Re-reading Swinburne's thesis, I do what comes naturally, which is play devil's advocate. This is simply a way of testing arguments, I guess.

Swinburne proposes that there are three options : scientific explanation, personal explanation, or no explanation at all. Science is limited in that it cannot explain why things exist, or why they are so coincidentally ordered & unified. As he goes on to show, personal explanation - extrapolated to a supreme being - provides (amazingly) a pretty strong explanation for the nature of the universe.

But what has been playing in the back of my mind is a notion, perhaps akin to that of Eastern religion : that there might be another mode of explanation, which we could call the impersonal.

What if the ultimate characteristic of the universe of objects and things is, indeed, not chaos, but order? What if the artificial ordered creations that conscious beings (humans) produce - works of art, technology, etc. - are not so much analogous to the acts of a divine Maker, but rather simply acts of alignment, on a smaller scale, with the original, universal Order? "Conforming with the Tao", so to speak?

This also seems akin to some recent physics theory (I can't remember the name of the author) about the "algorithmic" nature of reality. The universe shuttling automatically into new formal formations.

One might then expect the philosophical alternative to a "new theism" would be a counter-movement - toward a "new Taoism", or something like that.

I don't happen to agree with this view, but I can see its appeal. I think that, aside from the "cosmological" or "design" arguments for theism, the evidence from consciousness and "personhood" weighs the scale on the side of theism, as opposed to this sort of spiritualized materialism or impersonal Way. (I do believe in "the Way", or universal law : but I also believe in the Person as its original and ultimate expression.)

(Between the unknowing of the intellect faced with God, and the following of the everlasting Way, there is probably a lot of complimentary common ground. But they are not the same. The belief that the ultimate ground of reality is impersonal is... rather impersonal, I guess.)

p.s. & I wouldn't be surprised if somebody like Swinburne could look more closely at the evidentiary logic of chaotic things and events, vs. the vast prevalence of order, and suggest that my "impersonal" explanation is simply the same as the "no explanation" option. What is the probability of a universe self-ordering itself, by chance (because if it is not by chance, then you have to accept a motivation of some kind - which brings God back into the picture)? In fact, the analogy, between conscious intention producing small-scale forms of order, on the one hand, with cosmic intentionality, on the other - ie. small-scale ordering acts as examples or replications of a universal-metaphysical act - remains pretty persuasive to me...

Here's a brief summary of Swinburne's thesis. It doesn't provide much of the flavor of his writing, or the cumulative strength of the arguments - but it's the basic outline.

Swinburne published a revised, shortened version of The Existence of God, titled Is there a God? (1996) - less technical, more accessible to general readership.

I'll get back to poetry one of these days.

Richard Swinburne's book (The Existence of God) is like a well-built, deep-drafted seagoing vessel. His command of the logic of evidence, probability - "confirmation theory" - allows him to re-open old arguments toward God's existence - from cosmology, from design, from "Providence", etc. - in new and remarkable directions. His discussion of the kind of universe a good God would create (the chapter on Providence) - one which allows for conscious beings with a capacity for freedom of choice of good and evil, intellectual and moral growth - I found quite moving. Nor does he sidestep the "problem of evil" or the presence of suffering and death.

The rational investigation of the possible existence and nature of God seems to me to be one of the most important cultural developments of any society, because it allows for the possibility of reasoning about and "reasoning-with" a reasonable God. It is an exercise in free thought. It counters the text-idolatry and intellectual tyranny of the fundamentalist and "traditionalist" attitudes, present in all three of the monotheistic faiths.

Slogging through some turgid & pedantic chapters in Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God. When philosophers decided, about 100 yrs ago, that they should sound like scientists, and put all their reasoning into logico-symbolic equations ("where event E is folded into hypothesis H via prior knowledge K we get probability P divided by..." blah blah)... this was a huge mistake. It's worse than the most dried-up medieval scholasticism. All this stuff should be in the footnotes at the back.

& yet the book's stylistic weaknesses are rendered just about moot by the fabulous logical intelligence at work here.

We have a general mythical-historical notion of a gradual dimming away, in the West, of rational belief in an omnipotent creator-God. This book is perhaps the best evidence that such an historical picture is mistaken. Swinburne walks in no fear of Kant or Hume. & his arguments are cumulative and very strong.

p.s. & I should say that most of Swinburne's book is clear, simple & direct. (He apologizes for the symbology in the intro.)

Have you ever pondered the question : does God exist, or not?

A simple enough question, burdened with emotional and historical and ideological and hysterical doubts, fears, myths, fantasies, evasions, dogmatisms, etc. etc. Such coercive pressure, at many levels of society, applied to force people to take positions (regardless of free will or free thought).

Anyway, here are two books which I would use if I were setting up a course on this subject (which I may just do):

Richard Swinburne : The existence of God. 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 1991 (includes a brief rebuttal of arguments in Mackie's book, as follows).

J.L. Mackie : The miracle of theism. Oxford UP, 1982 (a response, from an atheist position, to 1st ed. of Swinburne's book - as well as a clear presentation of the various arguments for & against theism).