Saturday, December 16, 2006 | Reason : Science of Religion | print version

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Response to Richard Dawkins' Criticisms in The God Delusion

by Richard Swinburne

Reposted from Richard Swinburne's website:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/framesetpdfs.shtml

I am grateful to Richard Dawkins for having looked at some of my writings. Here are very brief responses to the objections which he quite properly raises. Proper answers to the objections are to be found in the other writings of mine to which I refer below.

1. On p.64 Dawkins claims that my theodicy, that is my attempt to justify 'suffering in a world run by God' is 'beyond satire'. Given that God cannot do the logically impossible (as Dawkins acknowledges that I claim - along, I would add, with many philosophical theologians including Aquinas), it is a serious philosophical issue whether God can give humans free will to choose between good and evil and at the same time significant responsibility for ourselves and each other (including for our own characters) - which many people think to be a great good, without also permitting quite a lot of suffering. Dawkins should enter that philosophical debate, and not try to win by shouting. [Dawkins's claim that I 'attempted to justify the Holocaust' is highly ambiguous between the claim (1) that I attempted to justify the Nazis conducting the Holocaust, and (2) that I attempted to justify God not interfering to stop the Holocaust. I certainly did not attempt to justify the very wicked conduct of the Nazis, but I did and do attempt to justify God's non-interference.] For my full theodicy see my book Providence and the Problem of Evil, and (briefly) chs 10 and 11 of The Existence of God (second edition, 2004), from which Dawkins quotes, but again - without arguing any point. It is of course also a serious philosophico-scientific issue whether we do have free will; for my (provisional) views in defence of the view that we do have free will, see my The Evolution of the Soul, ch 13.

2. On p.65 Dawkins quotes my remark that 'too much evidence [for the existence of God] might not be good for us', and then understandably dismisses it as (in effect) absurd. Here the fault is mine - I should have given a reference to some place where I point out the advantages of having to rely on a balance of probability, and not total certainty, with respect to the existence of God. (The reason why I did not do so is that the journal in which my comments appeared, Science and Theology News, wanted their articles to be self-standing, and not to include references to other writing. I should have insisted on a reference to a place where I defend the view in question.) For my defence of the advantages of a lack of total certainty, see pp. 267-72 of the second edition (2004) of my book The Existence of God.

3. On pp.147-50 Dawkins criticizes my view that the God whom I postulate (one personal being, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free - and so perfectly good) is a simple being. He writes that 'a God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple'. And why does he think this? He doesn't say, but I take it that his reason for thinking this is that, if God gets his knowledge and exercises his power in the way in which we do (via brains) he will need to be very very complicated, since ordinary human brains with their limited powers of control are very complicated things. But (1) I am not the same thing as my brain. The full story of the world would need toinclude both what happened to me and what happened to my brain. Split brain experiments illustrate this - see, for example, chs 8 and 9 of my book The Evolution of the Soul. And I (a simple entity) control quite a bit of my brain (a much more complicated entity) so that I can make it cause many different motions of my limbs, tongue etc. And (2) whether a hypothesis is simple or not is an intrinsic feature of that hypothesis, not a matter of its relation to observable data. Whether the hypothesis is such as to lead us to expect the data is a second and different criterion for assessing a hypothesis . Whether the hypothesis that one criminal committed all of some set of murders, or whether Newton's theory that all bodies attract each other with forces proportional to mm1/r2 is simple is something we can see by studying it. But, to be probably true, the hypothesis must also satisfy the criterion of leading us to expect the data. The postulation of one entity (God) with the stated properties (scientists prefer hypotheses postulating infinite qualities to hypotheses postulating very large finite quantities - other things, that is satisfaction of other criteria, being equal) is intrinsically simple. I also argue that it leads us to expect the enormously complex data (enormously large numbers of protons, photons etc.behaving in exactly the same way) For a detailed examination of the concept of simplicity, see my book Epistemic Justification, ch 4; and for an account of why it leads us to expect the data, see Is there a God? ch. 4 and (more fully) The Existence of God, chs. 6, 7 and 8.

I apologize for referring to so many of my own writings, but any justification of one's belief that there is, or that there is not, a God, at the highest intellectual level will inevitably bring in one's views about most philosophical issues. It is not possible to circumvent the serious philosophical discussions of these issues.

Posted: Saturday, December 16, 2006 | Permalink

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1. Comment #13203 by LucyFir on December 16, 2006 at 7:20 am

Hooray for yet another pompous and long-winded essay that doesn't provide proof of gods. Is it too much to ask for evidence of the existence of anything supernatural?

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2. Comment #13206 by Pilot22A on December 16, 2006 at 7:41 am

At the end of the day Mr. Swinburne, you still believe in invisible supernatural beings and silly ancient fairy tales and Dawkins doesn't.

