Remember those four questions that needed to be answered:
1. What is the probability of our hypothesis being true independent of its explanatory power?
2. Assuming our hypothesis is true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?
3. What is the probability of our hypothesis not being true independent of its explanatory power?
4. Assuming our hypothesis is not true, and taking into account other facts we know about the world, how likely is it that we would have the evidence that we have?
We can now begin to answer these questions. I will assume that, for the sake of argument, all the evidence we have is 100% likely if the resurrection occurred (that's our answer to question 2).
On question 1: Since we have strong confirmation that billions of people have died and stayed dead, never returning to life, and since we also have no other strong evidence that a miracle has occurred, it follows that miracles, if they even occur at all, are rare. After all, if miracles were even a one-in-ten-million sort of event, wouldn't we have overwhelming confirmation of one having occurred? With all those video cameras running (some 24/7) all over the world, wouldn't we know about miracles if they occurred with a frequency of even 1 in 100 million? Therefore, even granting the existence of a miracle-working God, the prior probability of a miracle is low. It is even lower if one takes the evidence against God's existence into account, which I won't do here. For now, we'll set the prior probability of God raising Jesus at 1 in 100 billion (That's our answer to question 1). It follows that the prior probability of God not raising Jesus is 99,999,999,999 out of 100 billion (that's our answer to question 3). The McGrews shouldn't have any problem with the prior probability being what it is, as they allow that the prior could be as low as 1 in 10^40.
Question #4 is more difficult to answer and will require at least two more long blog posts: If the resurrection didn't happen, how likely is it that we would have the report of an empty tomb, reports of various people seeing Jesus individually and in groups on a couple of occasions? Lots of considerations will go into figuring that out.
To my surprise, the McGrews actually didn't even present all of the various arguments for the resurrection. They're not to be blamed for this, necessarily, since they can only focus on a few things in their article. However, I'm going to incorporate some of the other arguments for the resurrection into my considerations.
2 comments:
'If the resurrection didn't happen, how likely is it that we would have the report of an empty tomb, reports of various people seeing Jesus individually and in groups on a couple of occasions? '
Obviously it would be pretty unlikely.
After all, we have reports of people seeing Elvis , even though Elvis never resurrected.
But Elvis is just one person, so reports of seeing dead people are very rare.
Hi Steven,
I actually think that it would be very likely, maybe even certain, that some individuals would report seeing Jesus after his death. Stay tuned on the reasons behind that.
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