tome is a must-read classic for any serious philosophy of religion student. Swinburne is fair, concise, and clear. The Coherence of Theism will likely be influential for some time to come. Simply outstanding!

This is an intriguing book. Oxford Professor of Religion Richard Swinburne defends substance dualism, a philosophically unpopular account of the mind as far as contemporary academic philosophy is concerned. The so-called "mind-body problem" provides the groundwork for this old philosophical argument, once shared by most of humanity before the secular age emerged. Simply put, substance dualism holds that the brain and the mind are separate entities regularly and causally interacting with each other. The brain is a purely physical entity, having a weight, length, width, color, temperature and definite location in physical space, whereas the mind -- taken to mean mental states, such as memories, desires, wishes, hopes, beliefs, and fears -- possesses none of these properties. For instance, you cannot describe your desire to purchase a new car as having the property of being one inch behind your left ear, or being three centimeters in length or weighing four ounces, etc. In short, physical objects can be measured, weighed, and (in most cases) publically observed, whereas mental states can't.

In defending substance dualism, Swinburne makes the traditional appeal to Leibniz's Law. Leibniz's Law claims if A is identical with B, then A possesses the same properties as B. For example, suppose a suspected bank robber is apprehended and brought into custody where he's given mug shots which determine that his height is exactly six feet two inches. Suppose also that subsequent to his capture the film from the bank's surveillance cameras are more closely inspected and reveal upon further analysis that the bank robber is considerably shorter than six feet two inches. Thus, it may be concluded that A (the suspect) possessed a property that B (the actual bank robber) didn't -- the property of being considerably taller -- and therefore wasn't the same person who robbed the bank. It is on this basis that Swinburne argues that the mind and the brain are two distinct entities.

Yet another property unique to minds is the property of intentionality. Intentionality is the property of aboutness or directedness. Something has intentionality if it's "about" something. Consider a belief. A person never simply "believes"; they believe in something. Say that Paul believes Max is a philosopher. The object of Paul's belief in this case is that Max is a philosopher. Mental states, Swinburne argues, each possess the property of intentionality. Wishes, hopes, memories, fears, and beliefs are each "about" something, whereas the electro-chemical processes which the brain operates under aren't. How, Swinburne asks, can the neurons of the brain be "about" anything in the same way a belief is?

Now Swinburne presents one materialist objection to the intentionality argument. Some materialist philosophers (like Dennett) who adopt a monistic account of mind counter that a guided missile is programmed to destroy a target, construed by materialist philosophers as an intentional object. So physical objects, on this basis, can be directed at something in the same way a mental state can. Swinburne makes short work of this objection by paraphrasing an argument devised by John Searle.

Searle makes a distinction between two types of intentionality: "as-if" intentionality, and "inherent" intentionality. Consider "as-if" intentionality. Someone (like Dennett) might observe water pouring from out of a faucet into a sink and exclaim, "The water wants to go into the sink." After the laughter has died down, a dualist might turn to the materialist (Dennett) and sanely inquire whether the water coming out of the faucet really "desires" to pour into the sink. Similarily, an observer (again, Dennett) might spot a robot programmed to dispense pills to patients at a hospital after midnight and say, "It wants to cure the sick." It may behave "as-if" it wants to, but does it really have a "genuine desire" to dispense pills to improve the condition of each patient? The answer, obviously, is no. In both cases the materialist observer has "read" a want into the water's motion and the robot's behavior. "Inherent" intentionality, by contrast, is a geniune desire (or hope or belief) that someone projects onto something. Say someone wants a glass of lemonade. Then that person really desires a glass of lemonade, and ergo possesses inherent intentionality.

This book, next to J.P. Moreland's excellent "Body and Soul," is the most comprehensive, up-to-date defense of substance dualism available, and that is why I recommend it.

