Richard Swinburne Quotes
Richard Swinburne is a British philosopher of religion, long associated with the University of Oxford, and the most prolific defender of natural theology in late-twentieth-century analytic philosophy. The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason developed a sustained Bayesian argument that the existence of God is more probable than not given the totality of available evidence, drawing on the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments along with the data of religious experience. The quotes below are attributed to Richard Swinburne, organized by topic.
Richard Swinburne on God
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Attributed to Richard Swinburne:
“On balance, the existence of God is more probable than not.”
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Attributed to Richard Swinburne:
“The simplicity of theism counts in its evidential favor.”
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Attributed to Richard Swinburne:
“Religious experience is evidence for what it appears to be experience of.”
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Attributed to Richard Swinburne:
“Christian doctrine is to be defended by the same canons of evidence that govern any historical inquiry.”
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Attributed to Richard Swinburne:
“Reason is not the enemy of faith; it is its proper guardian.”
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“I thus understand by a «theodicy» not an account of God’s actual reasons for allowing a bad state to occur, but an account of his possible reasons”
p. 15