How do you account for that?

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3. Comment #13210 by Sailnsouth on December 16, 2006 at 7:58 am

How long will people be willing to accept all this religious double talk?

The Bible always has something to support every view so it therefore supports no view.

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4. Comment #13211 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 16, 2006 at 7:58 am

Free will again. Not surprising of course, it's absolutely critical to justify the total shit that god has otherwise made of the world.

Free will is a crock and here is why. In principle, operationally day to day, I have "free will" in the sense that I may at any given moment choose X or Y. This is "free will" because although my decision at any given moment could be predicted with certainty, I personally don't have all the relevant inputs, and thus cannot.

However from the perspective of god (the classic christian definition) I cannot possibly have free will. Every decision I take is the sum of a vast variety of inputs, environmental, historical, chemical, hormonal. A complete knowledge of all of those inputs would make prediction of my actions entirely possible.

So god creates us knowing all the forces impinging on us for the duration of our lives, and can predict with absolute certainty what the outcomes will be. My decisions are NOT random from gods perspective, they are inevitable. What a complete FUCKWIT he was to go ahead with it then in the form that he did.

Finally, we get to heaven and complete obedience (although the fall of 1/3 of the angels throws some doubt on this) is assured. So what the heck was it all FOR?

Free will is a weak bullshit concept trotted out be theists to justify the clearly random, injust world we live in.

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5. Comment #13213 by Eamonn Shute on December 16, 2006 at 8:01 am

"...it leads us to expect the enormously complex data (enormously large numbers of protons, photons etc.behaving in exactly the same way)"
Nice use of the sharpshooter fallacy - fire a bullet into the side of a barn then paint the target!

I do not understand the business of free will. If you have two worlds, one in which you have free will and one in which the future is "carved in stone", how would you tell the difference! That is why I regard free will as a red-herring.

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6. Comment #13218 by CaptainShiny on December 16, 2006 at 8:41 am

I wonder if I'm related to this guy... I don't know many other Swinburnes. Anyway, I diasgree with him, and I wish he could just leave science alone.

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7. Comment #13222 by BillySands on December 16, 2006 at 9:18 am

I must be getting fed up with theistic bollocks, because I glazed over with contempt after reading about free will. I agree with Brian. Theist take note of Romans 9:18 "so god shows mercy to just because he chooses to, and he makes some people refuse to listen"
Insane bollocks isn't it? There is hope for theists though. Start thinking for yourself and lay off the crazy pills

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8. Comment #13227 by Diplo on December 16, 2006 at 9:38 am

"...it is a serious philosophical issue whether God can give humans free will to choose between good and evil and at the same time significant responsibility for ourselves and each other... Dawkins should enter that philosophical debate, and not try to win by shouting."

Why on Earth should Dawkins enter the debate given the whole premise pre-supposes there is a God? You can't enter a debate about whether God grants us free will if you don't believe there is a God.

Imagine I came up with the theory that the Iraq war came into being because of an intervention from beings form Jupiter. Further imagine I was then challenged on this idea by someone who strongly believed that it was, in fact, due to the machinations of the Venusians. If a third party came along and said, "You are both crazy", it wouldn't be rational to respond to them by saying, "But you can't say that, you have to enter into our debate or be quiet! Now, play nice and tell us which side you think was responsible...."

It amazes me how much time and effort some people waste jumping through theological hoops in their efforts to convince themselves that the God they worship really exists. Who are they really kidding here?

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9. Comment #13228 by stevencarrwork on December 16, 2006 at 9:42 am

' I also argue that it leads us to expect the enormously complex data (enormously large numbers of protons, photons etc.behaving in exactly the same way)'

Why should we expect protons and electrons to behave differently to other protons and electrons, when if they did, we would not call them electrons or protons, but call them muons or neutrons instead?

Neutrons are defined by the way they behave, so they are all going to behave the same way.

If a neutron starts behaving differently, it is because it has decayed and is no longer a neutron.

Swinburne tries to justify his God's inaction.

It isn't that God isn't there. He is there, busy doing nothing .

Suppose one or two people had decided to go on a picnic that day in Hiroshima in 1945, and had left the city when the Americans dropped an atomb bomb on it.

Would that have been a good thing? A miraculous escape?

Let us see how prominent theologian Richard Swinburne, a Professor at Oxford University, answers that question on page 264 of his book 'The Existence of God'...

'Suppose that one less person had been burnt by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Then there would have been less opportunity for courage and sympathy;one less piece of information about the effects of atomic radiation....'

But Richard, wouldn't there be one more person alive to show courage and sympathy?

If everybody was killed, who would take advantage of these thousands of millions of opportuities to show courage and sympathy?

