Tennant and Swinburne

Hi you lot,

CHECK YOUR EMAILS!!!!!  And don't forget to do the reading on evil for Monday (and bring it with you too).  The exam question I set today is for Tuesday.

But also as I am quite enjoying this blogging lark, I'll put more info here too.

Tennant was the first to coing the phrase "anthropic principle" and also the first to put forward a design argument which included evolution and natural selection.  He said evolution is consistent with design arguments because evolution seems to have a purpose. •Creatures do not randomly evolve this way and that.  Progress is made all the time, life is ever more complex, ever more intelligent and has had an increasing amount of moral awareness. •Therefore evidence which supports evolution is evidence to support belief in God.  If something is moving towards a goal there must be a ‘guiding hand’ behind it.

Go back to my first blog and have a look at the website that shows you examples of the anthropic principle.

Swinburne agrees with Tennant and says scientific discoveries provide good evidence for believing there is a God. •We need to explain why the fundamental laws of nature operate with such regularity.  Such regularity in the laws of Physics can’t be a coincidence.  It is simpler and more rational to believe in a divine intelligence. Swinburne also tried to categorise religious experiences:

•He totally supports Paley and he also agrees with Tennant’s Aesthetic Design Argument.

•The main force of his argument is:

1 – it is good scientific practise to look for the most simple explanation

2 – the alternative explanations offered to explain why there is order in the universe are more complicated than belief in God

3 – it requires a greater leap of faith to believe the alternatives as it does to believe in God.

Swinburne formulated five categories into which all religious experiences fall:

• Public - a believer 'sees God's hand at work', whereas other explanations are cited (e.g., looking at a beautiful sunset).
• Public - an unusual event that breaches natural law (e.g., walking on water).
• Private - describable using normal language (e.g., Jacob's vision of a ladder).
• Private - indescribable using normal language, usually a mystical experience (e.g., "White did not cease to be white, nor black cease to be black, but black became white and white became black.").
• Private - a non-specific, general feeling of God working in one's life.

Swinburne also coined two principles for the assessment of religious experiences:

• Principle of Credulity - with the absence of any reason to disbelieve it, one should accept what appears to be true (e.g., if one sees someone walking on water, one should believe that it is occurring)
• Principle of Testimony - with the absence of any reason to disbelieve them, one should accept that eye-witnesses or believers are telling the truth when they testify about religious experiences.