Swinburne's Confirmation Inductive Argument as the Best Explanation of Theism

Document Type : Research Paper

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Associate Professor of Philosophy Department, University of Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Can atheistic explanations scientifically explain the world and humans? Can theistic deductive arguments provide a rational explanation of the world? Many philosophers of contemporary religion believe that deductive arguments for the existence of God are invalid because they are either deductively invalid or based on one or more false or uncertain premises. Hence, they turned to non-analogical arguments about the existence of God. The purpose of this paper is to examine and evaluate one of these interesting new arguments, the Swinburne inductive argument. This research paper is a library-based theoretical analysis that is done through the concepts, propositions, and arguments. Swinburne claims that humanistic and materialistic explanations cannot explain the world and humans. In contrast, he has three arguments for the existence of the universe, the existence of scientific laws, and the laws of the process of evolution; He uses the existence of God as three affirmative inductive arguments and concludes the accumulation of theism as the best explanation. The result of such arguments is that theism can be the ultimate explanation of the world. It will also be shown that such arguments are less challenging and can greatly increase the likelihood of God's existence.

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References

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