Perhaps God got the balance just right at Hiroshima? Not too many dead, and certainly not one person too few....?

And should dead people really be counted in terms of 'information about the effects of atomic radiation'?

And let's not forget, God made sure every one of those exploding uranium atoms behaved in just the right way to make the bomb worked.

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10. Comment #13236 by Yorker on December 16, 2006 at 10:20 am

>>...but any justification of one's belief that there is, or that there is not, a God, at the highest intellectual level will inevitably bring in one's views about most philosophical issues. It is not possible to circumvent the serious philosophical discussions of these issues.<<

Belief is the key word here Mr Swinburne, critical thinkers don't 'believe' things, they try hard to 'know' things. There are many things we don't, perhaps can't know, but that's much more preferable to unjustifiable belief. You just used a thousand words to convince me that you're what Dawkins calls a 'faith-head'. Most of us knew that already, your words were wasted.

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11. Comment #13237 by Michael on December 16, 2006 at 10:22 am

I think we do ourselves a disservice if we merely laugh at someone like Ricahrd Swinburne who is both likeable and has an agile intellect. We need to try and understand where such folk come from to counter effectively their arguments.

Swinburne has to start from a profuond belief in a vanishingly improbable omnipotent entity which created the universe. From here he has to invoke elegant semantics to cope with free will, and both human evil and natural disasters. His charm and elegance is however wasted because the initial premise cannot be correct.

Swinburne then argues closely that too much evidence would be bad for those of faith. This is essential to justify faith as there can never be any scientifically credible evidence for the impossible.

Swinburne counters the argument that a supernatural omnipotence must be vastly complex by saying no. god is simple. Well OK but he argues that we are simple even if our brains are not. He is however wrong on both counts. We and all living creatures are extremely complex in contrast to the output of our brains. The latter are pretty good computers but less complex than the whole organism which supports it.

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12. Comment #13238 by Yorker on December 16, 2006 at 10:31 am

A thought just crossed my mind.

It is possible to make an intelligent comment upon these articles from just a cursory glance. No need to actually carefully read them, what does that tell us?

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13. Comment #13240 by Quine on December 16, 2006 at 10:41 am

Logic 101:"A false premise implies any conclusion."

If you start out assuming the existence of the supernatural, you can build a logical scaffold to anything you want. Often, religious "thinkers" do this very well and present it to you with the unstated position that because it follows the form of a correct logical argument, it must be true. Again, a false premise implies any conclusion, all further (even brilliant) argument notwithstanding.

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14. Comment #13241 by Yorker on December 16, 2006 at 10:43 am

11. Comment #13237 by Michael

>>I think we do ourselves a disservice if we merely laugh at someone like Ricahrd Swinburne who is both likeable and has an agile intellect. We need to try and understand where such folk come from to counter effectively their arguments.<<

Then perhaps he should try to heal his agile intellect, right now it is fatally crippled by a lack of evidence. I think most understand very well where he's coming from; a religious background he's unable or unwilling to shake off.

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15. Comment #13242 by Mr Blue Sky on December 16, 2006 at 10:44 am

RD summed this up many times along the lines of "Theology is a non-subject". How sad that Swinburne is part of the Oxford University structure. Perhaps he is tolerated to show us how importznt it is to be rational and to study evidence and facts. Surely these people will end up defeating themselves eventually with their own circuitous arguments as soon as they are the only ones left clinging to the fairy tales!

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16. Comment #13243 by Mr. Mark on December 16, 2006 at 10:48 am

I compliment Swinburne responding to Dawkins and doing so in a civil way. A little bit of civility from the belief wing is a good thing.

That said, Swinburne basically talks past and arond the points made by Dawkins. And offering apologies post-mortem that Swinburne didn't provide references from his other writings to support writings that Dawkins criticizes is both sloppy and insincere. As a writer, he should know better than to engage in such practices, no matter what the publisher of the article sets as ground rules. The writer can always decline to write the article. In fact, any writer who cares about words and perceptions owes it to his readers to refuse to agree to strictures that will, in the end, misrepresent his beliefs.

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17. Comment #13244 by Yorker on December 16, 2006 at 11:02 am

13. Comment #13240 by Quine

Indeed. I've said so myself -- though not in the same way -- a few times on this site. It makes continued refutation of unsupported claims and beliefs no matter how cleverly presented, rather a waste of time.

There are those who would argue that first-time, inquisitive visitors here, benefit from the available writings and that's probably true. But that task is done, religites never come up with anything new that needs new intellectual attention. I think we should spend more time discussing ways of advancing non-belief -- the aim of the RDF -- rather than re-squashing already squashed opponents. That's why I was vociferous in my support of the RRS action.

