Reasons for Our Hope: An Introduction to Christian Apologetics by H. Wayne House & Dennis W. Jowers

Author:H. Wayne House & Dennis W. Jowers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Christian Theology, Apologetics
ISBN: 9780805444810
Publisher: B&H Academic
Published: 2011-06-30T22:00:00+00:00

Common experience testifies therefore that multiple arguments, none of which renders a conclusion probable on its own, may render the same conclusion probable when considered together.

F. Can Different Theistic Arguments Support the Same Conclusion?

Swinburne replies, sixth, to the objection that one cannot combine particular theistic arguments into a plausible, cumulative argument for the existence of God, because particular theistic arguments imply different conclusions. Arguments from the necessity of a first cause, for example, imply by themselves the existence only of a nondescript, first cause, not the personal God of Christian theism. Arguments from design, however, do not, in and of themselves, imply the existence of a first cause; when considered in isolation, rather, they imply merely the existence of a cosmic architect.

Swinburne argues, however, that if this criticism sufficed to defeat all cumulative theistic arguments, it would also suffice to undermine virtually all scientific theories of broad scope. For in arguments for such theories, he asserts:

each separate piece of evidence [typically] does not make the theory very probable, and indeed taken on its own makes some narrower theory much more probable. . . . Each of the various pieces of evidence that are cited as evidence in favour of the General Theory of Relativity [for example] . . . by itself . . . was evidence in favour of some rival but far less wide-ranging hypothesis than General Relativity. Thus the movement of Mercury’s perihelion taken by itself would suggest only that there was a hitherto unknown planet lying between Mercury and the sun or that the sun was of an odd shape, rather than that General Relativity was true. Taken by itself it would not have given much probability to General Relativity; but taken with other pieces of evidence it did its bit in supporting the latter.47

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