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Swinburne Vs Swineburne

1066 Words5 Pages

This philosophical study will define the more rational argument of Thomas Nagel’s atheist perspective on the non-existence of God. In contrast to this view, Swinburne’s “theodicy” defines the “reason” in which God provides free will for human beings to choose between good and evil acts. Therefore, in Swineburne’s point of view, God exists because God allows good and evil to exist in the world, which attempts to validate theism through a perceived rational process under an omnipotent God. However, Nagel proposes that not only should a person not believe in God as an atheist, but that they should seek to argue that God does not exist at all. Nagel defines the inadequacies of religious paradigms, which create unscientific and illogical views that …show more content…

More so, the belief in good and evil have been given to humanity by God, which defines the freedom of choice that explain the rationality of God’s existence as an omnipotent creator. Swinburne (1998) states the presumption of God’s existence on the premise of free will as a rational choice given to human beings to chose between good and evil: “Every moral evil in the world is that God allowing it to occur makes possible (given the assumption that humans have free will) the great good of a particular choice between good and bad” (Swinburne 223). In this argument, the rationality of God’s existence is rationalized through the belief that an all-powerful theistic God has given human beings free will. In this manner, the entire paradigm of theistic reasoning is constructed from religious texts, which assume that God is the overarching authority on what is real or not real in the human condition. More so, Swinburne feels that God has no obligation to allow all human beings to live on equal terms. Therefore, the omnipotence of God’s authority is complete, and human beings must live with the circumstances of inequality by being able to choose evil over good. In a religious context, Swinburne has gathered much of “reasoning” from the Bible and other religious texts, which assume the existence of God through the moral tenets of “good” and “evil” as a criterion for God’s omnipotence and the free will that was given to human beings. Swinburne believes that there is a reason for all human choices, which has been defined by the moral authority of God in this interpretation of

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