MODERN CRITICISMS TO NATURAL THEOLOGY AND SWINBURNE’S PROBABILISTIC APPROACH

Abstract

In this article I expound some of the main criticisms by David Hume and Immanuel Kant against the legitimacy of natural theology, the philosophical activity of presenting arguments for or against the existence of God. The aim is not to contribute to the scholarship in history of philosophy, but as a starting point for describing the main lines of Richard Swinburne’s approach to natural theology in terms of inductive probabilistic arguments. His proposal has been part of a current philosophical movement of reestablishing the argumentative debate on the existence and nature of God, an area that has been growing in quantity and quality since the 1970’s.