An Analysis Of Richard Swinburne's Argumentialist Approach

Evidentialism is the idea that every belief about something must be justified through evidence. However, people have come up with different criteria and approaches concerning how one comes about this evidence. The evidentialist approach states there “there is indeed good evidence for Christian beliefs about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus” (Evans 232). Evans sites five criteria that must be met for anyone to have any knowledge of a proposition. The first is that “the proposition must be true” (232). This seems fairly basic. The second is that you must have good evidence. Third, you must believe it on the basis of that evidence. This is merely saying that a person cannot believe because of something outside of the evidence. Fourth,
Lastly, you must be aware that the evidence is good evidence. All of these criteria are reasonable and restrain evidentialism from going out of bounds. Meeting these criteria strengthen the evidentialist approach because it is going about knowledge through a logical approach, making more appealing to an atheist. Richard Swinburne creates a more modern evidentialist approach, arguing that “we have good reason to hold that Christianity is true, including its historical claims, because it is the result of a propositional revelation from God” (237). This argument does not address those who do not believe in God. Evans separates Swinburne’s argument into five different parts. The first is that “the whole case is couched in terms of probabilities” (237). This means that if you are going to show that Christianity is
This could be beneficial for someone who is more skeptical and is not willing to accept beliefs on others account. Another strength that evidentialism presents is that it prevents people from coming up with their own beliefs on a whim because they must acquire the evidence for that belief. For those who have been raised in more of a scientific minded community, the evidentialist approach would be more