Is There a God? Book

The stated aim of this book is to prove to its reader that not only does God exist, but that the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim God exists. The proofs are a little limp, the major one being that it is more reasonable and more rational to believe in God than to not believe in him. The evidence presented will not be certain knowledge, that would be asking too much - but like the evidence in all great mystery stories it will be 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

I must say that if I was convinced in the existence of God and that I could prove his existence logically as being necessary, then I would probably handle this in much the same way that Swinburne has here. At least in the early chapters - the latter ones are a bit embarrassing. Richard Swinburne was the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford when he wrote this book. To be honest, I would have expected more from such a person holding such a position.

He starts off by talking about what characteristics God is supposed to have - and these come down to about four, Omniscience (He knows everything), Omnipotence (He is all powerful), He has perfect free will (He can will the universe into being) and He is loving.

Swinburne then asks what are the necessary conditions to state that a theory of the world is true? There are again four conditions for this too: that the theory leads us to expect the things we observe, it is simple, it fits with our background knowledge and no other theory is as good at presenting these first three conditions in a logical and comprehensive way as the proposed theory.

Really, the main consideration that Swinburne relies on is a statement of what is generally called Ockham's Razor. His statement of this principle is that a theory should be simple, but this is a very narrow definition of this principle.

William of Ockham did put forward the idea that one should look for the simplest explanation. But his razor goes somewhat further than this - it does not just refer to an idea that is the easiest to state, but is simple in the sense of not being complex. It is a theory that has the least number of explanatory elements that should be preferred over an explanation that requires more elements to explain it. Let's take an example to make this plain.

Say you are drinking in the pub and the guy beside you tells you he has been abducted by aliens. Many people say things like, "Well, one should always keep an open mind". Yeah, right. Actually, this 'open mindedness' isn't the 'scientific' response at all. Ockham said that before you accept his aliens you need to ask - before I add elements (like aliens) to the universe to understand this story I should make sure that there is no other possibility that I can use to explain this story without them. For example, is it possible that the guy telling me this story could have imagined being abducted by aliens? And is the fact that he is on his sixth drink when I'm still finishing my first a bit of a give-away?

The point being that there are already lots of elements in the universe, can I explain the universe just with them, or do I need to invent something like aliens or (oh, I don't know) a god or something, to help explain the universe.

Swinburne says that we can't get by without a God.

There is something that is very interesting about this argument - not just is it the opposite of what I was expecting (I would have thought that someone who was going to be proposing a rational basis for the existence of god would be keeping way from Ockham as much as would be humanly possible). The fact he then says that the simplest solution to the problem of the universe is proposing a god who sustains the universe seems to be flying in the face of Ockham, but we'll get there.

Swinburne has lots of talk about the laws of physics and how these explain a lot, but not enough. They don't explain why the universe is as it is. Swinburne proposes that there could have been lots of different universes if the fundamental constants governing the life of the universe had been different. Many of these universes would not have sustained life. A universe with life is a better universe than one without life (apparently, though why this should be necessarily true sums up what still remains my major objection to this book). The only reason that explains why the fundamental forces of physics are as they are is the postulate of a god who knows and watches over us. Swinburne makes a point of stating that this is not just 'the god of the gaps' - but he protests too much. What else can it be? If we eventually find reasons why the universal constants could not be other than they are, such a finding will make his god again be an unnecessary hypothesis.

Saying that the hypothesis of a god makes the universe easier to understand was the high point of the book - I don't agree, but at least it didn't seem like special pleading as the rest of the book does. Elsewhere he says things that made my hair curl. For instance, in the chapter on miracles (and again on 'religious experiences') his argument is basically, lots of people say they have witnessed miracles. Not all of them could be wrong. Therefore miracles must exist and if that is the case then God must exist. That must be close to the sloppiest syllogism I've heard - and I've only simplified it slightly from what he said over pages and pages.

Actually, the hypothesis that there is a god is so exceptionally beyond the bounds of reason that to establish it one really needs to go beyond the bounds of 'balance of probabilities' to 'beyond reasonable doubt'. At no stage does Swinburne's arguments go even close.

The writing is, at times, very poor. He spends far too much time building logical arguments and then only to make some outlandish statement at the end that seems confounded by the logical argument he has just built up. The stuff about why evil exists in the world would be funny if it wasn't so serious a question. To say that God allows evil in the natural world as a way to show us what is possible - and thereby to give us an option to either be evil ourselves or to choose to be good, is, frankly, bizarre. Naturally, his argument for the existence of evil is 'free will' - but how this 'free will' explains children that die in utero is a bit beyond me. There is also the argument that God uses some of us as examples for others - and this guy is supposed to be moral.

The fundamental question that lies under this book is what sort of world would it be if there was no god sustaining and occasionally intervening in the workings of the world? This is a very interesting question - but my answer is still that the universe is better off without such a god to sustain it.

A number of times during the book he says that a religion that endorses killing for fun or raping and pillaging for fun can't be a true religion. But the Old Testament comes as close to this when Moses criticises the Israelites for not killing everyone in the tribes they conquer that one would suspect he is making an unconscious criticism of the religions he is supposed to be supporting.

I found this book remarkably disappointing - if these are the best arguments available for belief in god, then I would say one would be better off just saying, "I believe." And being done with it.