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Swinburne's argument for the existence of God: a critical comment on conceptual issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

JULIA BRAUNSTEINER-BERGER
JULIA BRAUNSTEINER-BERGER*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien, Austria e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article I discuss two interrelated problems found in Richard Swinburne's cumulative case argument for the existence of God. First, I argue that the probabilistic proof apparatus introduced by Swinburne in The Existence of God (1979; 2004) would require him to provide a normalized preference order of God's intentions based on a measure of the ‘relative moral goodness’ of possible-world states. However, the approach offered in the second edition of The Existence of God (2004) fails to do so for various reasons. Second, a slightly different version of the argument briefly indicated by Swinburne might avoid the problems of normalizability but falls apart when meeting the criteria of relevant confirmation.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 359 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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