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18. Comment #13248 by mdowe on December 16, 2006 at 11:42 am

Comment #13238 by Yorker

Yorker,

Agreed. If I thought I was going to be exposed to something new and thought provoking (and based on solid reason and evidence) then I might carefully read the article. And then carefully read all the necessary books and articles to which it refers. However, because of what he is defending we already know it will eventually boil down to paper-thin nonsense. Judging from my cursory look at the article, Prof. Swinburne seems to be a polite and well-written, and probably well-meaning man ... but I have real work to do =)

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19. Comment #13249 by Niels Thorsen on December 16, 2006 at 11:45 am

It is very difficult for an otherwise keen intellect to break the bonds of the religious cage and more pathetic to watch that intellect squirm inside such a prison.

Right we are to point out the glaring flaws in their reasoning, but we must have compassion if we are to turn the tide. Atheism cannot lead by poor example.

Niels

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20. Comment #13251 by paul fauvet on December 16, 2006 at 12:12 pm

So Swinburne's all-powerful super-being chooses not to intervene to halt the Holocaust (or any other great evil, for that matter).

But what is the difference between a god that does not intervene and a god that doesn't exist ?

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21. Comment #13254 by Joadist on December 16, 2006 at 12:31 pm

Theology is a non-subject. Not exactly. Theology is the study of opinions about God.

Free Will is a self-referential term within Christianity. It does not mean freedom to choose one action over another. It means that we have Will which is seperate -or free- from God's will.

A subtle, but important distinction.

Free from X is not freedom to do Y.

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22. Comment #13257 by anon on December 16, 2006 at 1:02 pm

So for [3.] he's basically saying that god doesn't need to be complex (and thus improbable) to control the universe since he's just a magic soul and souls don't need to be complex. Nice. It is truly disturbing the extend to which people will delude themselves to hold on to their religious security blankets.

There's no souls, just brains, and brains - like gods - turn out to be at least as complex as the things they control. Even if we ignore the fact that we can explain our sense of self without a supernatural soul, and that the evidence shows free will suspect at best, he's basically just reducing god to a magical unobservable entity, just another orbiting teapot.

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23. Comment #13260 by mdowe on December 16, 2006 at 1:24 pm

Comment #13249 by Niels Thorsen

Hmm .. yes .. guilty as charged. It is easy to underestimate the power of indoctrination, and thus slip into feeling smug and superior. Those of us that were not subjected to religious indoctrination (or only subjected to an extent we could later shake off) are rather fortunate. "There but for the Grace of God go I." (John Bradford c1550)

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24. Comment #13269 by Roy_H on December 16, 2006 at 2:10 pm

Did any of my fellow Brits watch the TV programme today with Tony Robinson on More 4 "The Domesday Code?" It is really frightening how The U.S.A. takes the book of revelation as fact.It was terrifying.

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25. Comment #13273 by Donald on December 16, 2006 at 3:03 pm

Swinburne is clearly intelligent, but uses deceptive techniques.

For example:
Swinburne: "[Dawkins] writes that 'a God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple'. And why does he think this? He doesn't say"

It doesn't need saying. But Swinburne uses this to create a strawman:

Swinburne: "his reason for thinking this is that, if God gets his knowledge and exercises his power in the way in which we do (via brains) he will need to be very very complicated"

Dawkins does not attribute a physical brain to 'God'. But Swinburne is developing the strawman.

Swinburne: "I am not the same thing as my brain"

Ah. Swinburne's going to use the mind-body duality argument. This is a bit of a meander from the initial issue of whether 'God' has to be complex, but we'll read on to see what Swinburne has to say.

Swinburne: "And I (a simple entity) control quite a bit of my brain (a much more complicated entity)"

Cunning. Without admitting that mind-body duality is as contentious as the existence of God, he has slipped it in as a premise. Also in separating out a "mind" from the "body", he takes the opportunity to assert that (a) minds are simple, and (b) minds control bodies. All without explicit mention. What a wordsmith.

Swinburne: "whether a hypothesis is simple or not is an intrinsic feature of that hypothesis, not a matter of its relation to observable data"

True, we must be careful not to confuse simple things with complex things that have simple descriptions.

Swinburne eventually continues: "[...] The postulation of one entity (God) [...] is intrinsically simple."

Having anaesthetised the reader with lengthy prose and gained the reader's confidence by mentioning the dangers of confusing simple things with things that have simple descriptions, now comes the confidence trick! Swinburne asserts that postulating God is simple. Of course it is! But casual readers by now will be reading this as ' God is simple, and thus Dawkins is wrong'. It's like stage illusionists. Misdirecting the audience with flimflam including one or two swift moves and the audience are left believing things that didn't happen, or that the performer did things he didn't do.