Human beings have evolved from animals, and animals from inanimate matter; but what has evolved is qualitatively different from the inanimate matter from which it began. Both humans and the higher animals have a mental life of sensation, thought, purpose, desire, and belief. Although these mental states in part cause, and are caused by, brain states, they are distinct from them. Richard Swinburne argues that we can only make sense of this interaction by supposing that mental states are states of a soul, a mental substance in interaction with the body. Although both have a rich mental life, human souls, unlike animal souls, are capable of logical thought, have moral beliefs, have free will, and have an internal structure (so that their beliefs and desires are formed largely by other beliefs and desires inhering in the soul). Professor Swinburne concludes that there is no full scientific explanation available for the evolution of the soul, and almost certainly there never will be. For this revised edition Professor Swinburne has taken the opportunity to strengthen and expand his book to take account of developments in this area of philosophy since the first edition. He adds a prolegomenon and seven new appendixes, in addition to minor revisions of the main text. Richard Swinburne has been Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Oriel College, since 1985. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

This is an excellent book on the value and strength of the theistic arguments, although I think each argument is actually stronger than Swinburne makes it to be.

I also recommend "God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs" by Stephen Davis, and "On Good and Evil" by Vincent Cheung.

Swinburne is perhaps the leading figure in contemporary natural theology and _The Existence of God_ is his most important work. In it, he employs the tools of modern confirmation theory to develop a sustained argument for theism.

Swinburne views himself as part of the long tradition of Christian evidentialism that seeks to give rational reasons for belief in God. However, unlike, say, Anselm, Aquinas, or Paley, Swinburne thinks that every deductive argument for theism rests on premises that could rationally be rejected by the skeptic. Thus his arguments are inductive; he treats theism as a large-scale explanatory theory on a par with, say, quantum theory or Newton's theory of motion. He takes several classical arguments (the cosmological and teleological arguments, the argument from religious experience, etc.) and recasts them in terms of Bayesian probability theory, arguing that each of them confirms God's existence, i.e. raises the probability that He exists.

This is, I think, a brilliant strategy: it means that Swinburne's case does not rest on the cogency of any one argument and that none of his arguments depends on such controversial grounds as the principle of sufficient reaon or the claim that existence is a "real predicate." Rather, his premises generally reflect obvious features of the world (such as its existence and complexity) together with a set of widely accepted principles of scientific reasoning. Moreover, he establishes a rational framework applicable to any inductive arguments for theism, making it easier for other philosophers of religion to offer their own inductive arguments. (I'm surprised more of them have not done so!)

Of course, the book is open to criticism. Many of Swinburne's claims are idiosyncratic, for instance, his claim that at every moment God chooses to exist at the subsequent moment. But nothing critical rests on these oddities. More vexing is the dreaded "problem of the priors" besetting Bayesian reasoning in general. His assignment of probabilities to certain propositions might be unsatisfying to the skeptic, to say the least. But here Swinburne is aided by the modesty of his goal: he merely aims to show that it is more likely that God exists than that He does not. His assigments of priors, I think, almost always errs on the side of caution.

Presuppositionalists, Wittgensteinians, fundamentalists, and other fideists will hate this book, as will knee-jerk atheists. Thinking atheists and theists who value reason will appreciate it, even when they do not accept its conclusions. All should read it.

this is by far the best collection of arguments for the existence of God put forward by one author in one volume. swinburne is absolutely fair; perhaps too fair. if anything, he understates his case. at any rate, his careful and absolutely rigorous analytic assesment of various arguments for and against the existence of God is a treat for the reader.
but the book does have a severe flaw: it gives no attention to an aesthetic appeal to the existence of God. you almost feel, after you've read this book, like saying 'okay, there is good reason to believe in God, but so what?'...almost as though the existence or non-existence of God has no existential implications. (mark wynn's GOD AND GOODNESS is helpful in this area).
yet this shouldn't detract from the overall value of the book. i simply wish for it to be noted that swinburne's arguments are more persuasive, atleast for me, when placed alongside an existential and aesthetic approach. but such an approach cannot stand without a rigorous analytic assesment of the classical issues, and it is not likely that a better such assesment can be found than in what swinburne here offers. an absolutely essential addition to any philosophy of religion bookshelf and any comprehensive argument for the existence of God, i highly recommend it to the atheist, seeker, and theist. enjoy the book.

