Dr. Richard Swinburne: Christian Moral Teaching on Sex, Family, and Life
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
- Notes for the lecture can be found here: bit.ly/2dnLorO.
Dr. Swinburne is a distinguished professor at the University of Oxford and author of a number of books including The Existence of God (2004), Faith & Reason (2005), Revelation (2007), Was Jesus God? (2008) and Mind, Brain, and Free Will (2013).
Dr. Swinburne gave a keynote address at the 2016 Society of Christian Philosophers Conference at Evangel University.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by Dr. Swinburne are his alone and do not necessarily represent the views, opinions or positions of Evangel University. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This is splendid presentation and defense of traditional Christian views on marriage and sexuality. Professor Swinburne clearly laid out his basic assumptions, and from them presented arguments for each of his positions. That is also the obligation of his philosophical opponents--to give their best arguments in response, and then allow the dialogue to continue, and of course Professor Swinburne then can respond to their arguments. That is how philosophy is supposed to work.
I see he offended your fundamentalist religious beliefs. You are worthy only of pity.
I don't think you're an atheist. You're just an angry Catholic. In any case, philosophy has long recognized that logical positivism does not work, since the very statement that we can only know either tautologies or empirically verifiable facts is itself neither a tautology nor an empirically verifiable fact. Thus, that kind of radical empiricism is self-referentially incoherent. You are a dinosaur, resting on the long outdated analytic philosophy of the 1920s.
The problem is, Marco, Swinburne gave coherent philosophical arguments for certain propositions. In reply you have offered a string of emotional _ipse dixits_ but not a single constructive counterargument. This may afford you some kind of catharsis but it is completely irrelevant to the debate. Don't tell us that you don't personally like Swinburne's conclusions; tell us, if you can, why those conclusions are wrong.
Thanks for uploading this. The hyperlink for the lecture notes in the video Description does seem to work and just takes me to "404 - Page Not Found". I would be very grateful if you could please fix this, if possible. Thanks in advance.
I must confess a skepticism that a social / civic atmosphere of disapproval and discouragement of homosexuality would much prevent the development of homosexuality. Such an atmosphere would discourage some homosexual behavior, and it might even, in some people, repress a well-defined conscious awareness of the disposition, but it would not prevent or extinguish the disposition itself. I think history is pretty clear on that. And history is also pretty clear on the degree of misery and, yes, social dysfunction, that would be created.
I should add that he said it isnt "intrinsically wrong." So he left a little room to backpedal.
Unbelievable how people pretend that they are explaining what the bible says on abortion, only to leave the bible aside and explain his thinking. Fear God, thats what the bible teaches. This man has no fear of God.
Swinburne presents himself as a traditionalist church apologist, but he lacks consistency on the issue of usury and presents himself as a historical relativist. As soon as he concedes usury, the whole structure of his argument falls down, as one can always find reasons for why abortion, divorce, and homosexuality can be permitted (normally on the grounds of compassion, as expressed by liberal theologians like Keith Ward).
To go into greater detail with one example, Swinburne posits that an anti-homosexual culture would be a positive culture, since it would discourage young people from perhaps becoming homosexual; but there is also evidence that an anti-homosexual culture leads to the depression and suicide of gay youth. Suicide is one of Swinburne's "intrinsically wrong" acts, so the promotion of an anti-homosexual culture could be perceived as wrong insofar as it contributes to these suicides.
Swinburne is strong on pro-theistic arguments, but his weakness as a Christian theologian comes down to a fundamental mistake: he assumes the Christian Revelation is the church, and not the person of Jesus. I also understand from other interviews that Professor Swinburne's own domestic life has not been a happy one, and perhaps he could reflect on why that has been the case, and use those insights to develop a Christian theology which recognises that human beings are complicated creatures, not chess pieces.
Do you happen to have any links to these interviews? It would be interesting to hear them.
You write, "The issue is whether they are good reasons. Swinburne suggests there are no good reasons to permit (or encourage, rather) these things on balance..."
With the qualification, I would add, "...In Professor Swinburne's reckoning."
Let's go further into the reason this has become a controversial speech, the labeling of homosexuality as a disability, and how Prof Swinburne's arguments might work in practice.
If homosexuality is actively discouraged, then it is very likely homosexual men would marry heterosexual women (or vice versa) under the pretense (or hope) of being/turning heterosexual. But unfortunately the homosexual's "disability" remains, and the marriage consequently becomes unhappy. So in this example, the social discouragement of homosexuality has led to the unhappiness of two human beings, and also potentially robbed the heterosexual spouse of the opportunity to have children (here I am following Swinburne's disagreement with divorce). This has been the case in many conservative societies, and I find it hard to imagine another type of society where homosexuality is thought of as a disability but which is supportive and compassionate of publicly self-identifying homosexuals.
So one can construct all sorts of scenarios in which "on balance" divorce, homosexuality, and other culture war issues can be seen in a very different light.
And that is why I think this is a weak presentation, as Professor Swinburne wants to reach conclusions in advance of starting his arguments, through a desire to affirm a traditional Christian morality. He has every right to do so. My point is he ends up constructing subjective scenarios to reach those conclusions, both when he is against an issue and when he is for it (contraception and usury).
After the financial crash, many people might also argue against Swinburne's support of usury, which is as fundamentally rejected in scripture as the other issues he speaks of. And if there were a nuclear bomb tomorrow which wiped out half the world's population, the overturning of God's rejection of contraception would also need to be revised.
A more consistent line would simply be to say that all these things are wrong because they are portrayed negatively in scripture, and leave it at that, as traditionalist catholics do.
Hi Jon! Once again we cross paths here on YT! hope you are doing well.
This whole video was so cringe I could hardly stand it
Try asking a Christian apologist to name a feature of Christian morality that is both (1) unique to it, and (2) not utterly repellent. They won’t be able to think of one. Then you can teach them some philosophy.
Being made in the image of God. Which gives every human intrinsic worth (Genesis 9:6). Even if there wasn’t any that was unique to Christianity, what would that prove against it?
His conjectures here border on fantasy and imagination as arguments for reason. Tread lightly when you conjecture into the why of God's rules.