Why bother to deconstruct the tendentious writings of a someone who is probably beyond change?
If no-one challenges them, or simply dismisses them with insults, any neutral reader will take the well-written, but tendentious and deceptive, writings as credible, or true.

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26. Comment #13275 by Anat on December 16, 2006 at 3:52 pm

Swinburne: "But (1) I am not the same thing as my brain."

And what would be left of 'you' without it?

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27. Comment #13276 by Joadist on December 16, 2006 at 4:15 pm

---Swinburne: "[Dawkins] writes that 'a God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple'. And why does he think this? He doesn't say"---

This is the result of an ambiguous statement.

I can start a fire. I can monitor and control it by adjusting fuel and air. It isn't necessary for me to monitor every particle individually, since I control them as a group.

If God uses gravity, then he doesn't have to take each apple off the tree and place it on the ground.

I think it is a moot point.

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28. Comment #13278 by goddogit on December 16, 2006 at 4:49 pm

Swinburne posting a blank page would have been as informative and moving, and saved me time.

Who is he, anyway?

Did he at least get PAID for this?

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29. Comment #13281 by Martha on December 16, 2006 at 6:16 pm

>>>Did any of my fellow Brits watch the TV programme today with Tony Robinson on More 4 "The Domesday Code?" It is really frightening how The U.S.A. takes the book of revelation as fact.It was terrifying.<<<

That's the whole idea about such programmes: to TERRIFY the general population! Its just more of the same CH4 and Western Media PROPAGANDA in cahoots with Corporate America .. generate as much FEAR as you can, to control the populace. Get a grip!

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30. Comment #13285 by k1mgy on December 16, 2006 at 7:31 pm

Swinburne: "Here the fault is mine - I should have given a reference to some place where I point out the advantages of having to rely on a balance of probability, and not total certainty, with respect to the existence of God."

Pardon my yawn.

Explain, please, how it is advantageous to "rely on a balance of probability, and not total certainty, with respect to the existence of" your god? Parsing words here - are you saying that it's actually preferable to *not* have total certainty? How baffling! Did the word processor get the best of you?

Perhaps this statement of yours sheds some light on why science and your religious apologetic are so at odds. Perhaps it may be too discomforting to accept the science, which will clearly tell you that the "balance of probability" is nil. Embracing reality and putting away the fantasy might be too much to take.

Well whatever you might call it, the probability of your god, when correctly viewed through a logical and scientific lens, is extremely low. If the probability were higher, say 51%, you'd need fewer words to prop up your argument. Instead of spinning around the maypole you could simply offer *evidence* and rest easily right there.

In place of evidence, as you have none, instead you offer a lot of high sounding words.

How sad.

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31. Comment #13286 by nrvous on December 16, 2006 at 7:56 pm

The Channel Four show 'The Doomsday Code' mentioned here is up on Youtube in its entirety. See the link below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHk0N9mzPsk

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32. Comment #13293 by Zaphod on December 16, 2006 at 9:10 pm

Sometimes I laugh when people actually talk about the intricacies of something that to me plainly doesn't exist, "god".

Sometimes I cry.

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33. Comment #13305 by jonjermey on December 16, 2006 at 11:01 pm

Let's see. I approach a man dying of thirst and offer him two identical glasses of liquid. One is pure water, the other a deadly poison. "Sorry, I can't tell you which is which." I say, "That would mean I was limiting your free will to choose." Good one, God!

Rational choice requires information. Withholding information from the decision-maker doesn't contribute anything to 'free will' - it just makes it harder for them to come to a rational decision.

If there really are convincing reasons to believe in God, then God is morally obliged to make them known. Failing to do so is as evil as failing to warn a thirsty man about the poison in his glass.

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34. Comment #13312 by Donald on December 17, 2006 at 1:31 am

Joadist comment #13276 wrote:
---Swinburne: "[Dawkins] writes that 'a God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple'. And why does he think this? He doesn't say"---

This is the result of an ambiguous statement.
I can start a fire. I can monitor and control it by adjusting fuel and air. It isn't necessary for me to monitor every particle individually, since I control them as a group.
If God uses gravity, then he doesn't have to take each apple off the tree and place it on the ground.
I think it is a moot point.
-----------------------------

Swinburne is arguing for a personal god, one who answers prayers, performs miracles, monitors the billions of human individuals continuously, etc.

When you start a fire, can you control the burning of each particle?

These analogies only work if you abandon the Abrahamic god and reduce god to creating the machine (universe). Abrahamic gods cannot be simple, even if (a big if) one thinks that creating the universe could be done by something simple.

The god of the bible cannot be simple, Dawkins is clearly right about that, and I don't think there is room for mooting here.