Swinburne would surely affirm Bishop Butler's famous declaration that "probability is the very guide of life." This sentiment is present throughout his work but it is developed most fully and explicitly in _Faith and Reason_. Swinburne maintains that there is no tension between faith and reason, defining faith simply as "a matter of pursuing the goals of religion on certain assumptions believed to be more probable than rival assumptions." This may sound sterile, but, for better or worse, it is thoroughly Swinburnean. The book is probably the best modern attempt to lay out a "rationalistic" account of religious faith, according to which faith is a matter of weighing probabilities and making decisions in light of them. This is required reading for anyone who would fully understand the contours of Swinburne's thought.

Swinburne begins by laying out a theory of rational belief, then applies it to the case of religious belief. Throughout the book, Swinburne does what he does best: make distinctions. For example, in Chapter 2 he distinguishes no less than five kinds of rationality, and in Chapter 4 he analyzes the rational and volitional components of faith and relates each to pragmatist theories of faith. His discussions of both faith and reason are often illuminating, even when his account of how they relate to each other is unsatisfying. Swinburne considers the positions of such figures as Aquinas, Luther, Pascal, James, and Newman in some detail, but is dismissive of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. I think the book suffers from its failure to consider Kierkegaard's view that uncertainty is not just acceptable, as Swinburne admits, but is the very hallmark of faith. It would have been stronger had he tried to account for the intuition behind this view within his framework.

I do not know of any wholly satisfactory treatment of the relationship between faith and reason. Swinburne's book is valuable, not only for the position it defends, but also for its clear and precise elucidation of the issues at stake. I recommend reading this book in conjunction with Scott MacDonald's paper "Christian Faith" in the volume _Reasoned Faith_, edited by Eleanore Stump, and possibly James Kellenbarger's "Three Models of Faith" in _Contemporary Perspectives in Religious Epistemology, edited by Geivett and Sweetman. Etienne Gilson's _Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages_ is also an excellent treatment of three medieval approaches to the issue that still have application today.

A little out of date, but still a good place to go
for the standard and classic readings on the problem
of induction.

In Providence and the Problem of Evil, Swinburne finally gives us a full-length treatment of evil. Swinburne presents us with an explanation of evil that focuses not just on our free will, but on the importance of mutual responsibility as a prerequisite of free will. Admirably, Swinburne attempts to integrate an account of natural evil into his account of moral evil. Natural evil is ultimately the result of a law-governed world, again a prerequisite for significant free will. Despite the usual intellectual rigor and vivacity of his work, there are some problems which Swinburne has left unresolved. First, his account of evil often falls flat in the face of concrete evil, requiring that we see such things as childhood cancer as a good thing because of the opportunities it affords us to be caring. It rings especially hollow in the face of tremendous evil like the Holocaust. Second, Swinburne does not fully treat a problem raised by J.L. Mackie some 30 years ago--that every opportunity for higher-order good (such as caring, sympathy and the like) are also opportunities for higher-order evil. Lastly, Swinburne never takes seriously the fact that his treatment of natural evil is really no more than the atheist has to say about the issue with the further complication of God and free will being added to the picture. As Swinburne himself in his other works focuses on simplicity as the be-all and end-all of explanation, this lacuna is greatly regrettable. However, despite its problems, Swinburne's book is an excellent attempt to grapple with a serious issue, and thus is time well spent.

Swiburne writes clearly and his arguments for God's existence are interesting and suggestive. In the end, though, they come down to the notion that God is the "simplest" explanation for things we observe in the natural world. It was never clear how postulating the existence of something unlike anything else in experience could be a "simple" explanation of the world. Maybe it's "simpler" just to take the existence of the world as an unexplained fact, a mystery. The discussion of why God allows pain and suffering is the weakest part of the book and is almost a parody of traditional theodicy. At one point in his discussion of animal suffering, Swinburne argues that forest fires aren't necessarily bad for animals because they give them an opportunity to escape danger, which he regards as a "significant intentional act." Since "significant intentional acts" are goods things, it follows that forest fires could be good for animals. This sounds like a joke but Swinburne was serious. The reader wondering why God allows suffering would be better advised to read the book of Job.

