Swinburne, Richard - The Existence of God

The Existence of God is a sequel to The Coherence of Theism, published in 1977. The Coherence of Theism was concerned with what it means to say that there is a God and whether the claim that there is a God is internally coherent. The Existence of God is concerned with whether the claim is true; it is concerned to assess the weight of arguments from experience for and against this claim, and to reach a conclusion about whether on balance the arguments indicate that there is a God or that there is not. The present book assumes that the claim that there is a God is not demonstrably incoherent (i.e. self-contradictory), and hence that it is proper to look around us for evidence of its truth or falsity. For argument in justification of this assumption I must refer to the earlier work. However, it is in no way necessary for a reader to have read the earlier work in order to understand this one; nor, with the exception just described, does this work in any way presuppose the results of the earlier one.