Swinburne is trying to confuse simple things with complex things that have simple descriptions.
"God did it". Really simple. But only suitable for simple minds.

Other Comments by Donald

35. Comment #13411 by crowedone on December 17, 2006 at 2:19 pm

i was shocked and disapointed when i read the first few comments on here, it sounds like the equivilent of Catholic propaganda. I thought that all the athesets here would be clever and resonable enough to be above that!

I do agree that Richard Swinburne's logic is wrong but just dismissing it with a swear word is a usless post and makes us no better than Bible bashers

Gentle ironic hummor is unavoidible with ideas such as God, esspecialy with arguments like you controling your brain with your body, this kind of misses the point of the brain!

That said i agree entyerly that God is a load of coblers and the ideas around him are ridicules

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36. Comment #13416 by goddogit on December 17, 2006 at 2:43 pm

Crowedone: "I do agree that Richard Swinburne's logic is wrong but just dismissing it with a swear word is a useless post and makes us no better than Bible bashers."

I probably disagree with all of this statement, but am unclear what a "Bible Basher" is. Prof. Dawkins opens his book with that hilarious thumping of the main character of the OT, and certainly would accept the moniker of "bible basher". Indeed, the term sounds like a badge of honor, though there is no need to see Xian nonsense as particularly worse than many others (or religious nonsense worse than ethnic- or culture-based nonsense for that matter - e.g. "Don't mess with the U.S."). What exactly is your point?

(I rarely do this, and really, really do NOT mean it as a slight in this case, but the misspelling of ridiculous confused me for several seconds. Use that spell check and some errors will be avoided.)

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37. Comment #14516 by Veronique on December 23, 2006 at 12:14 am

I don't really want to talk Swinburne who I see as a dissembler.

Thank you Roy_H comment 24 for the link to The Doomsday Code. I had to take several breaks throughout the 101 minutes to do something physical to stop the absolute horror I experienced.

Forget silly Swinburne trying to defend the indefensible. This program presented by Tony Robinson is truly horrifying. It frightens me more than anything I have seen so far either on or via links like yours through the RD site.

How are we ever going to deal with the reality of the world we live in and what we are doing to it if this revolting stuff is spreading at the rate it appears to be.

We are the most destructive species this poor planet has ever had and with the kind of of homo sapiens who believe and proselytise the book of revelations that the mad American right religites are doing in order to hasten the end of the world, I starting to feel that every atheist everywhere has to become an activist.

That, in itself, has enormous problems. We maybe like cats and be unable to be herded because we are all so individual, but this apocalytic stuff seems to be spreading like wild fire. The Uganda segment was appalling in its adoption of this American madness.

I am only just beginning to understand the power of these people and how Bush has either buckled or is a born again anyway (which he appears to be). There was one bloke that boasted that the White House phones him for approval of policy. This is utter madness.

I apologise for this being such a rave. How on earth can this stuff be combatted?

I cannot thank you enough Roy_H for putting that link in your comment. I have sent the link to, admittedly very few, people that I know (if they can stand the length) will be as horrified as I am.

I ahve to have a drink and try to calm down. Thank you so much.

Other Comments by Veronique

38. Comment #14643 by Robert O'Brien on December 23, 2006 at 10:26 pm

I admire Richard Swinburne; he should have been voted Britain's leading public intellectual.

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39. Comment #15133 by daveadams on December 29, 2006 at 4:19 am

BrianCoughlanworldcitizen, your response to this Richard Swinburne post is immature, rude and unhelpful. What impression would you get from a religious person swearing and writing in such an impatient tone on this website? Would you not think it's because they'd rather use vulgar rhetoric than their own measured argument? Do you think Dawkins appreciates you swearing on his site?

As for your argument, you refer to "the total s**t that God has made of the world". Did God make you do the last bad thing you did? Is it not human error that has created what is wrong with this world? The Christian view is that God, through his grace, has surrendered some of his sovereignty so that we may have free will. He may know what we are going to do, but the point is he doesn't stop us doing it because that is not free will. You clearly believe in free will, but can't understand how God could allow it when he is all-knowing (it wouldn't be free will at all if he didn't - we're not machines).

As for calling him a "F*****T", your view of life is clearly very negative. You call him that for allowing us to do both good and bad, but concentrate only on the bad things people have done as a result. So kindness, charity, generosity and compassion mean nothing to you? Whether they come from God or not, you seem to see the glass as pretty much empty.

So...the world is clearly random and unjust? How much is random (ask Dawkins), and how much is unjust (ask yourself)?