It is entirely possible that I am hopelessly bound to enjoy Swinburne's book. After all, he arrives scientifically at "theistic" conclusions that I already believe in by way of faith alone. At any rate, I tried to distance myself from religious presuppositions and read the book in as "unbiased" a fashion as I could. Swinburne's conclusions seemed to be very REASONABLE. I liked this excerpt, from chapter 4: "It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing: no universe, no God, nothing. But there is something. And so many things. Maybe chance could have thrown up the odd electron. But so many particles! Not everything will have an explanation. But the whole progress of science and all other intellectual enquiry demands that we postulate the smallest number of brute facts. If we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simple being which keeps them in existence, we should do so - even if inevitably we cannot explain the existence of that simple being."

In a limited way, Swinburne's work responds to many ideas postulated in books such as Richard Dawkin's "The Blind Watchmaker" (1986) and Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" (1988)... books which carry the suggestion that there is no God who is in any way involved in the sustaining of the universe. Swinburne's special field of expertise is in Philosophy of Religion, and as such, he is able to show us that "it is not a rational conclusion to suppose that explanation stops where science does". He presents a convincing argument that theism is the best explanation for the conformity of nature to formula, and the vast, all pervasive temporal order that characterizes the known universe. Why is there a universe AT ALL? Why is there ANY life on earth? HOW is it that discoverable scientific laws operate in the universe? Reading this book will help you to consider that perhaps the best answers to these questions can be offered by someone who allows for the existence of God.

Swinburne takes the moldy old "primal mover" argument for the existence of God and brilliantly revitalizes it to such an extent that it is nearly unrecognizable. I am an atheist-an open-minded one. If the arguments for God's existence ever become compelling again, I will change camps. This book was so fresh and original that it deserves a second read-which I am doing. I cannot say that I am convinced but I am very intrigued by Swinburne's argument. It is difficult to summarize his long and subtle argument here. Any attempt to do so would do it injustice so keep that in mind. He suggests that God-a simple non-material being-is the best explanation for the totality of the information that we have about the universe and that no other theory explains the universe as simply or completely as the existence of God does. In other words, using the old principle of "Occam's Razor" (the principle that "the simplest (not more complex) solution is often the correct one") God, rather than seeming a holdover from dark, superstitious times, is a very efficient and elegant solution to the reason why the universe exists at all. You will have to read the book to appreciate this in all its interesting details. And it is interesting and very thought provoking. At the very least, it is a very clever and subtle restating of a very old argument. That alone is enough reason to buy this book if you are interested in these issues. At the most, he may be onto something. A second reading is necessary. One complaint: Swinburne tries to simplify his larger volume for this edition. He writes like a typical academic-which means that his prose is often leaden and dry. It appears that he has shortened his work without necessarily making it more elegant in its presentation. I thought of many examples and illustrations he offered which were not as helpful as he must have thought they might be. If you can dig your way through his flat writing style and have some background in this area, this is a must read book.

Simplicity as Evidence of Truth
Richard Swinburne

I believe this was the first Swinburne book i actually finished cover to cover, no wonder however, it is only 56 pages long, and even those few small pages.
Perhaps he is making a statement about the theory in the shortness and conciseness of the book about it. *grin*

The book is a philosophic justification of Occam's razor, that is: given two theories the simple one is to be preferred, because it is more likely to be true.

I have been, of late, involved in an online discussion about whether science has a philosophic component. Interestingly this little book enters into that discussion because it states clearly: "To summarize the claims in a nutshell: either science is irrational (in the way it judges theories and predictions probable) or the principle of simplicity is a fundamental synthetic a priori truth."

To be a priori makes it part of the axioms by which we judge science, these axioms are not part of science, but rather part of the metaphysics prior to and upon which science is built.

The best explanation:
What are the criteria for supposing one explanation is better than, is more true than another?
a posteriori types:
1. the one which satisfies the criteria best on the whole.
2. hypothesis which best fits our background knowledge.

a priori types:
1. the greater the content, the more it predicts or tries to explain the more likely it is FALSE.
2. and this book's topic: all others things equal, the theory that is simplest is more likely to be true.

So i saved you an hour or so, reading and rereading this little book. Glad i did it, simplicity is a key element in scientific theorizing. Plus it builds confidence to actually understand and finish one of his books.

thanks for reading this rather short review.