A new critique of theological interpretations of physical cosmology

Abstract

I begin my present paper by arguing against the response by the contemporary Oxford theist Richard Swinburne and by Leibniz to what is, in effect, my counter-question: ‘But why should there be just nothing, rather than something?’ Their response takes the form of claiming that the a priori probability of there being just nothing, vis-a-vis the existence of alternative states, is maximal, because the nonexistence of the world is conceptually the simplest. On the basis of an analysis of the role of simplicity in scientific explanations. I show that this response is multiply flawed.