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40. Comment #15138 by Roy_H on December 29, 2006 at 4:55 am

Veronique, you are very welcome. The insane are taking over the asylum. Now look at this:-
http://baconeatingatheistjew.blogspot.com/2006/04/penn-and-teller-creationism.html
"Scary and sad. It is amazing how absolutely ignorant ID supporters are when it comes to science"

Penn and Teller on the teaching of I.D. ( Idiot's Drivel ) in schools in U.S.A.

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41. Comment #17264 by NoLongerHaveBelief on January 12, 2007 at 12:18 pm

Richard Swinburne said:

>>Dawkins criticizes my view that the God whom I postulate (one personal being, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free - and so perfectly good)<<

And herein, Richard Swinburne, is a problem I've had with belief in the past. Perhaps you could explain to us Atheists the following points from a view of belief:

1) If God is Omniscient - as you claim, then where did he get his knowledge from? All lifeforms on this planet have either instinctual or life-teaching information. Where did he get his?
2) If God is Omniscient, then why does he condemn Gay people? Surely, he had to have known in advance who was to be created Gay - so why condemn them? Homosexuality is not a choice as so many of you believers would have us believe. It is a biological inheritance.
3)Was God born? 'No, he's always existed' you'd say. How do you know this and wouldn't he get bored? How boring would existence be, if you knew everything, could do anything? Nothing would be new to such a God. Such an existence would be torment. Think about it.
4) If God is 'all-loving' as you would have us believe, then why conceive of such horrors as Ebola, Progeria, Malaria, AIDS, Death [surely death, is a cruel idea?], Sin, Pain et cetera? Further, what is the point of Planets such as Venus or Mars, or the stars Sirius and Alpha Centauri? Are we the only life-forms in the universe? If not, why are we so special?
5) Why then, not just create everything perfect in the first place? What can be learnt from all the suffering that God had to have created? Why blame murderers for being exactly as God created them? Surely, God knew who Hitler was going to be - is he not up for eternal reward, now that he has fulfilled his destiny [that an all-knowing God, would have known in advance]? Why send him to hell?
6) Oh but we have free-will, you say! How can we have free-will, if our destinies are pre-ordained - by your all-knowing God? Again, you can't give free-will, if by extension, the agent [God] knows everything there is to know. This would mean that God would know that I, an Atheist, would become an Atheist [he knows everything], yet he gives me no reason or evidence, to believe in him? How are we supposed to find him, then? The Bible, you say? That book is horrendous, to clean-living people. Read it properly and tell us you think it is a book of tolerance!

No Richard Swinburne. You clearly are intelligent - but you refuse to see what is in front of your very eyes. ZERO evidence for your creator, I'm afraid. The wonders we see, the horrors we see - all natural processes' in a natural universe, quite likely, of natural and eventual explainable phenomenon.

I'll leave you with this last thought: If your God is truly all-loving, then please tell me how such a being can conceive of imperfection? If he is perfect - as you would have us believe - then by logic, 'He' couldn't conceive of the imperfection of life and the universe. The delicate balance could be ruined at any moment. The Human body has much junk DNA - as you must know [i.e what is the point of a Spleen?] and we are easily destroyed. Your perfect Being then, creates imperfect beings. And then when the imperfect beings live out their imperfect lives, created by a perfect being who knew the outcome in advance, 'He' condemns them to eternal punishment or reward.

All ludicrous. All circular reasoning. All logical fallacy. All wrong.

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42. Comment #254452 by setharmstrong on September 25, 2008 at 5:11 pm

It's funny that Swinburne feels the need to name drop right at the beginning, mentioning Aquinas. This suggests even to his fellow believers that he knows he will fail to make his case.

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43. Comment #304042 by RichieDickins on December 20, 2008 at 7:28 am

I'm a little confused about the free will issue people are talking about here, perhaps someone can shed some light on this

The claim is as follows: "you can't have free will if God knows everything there is to know."

Here I take free will to mean self-caused action. If so, I'm not sure where the inconsistency is.

Here's an example: I see you take a sip of whiskey. Then I travel back in time to the moment right before you sip the whiskey. Now at this moment, I know that you are about to take a sip of whiskey. Then you sip the whiskey. Did my knowing what you were going to do cause you to take that action? Clearly not, because knowledge isn't causally efficacious in that way.

To show that 1. God is omniscient, and 2. People have free will, are logically inconsistent with one another, one would have to derive a logical contradiction from those two premises. Now I've noticed a lot of people using the terms "logical" and "contradiction" rather loosely here. To be clear, a contradiction is to say that something is and is not in the same sense at the same time. That is, p and ~p. I'm just trying to see here how we're gonna get from 1 and 2 to p and ~p. If anybody knows how to do it, let me know because it sure would be useful for my debates with theist friends. Perhaps more premises are needed? Knock yourself out, so long as they are propositions that your general Christian holds to be true, otherwise it's a no go.

