Ep. 43: Arguments for the Existence of God

Product Description

Discussing the arguments by Descartes, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, Kant, and others, as analyzed in J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1983), chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8, and 11. We also touch on Richard Swinburne's Is There a God? (1996).

Are the ontological, cosmological, and teleological (argument from design) arguments for God's existence any good? Mackie, a very sharp analytic philosopher well hooked into recent advances in philosophy of science, says no. He's chiefly responding to his Oxford colleague, Richard Swinburne, who takes a very rationalist approach to God, taking the concept of God to be wholly simple and intelligible and providing a superior scientific explanation for, e.g. the beginning of the universe than the brute fact of an ultimately uncaused physical universe. Read more about the topic.

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Running Time: 1 hr., 43 min. Recorded: August 7, 2011. Participants: Mark, Wes, Seth, and Robert Scott.

As a bonus, your purchase includes a high-bitrate mp3 of the song that concludes the episode, “I Believe,” by Mark Lint (2011).