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    The puzzling existence of the universe can be made compre... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The puzzling existence of the universe can be made comprehensible if we suppose it is brought about by a personal God with intentional beliefs and the power to bring intentions to fruition.

    Natural Theology
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but more likely that God would exist uncaused.
      ?

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    • 2.It is likely that if there is a God, he will make something like the finite and complex universe.
      ?

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    • 3.God can will to act on his intentions directly, providing a simple account of why things came to exist.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Explaining X by positing Y only reduces puzzlement if Y is itself less puzzling than X.
      ?

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    • 2.A personal God with intentional states, desires, and causal powers is at least as ontologically puzzling as a contingent universe.
      ?

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    • 3.Swinburne's inference therefore relocates rather than resolves the explanatory demand, violating Leibniz's own cosmological standard.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Intentional explanation requires a pre-existing psychological framework of beliefs, desires, and rational agency.
      ?

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    • 2.Applying intentional categories to a being prior to and independent of any physical or temporal substrate is categorically incoherent, as Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason's Transcendental Dialectic.
      ?

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    • 3.A purported explanation that deploys categorically inapplicable concepts fails to render the explanandum genuinely comprehensible.
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    Topics

    Natural Theology

    Key Terms

    God(Classical theism; used to fix the referent of 'G' in the Bayesian formulation)
    An eternal, personal being of maximal power, knowledge, and goodness who created the universe
    Intentional(as a dimension of human intelligence)
    The quality of mental states being 'about' something—when you think about pizza, your thought points to or represents pizza; this directedness toward something is called intentionality.
    Personal God(describing the type of God being proposed)
    A God who has thoughts, feelings, and intentions like a person does, rather than being an impersonal force or abstract principle.
    cosmological argument(Swinburne's general characterization)
    An argument that the fact that there is a universe needs explaining, typically by appeal to a cause or ground outside the universe

    Related

    A personal God with intentional states, desires, and causal powers is at least a...A purported explanation that deploys categorically inapplicable concepts fails t...Applying intentional categories to a being prior to and independent of any physi...Explaining X by positing Y only reduces puzzlement if Y is itself less puzzling ...
    +5 moreShow less
    God can will to act on his intentions directly, providing a simple account of wh...Intentional explanation requires a pre-existing psychological framework of belie...

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: cosmological-argument
    Swinburne 2004: 152
    View source passageHide passage
    Moreover, God is the simplest kind of person there can be because a person is a being with power (to do intentional actions), knowledge, and freedom (to choose, uncaused, which actions to do), and in God these properties are infinite, and having infinite properties is simpler than having properties with limits, as humans do. “It is always simpler to postulate infinite or zero degrees of some property than a certain precise finite value of it” (Swinburne 1983: 385). Furthermore, God engages in simple causation, that is, causation by simple intention. Swinburne concludes that although the prior ...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The extracted argument faithfully represents Swinburne's concluding reasoning as stated in the passage, where premises about the relative likelihood of God existing uncaused, God's likely creation of a finite complex universe, and God's direct intentional causation collectively support the conclusion that the universe's existence is made comprehensible by positing a personal God.

    It is likely that if there is a God, he will make something like the finite and ...
    It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but more likely that G...
    Swinburne's inference therefore relocates rather than resolves the explanatory d...

    Similar

    The existence of the universe can be made comprehensible if we suppose...87%If we are to explain the universe, we must appeal to a personal explan...80%Therefore, humans cannot draw meaningful conclusions about the nature ...80%The universe must have arisen from a necessarily existent Being who ca...79%

    Confidence: Swinburne's concluding summary argument.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit