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References
The Age of Reason (Secaucus: Citadel Press, 1948, 1974). First published in 1974.
See especially Soren Kierkegaard'sConcluding Unscientific Postscript (Princetown: Princetown University Press, 1941), translated by David F. Swenson; introduction, notes, and completion of translation by Walter Lowrie. See also some of the writings of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981)
See T.M. Penelhum'sReligion and Rationality (New York: Random House, 1971), B. Mitchell'sThe Justification of religious Belief (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), and J. Hick'sFaith and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966, 2nd Ed). Penelhum, Hick, and Mitchell are, like Seinburne, ‘sophisticated’ Christians.
Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) pp. 181–183. This point, Swinburne urges, has been accepted widely only in the past four centuries by Christians but was made by earlier Christian thinkers like St. Hilary of Poitiers and Aquinas.
ibid.,Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) p. 182.
ibid.,Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) p. 182, n.1.
See David Hume'sThe Natural History of Religion (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1956), edited with an introduction by H.E. Root. First published in 1757.
It is either not drawn at all (Islam) or assigned a different significance (Hinduism).
Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) p. 182.
ibid.,Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) pp. 183–184.
Established archaeological data render false the claim inGenesis that the Flood was a universal cataclysm which destroyed virtually all civilization flourishing at about the 21 or 22 centuries B.C. Again, one can safely assume thatGenesis 19:30–36 is making an outrageously false claim, if either ofGenesis 18:23 or2 Peter 2:7–8 is true. As for inconsistencies,Genesis 6:3 is inconsistent withGenesis 11:10–32;Matthew 28:11–15 relates a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility.
Genesis 37:28
The genealogies of Jesus inMatthew (1:1–16) andLuke (3:23–28) conflict. Moreover, only paternal genealogies which are, of course, in the case of an immaculate conception irrelevant: an exclusively maternal genealogy is needed. Again,John 21:1–14 contradictsLuke 5:1–11;Acts 1:3 contradictsLuke 24:51, and so on.
The claims about the dating of the world's existence (which can be deduced fromGenesis) are clearly false.
T.M. Penelhum concedes that such disownment involves a measure of arbitrariness. See hisReligion and Rationality, p. 255.
For all his talk of ‘comparison of creeds’ (ibid., See hisReligion and Rationality, pp. 173–197), Swinburne himself never moves beyond his own. The discussion is, consequently, thoroughly unsatisfying.
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Akhtar, S. Religious messages and cultural myths. SOPH 25, 32–40 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02781071
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02781071