Asghar Mohammadi; Sahar Kavandi; Hassan Fathzadeh
Volume 5, Issue 9 , November 2014, , Pages 67-90
Abstract
In his reading of the teleological argument, Richard G. Swinburne tries to show that belief in God is plausible. He, however, argues that no proof for existence of God can ever establish mathematical certainty and that the set of such arguments only suggest that existence of God is more probable than ...
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In his reading of the teleological argument, Richard G. Swinburne tries to show that belief in God is plausible. He, however, argues that no proof for existence of God can ever establish mathematical certainty and that the set of such arguments only suggest that existence of God is more probable than the opposite. Swinburne makes a distinction between two types of order (temporal and special) and bases his argument on the temporal order. He makes a further distinction between two types of explanation: personal and scientific. He argues that scientific explanation is not capable of explaining the laws of nature and that one needs to turn to personal explanations for explaining these laws. For Swinburne, explaining the world using personal explanation is the simplest explanation one can give since it is free from any complexity. In other words, fewer the number of reasons needed to explain a phenomenon is, the easier the explanation will be. This paper argues that the concept of simplicity in Swinburne’s discussions is not without complexity and that it is vague. The paper further argues that the very assumption of existence of a metaphysical quality in explaining the phenomenon of order cannot be the simplest explanation, but rather, such assumptions makes the explanation more complicated.
