Is There a God? [Paperback]

"With audacity, [Swinburne] yields nothing to modernity that cannot withstand rigorous philosophical analysis. An essential purchase for seminaries and graduate schools."--Religious Studies Review

Is There a God? offers a powerful response to modern doubts about the existence of God. It may seem today that the answers to all fundamental questions lie in the province of science, and that the scientific advances of the twentieth century leave little room for God. Cosmologists have rolled back their theories to the moment of the Big Bang, the discovery of DNA reveals the key to life, the theory of evolution explains the development of life... and with each new discovery or development, it seems that we are closer to a complete understanding of how things are. For many people, this gives strength to the belief that God is not needed to explain the universe; that religious belief is not based on reason; and that the existence of God is, intellectually, a lost cause. Richard Swinburne, one of the most distinguished philosophers of religion of our day, argues that on the contrary, science provides good grounds for belief in God. Why is there a universe at all? Why is there any life on Earth? How is it that discoverable scientific laws operate in the universe? Professor Swinburne uses the methods of scientific reasoning to argue that the best answers to these questions are given by the existence of God. The picture of the universe that science gives us is completed by God.

Richard Swinburne has been the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of Christian Religion at the University of Oxford since 1985; before that for twelve years he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Keele. He is the author of many eminent books on the philosophy of religion in general and of the philosophy of Christianity in particular.