swinburne essay

The Principle of credulity says that what we perceive is usually the case and that ‘this is what I experienced and you must believe my unless you can prove it did not’. This concept goes against what is generally demanded at this time, that everything must be proved first empirically before it is accepted at fact. The idea of religious experience is rejected by many people as they are skeptics and therefore simply don’t believe that what he person says happened did actually happen in that way or even happen at all and they or say that the person has misunderstood the experience they had. In order to change their views they would generally turn to the person making the claim and tell them to prove what they say is true however this principle reverses this concept to say the skeptic must believe until it can be proved false.

There are many challenges to Swinburne argument and he himself accepts this and tried to address the criticism he saw about the reliability and authenticity of religious experience. The possible criticism Swinburne saw with his argument were summarized by Caroline Franks Davis who put the criticisms into four key challenges that limit the Principle of Credulity. The first challenge was that the experience produced unreliable results or the recipient themselves were unreliable due to drugs and alcohol or the person being a pathological liar, respectively. The second is that the person who had the experience doesn’t have the ability to understand and interpret the experience due to age or another form of barrier preventing understanding. These two problems it is can be addressed not using the principles of credulity and testimony but using William James who argues that an experience being induced by drug etc does not make it less credible as the substance enhances the understand of an experience when it that state and even if some of the understanding is lost when a normal state is returned there will still be retained sense of profound experience. William James also argues that that because someone has a barrier affecting understanding for example neurosis it doesn’t mean they are not having religious experiences it is possible that neurosis make a person more able to understand religious experience better than a person who does not so we cannot dismiss what. These two criticisms would therefore seem to be successfully overcome.

The third key challenge as summarized by Davis is if it possible to show that whoever or whatever the person is saying they experienced was not actually there and the final challenge is that it possible to show that whoever or whatever is not responsible for the experience even though they claim that it was there. These to challenges on face value seem very valid criticisms as if we can say God was not there or was there but not involved then we can dismiss the claim of religious experience to proving God’s existence. However this is not an easy thing to do as it not as though we can ask God if he was in a place at a certain time or if he was there are did nothing so the challenge doesn’t get very far as he may have been or me may not, we can’t find out for ourselves we just have accept what person making the claim is saying. These last two criticisms would therefore also appear to be overcome and Swinburne’s argument who seem to be succeeding.

These four key challenges however are not the only challenges to Swinburne as Davis places criticisms on the validity of religious experience into classifications similar to Swinburne but also raises a problem with his definition of a religious experience. The Classifications are description-related challenges, subject-related challenges and object-related challenges. The subject-related challenges is very similar to the first of the four key challenges and states that if the subject making the claim/s credibility or reliability is generally questionable due to drugs or alcohol, then the claim they make can be rejected and is therefore already been partly overcome through James’ argument and with further independent evidence could lead to this challenge being completely overcome. The descriptive-related challenges reject the alleged religious experience based on the description of it and if there is any reason to reject what the person says based on their description then it cannot be used as evidential proof. The object-related challenges raise problems with the authenticity of God’s involvement in religious experiences as if what the subject claims they experienced of God is different to our presumed nature of God we will find it incredible and who is to say whether my view on God’s nature is right or the subjects view. Lastly the problem Davis raises with the definition is that it excludes aspects of nature-mysticism which affect many of the testimonies from new age religious movements or Buddhism that some people class as religious experiences and could be useful in proving God’s existence. Swinburne argument does not appear to have much or a response to the last three challenges/criticisms and therefore does not succeed in overcoming them.

In conclusion it would look as if though Swinburne’s argument for the existence of God based on religious experience does successfully overcome some of the challenges made against it, such as the four key points, but does not overcome them all. Although the fact it doesn’t overcome all of the challenges put forward by Davis it raises some questions Swinburne’s argument is still a very strong argument  as he does not claim that one persons religious experience can irrefutably prove that God exists but uses religious experience as part of an accumulative approach towards make this conclusion. Overall it would therefore seem that Swinburne is fairly successful in overcoming the challenges made against was he says as he addressed many of them and the argument has not disintegrated because of the challenges made against it.