Objectively?
A little more on Swinburne, just for drill.
Why do all particles behave in exactly the same way as each other, so as together ultimately to produce human life? This enormous coincidence in particle behaviour requires explaining. I’ve got a good theory which explains it; you haven’t. And if you are really telling me that the production of humans is not, objectively, a good thing, I find myself wondering if you really mean something so implausible.
He’s got a good theory to explain it. His good theory to explain it is a big person (where? where is this big person? outside the universe? on one side of it? or all sides, going all the way around? a big round person with the universe at the middle of it?) who is perfectly this that and the other, that no one can see or smell or talk to, that doesn’t take phone calls or answer letters, but does answer prayers, sometimes, maybe. That’s a good theory? It’s not just a tiny bit, erm, implausible, on the face of it? I have to be honest: it seems very implausible to me. Not just mildly implausible, but very implausible. A big person, wot made the universe, in order to make yooman beings. Nope – don’t buy it.
Okay, next bit. (And what’s that we’re always being told about how uncertain and modest religious believers are? Not if Swinburne is anything to go on they’re not.) It’s implausible to say that the production of humans is not objectively a good thing. But why are they a good thing to anyone but themselves? Well, maybe not quite only themselves. I can see why rats would be pleased, and pigeons, and flies, and various types of virus and bacteria. And of course wheat and soybeans and potatoes are delighted – it’s worked out terrifically well for them. I do quite see that. But that’s not objectively – that’s just to a few species (and who knows how many naysayers there are even there, eh? maybe lots of pigeons and rats would really have preferred to go it on their own and let things fall out as they would), it’s not objectively. How can the production of humans be objectively a good thing? What ultimate, general, non-personal, non-local good does our existence do? How is Jupiter, or Alpha Centauri, or the next galaxy over, better off for the existence of humans?
Is this the best theists can do? I suppose it must be. Since I don’t think they have any good arguments, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the arguments they do give seem awfully thin. But – then why do they get to be Topp, and publish books, and so on? It seems a little strange.
“I’ve got a good theory which explains it; you haven’t”.
Here Swinburne gives the impression he is making an argument from ignorance, without actually making an argument at all. I love this “nudge nudge, wink wink”, “plausible deniability” stuff
Well, quite. It’s one thing to agree that certain things are good given the existence of intelligent moral agents with interests and preferences, but to say that the existence of such agents is a good thing in itself – measured against some presumed objective standard – needs a lot more argument than Swinbo is giving.
And even if we can somehow make sense of this claim, it isn’t enough for his case. As he’s arguing for a “perfectly good” god, he needs as evidence for the moral beings that exist to be the best that there could possibly be. Now, I can vouch for myself being pretty damn good, and I hear there’s some old guy in South Africa who’s not so bad, but generally I think this idea is dancing in the clouds with Dr Pangloss.
We can safely assume that most people who buy Swinborne’s book already have the death sentence for atheism or agnosticism in their pockets before they open it – in fact it will probably have much the same fate as Hawking’s ‘Brief History of Time’, one those best-sellers virtually nobody reads.
What fascinated me was THIS gem of wisdom on Swinborne’s part:
“It is pretty well agreed that the belief of early Christians in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was crucially influential in their commitment to that religion and to its widespread propagation throughout the world. What caused that belief? My view is that the resurrection of Jesus caused the belief in the resurrection of Jesus. You, I suspect, have a different view. There’s quite a lot of evidence from witness testimony that Jesus did indeed rise.”
(my italics)
Now THAT would really make me happy as a lapsed Catholic just panting to return to the fold. Puhleez Puhleez come up with that witness testimony somebody!
Coming soon from the Swinborne Investigation Department:
– quite a lot of evidence from witness testimony that Jesus walked on water …
– quite a lot of evidence from witness testimony that Jesus converted water into wine…
– quite a lot of evidence from witness testimony that Jesus healed the sick…
Talk about shooting a fish in a barrel.
Borne again.
Ooops — should be Swinburne. Just that I’d never heard of the chap before.
Yeah, I liked that bit too. But – a lot of Xians, even eddicated ones like Swinny, do quite seriously believe that. I don’t know how they manage it, but they do.
He’s well-known in the field, Swinburne is. That’s part of my point, or my puzzlement.
“Now, I can vouch for myself being pretty damn good, and I hear there’s some old guy in South Africa who’s not so bad, but generally I think this idea is dancing in the clouds with Dr Pangloss.”
That made me laugh a lot.
Richard Dawkins did a review of Swinburne’s book “Is There a God?” a while back. He states what could be called the Argument from Baffling Similarity thus:
“His (Swinburne’s) reasoning is very odd indeed. Given that the number of particles of any one type, say electrons, is large, Swinburne thinks it too much of a coincidence for so many to have the same properties. One electron, he could stomach. But billions and billions of electrons, all with the same properties, that is what really excites his incredulity. For him it would be simpler, more natural, less demanding of explanation, if all electrons were different from each other. Worse, no one electron should naturally retain its properties for more than an instant at a time, but would be expected to change capriciously, haphazardly and fleetingly from moment to moment. That is Swinburne’s view of the simple, native state of affairs. Anything more uniform (what you or I would call more simple) requires a special explanation.”
And Dawkins goes on to agree with Paul here:
“A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe is not going to be simple. His existence is therefore going to need a modicum of explaining in its own right (it is often considered bad taste to bring that up, but Swinburne does rather ask for it by pinning his hopes on the virtues of simplicity).”
Heh.
You can find the rest of the review at:
http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/think/print.php?num=17
Ha, that’s good. I was thinking of asking how Swinburne explains the deity itself in a later comment. He does ask for it, with the stuff about ‘I have a good explanation and you don’t nyah nyah’ – I mean really.
There’s an interview of Swinburne in What Philosophers Think.
This was to be my post very early on
Surely the shithead has got it all arse-upwards – what would need explaining is if the same things under the same conditions acted differently. Sorely puzzled.
But no, I thought, must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick – imagine my surprise!
Even more sorely puzzled.
Actually, it doesn’t matter at all. As far as Swinburne’s concerned electrons acting the same or differently would both be equal proof of god’s existence. Because the world being as it is is proof of god’s existence. The fact that there are species going extinct because they haven’t got a chance against other species is also proof of god’s existence. You think it could just happen? What rubbish! It needs careful, not to mention divine, design and planning.
I like (if you know what I mean..) that bit when he says “I don’t think that it is in any way important that science should make predictions.” But it is isn’t it? That is science making testable predictions. I know science can be historical – making predictions about what you might find out if you looked for more evidence to support or refute your theory about what happened. But what he is describing ain’t science….its just so stories…its religion. Religion doesn’t make predictions (not ones you can test without dieing first anyway).
Yes, that was one of his more absurd moments. Not in any way important? Of course, if you just admit you’re talking nonsense, or just so stories, then naturally you think that, but Swinburne is pretending throughout that he’s talking better sense than Dennett is.
I’ve just got around to reading that exchange in full, and the ‘predictions’ bit in particular just shows S getting it wrong — Newtonian physics didn’t make any testable predictions? It ‘predicts’ what happens on a billiard-table [or under an apple tree]. S seems to confuse ‘prediction’ with ‘undiscovered phenomena’, and thus is bollixed from the start…