I'll admit, it's fun and easy to knock down straw men while pretending that they were real men, but it's really not the same thing. That is, it's not enough for me to simply assert, "you can't have free will if God knows everything there is to know," then claim that I have thereby refuted Christianity. Any clarification here would be much appreciated.

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44. Comment #374045 by Taliesan on May 7, 2009 at 1:57 pm

RichieDickins

Its not simply God knowing the future - God, as creator of all things, is the causal root to the future.

In your example you aren't the causal root to the guy drinking the whiskey, you didn't create the guy knowing he would drink the whiskey.

Whereas with God, he created man with a plan in mind knowing everything man would do, including drinking the whiskey - hence free will falls away.

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45. Comment #374046 by JHJEFFERY on May 7, 2009 at 2:05 pm

Well, it's slightly simpler than that. If God knows the future, as any self-respecting omniscient god should, the future is necessarily immutable. If I can change the future through my use of free will, God does not know it. Therefore if he is omniscient, there is no free will.

JHJ

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46. Comment #374047 by Diacanu on May 7, 2009 at 2:07 pm

RichieDickens-

It's worse than that, if God can know everything there is to know, then he already knew everything HE was going to do, therefore GOD has no free will, therefore isn't omnipotent, therefore isn't God, therefore doesn't exist.

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47. Comment #374048 by JHJEFFERY on May 7, 2009 at 2:09 pm

Correct.

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48. Comment #388686 by passerby on June 17, 2009 at 7:03 pm

God must be laughing at us now, amused by our efforts to understand God. I know, i know... I'm a theist, whatever that means to many of you. What it means to me though is that i believe and accept that we were created by God from God's image, thus we have the capacity to understand God in part; to have a glimpse of God's mind, BUT NOT in totality for we are created and limited. And my limited capacity to grasp God's immensity led me to this limited insight, some points about human will. Let us picture life as God's program to us. And life may be defined as the energy to generate and grow and develop, to reach a certain maturity, a fullness. And in our case we define growth in relation to biology and critically, in relation to others, to society. And let me remind all of us--whether we admit it or not--that we have survived so far by abiding to certain rules and laws( respect others, don't kill, don't steal,etc.) that are fundamentally derived from the concept of goodness as attributed to God, the 'highest good' of scholastic philosophy and theology. Let me return now to my insight of life as a program of God. All of us are programmed to be good, to be Godlike. Goodness is our program then. But, UNLIKE chips, we have our will--unfortunately a will subject to the veto of feelings and emotions-- to either execute that program or override and even disregard it. Thus even though we are programmed to be good, we still commit evil because UNLIKE machines, we have the will and the human prerequisites of emotions and feelings that influence us from executing such program. We are to be blamed for the evil acts, not God.

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49. Comment #388696 by Beachbum on June 17, 2009 at 9:05 pm

Wow,

Comment #388686 by passerby on June 17, 2009

What it means to me though is that i believe...

It is not what you believe that counts, it is what you can prove. And I can show you why you cannot know the mind of any fictitious skydaddy.

BUT NOT in totality for we are created and limited.

Bullshit! But, I can show very good evidence for the evolution of our species.

And let me remind all of us--whether we admit it or not--that we have survived so far by abiding to certain rules and laws( respect others, don't kill, don't steal,etc.) that are fundamentally derived from the concept of goodness as attributed to God,...

If you want to truly know where our goodness comes from read Robert Wright's, "A Moral Animal". It does not come from any bronze age desert goat herder myth or its asserted skyfairy.

Crap- Have you ever read your bible it is the most immoral treatise ever written. Thanks for the sermon, but no thanks.

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50. Comment #388731 by Quetzalcoatl on June 18, 2009 at 2:41 am

Passerby-

What it means to me though is that i believe and accept that we were created by God from God's image,

And what does this mean, exactly?

And let me remind all of us--whether we admit it or not--that we have survived so far by abiding to certain rules and laws( respect others, don't kill, don't steal,etc.) that are fundamentally derived from the concept of goodness as attributed to God, the 'highest good' of scholastic philosophy and theology.

God as a source of absolute morality. So far, so standard. Can you provide an example of an absolute moral value? And if God is the highest good, why is the Bible full of examples of him commanding his followers to go forth and slaughter, rape and pillage?

Thus even though we are programmed to be good, we still commit evil because UNLIKE machines, we have the will and the human prerequisites of emotions and feelings that influence us from executing such program. We are to be blamed for the evil acts, not God.

Hmm. So if we do something good, it is because of God. If we do something evil, it is because of us, God is blameless. How convenient.

So, why did God create us in such a way to make us prone to committing evil acts? Why does he punish us when he knew full well this is what would happen, given his omniscience? Why does he not intervene to change things?

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