James Still

According to an article published in today's NYT, Richard Swinburne has argued that "the probability of the Resurrection [of Jesus] comes out to be a whopping 97 percent." (The article is published online at <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/arts/11GOD.html.)" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/arts/11GOD.html.)</a>

My wife (an economist who does transportation planning) read the article to me this morning and wanted to know why a philosopher was using Bayesian probability theory in matters of faith. All I could do was sigh and tell her that it wasn't just him but that a whole bunch of philosophers of religion were out there doing it. She stared at me quizzically and went back to the paper. I can't wait for this academic fad to run its course. Since belief in God and evidence have absolutely nothing to do with one another and cause confusion when they are married (in my not so humble opinion) it should not surprise me that evidentialists turn to Bayes as a last gasp effort to demonstrate the truths of Christian theism. But Swinburne's project will bear no fruit I suspect because those with real faith will be rightly confused by his attempt and those without it will see his prior probabilities as non-starters.

Toto

fix for URL - take out the ".)"

good article - but I have a hard time taking these arguments seriously, or any more seriously than the number of angels that dance on the head of a pin.

edited to fix typo

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>

Kenny

James Still,

Just out of curiosity, what is your justification for this statement? It seems that many of your fellow atheists would disagree.

Well, I agree that prior probabilities are the major hurdle in these types of discussions which is why I (as a Christian theist) tend to use evidential arguments rather judiciously and see their value as limited, but I don’t see them as completely worthless either. I am curious as to why you do?

God Bless,
Kenny

Grizzly

Hi James,

As you stated, Bayes theorem is very sensitive to what we call "prior probabilities". That is, in order for bayes theorem to be useful, one must have some notion of the prior probability of occurence (sometimes called the base rate). I wonder what value Richard Swinburne used as his "prior probability" of the resurrection of Jesus to come up with a posterior probability of .97? Sheesh.

Grizzly

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Grizzly ]</p>

Kenny

For those who might not know what Bayes’ Theorem is:

notation:

h = hypothesis

e = evidence

k = background information

~x = “x does not obtain”

P(x/y) = “the probability that x obtains given that y obtains”

P(x/y&z) = “the probability that x obtains given that y and z obtain”

Given this notation Bayes’ Theorem reads:

P(h/e&k) = P(h/k)*P(e/h&k)/P(e/k)

P(e/k) may also be expanded as follows:

P(e/k) = P(h/k)P(e/h&k) + P(~h/k)P(e/~h&k)

God Bless,
Kenny

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Toto

Maybe you can find out by ordering the book here:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0197262678/internetinfidelsA" target="_blank">Bayes's Theorem (Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol 113)</a> by Richard Swinburne (Editor)

(to be published May 15, 2002)

Toto

Most of those who take a Bayesian approach tend toward atheism or agnosticism for the reasons given by the questioner in the article - each scientific advance creates more evidence that the god explanation is not needed.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/peter_wilson/bayes.html" target="_blank">Atheism---A Bayesian Approach (1994)</a> by Peter Wilson from the II Library

hezekiah jones

From my perspective such "properly basic" religious beliefs are impossible, by definition.

Especially for Plantinga, who's a Christian, of all things, and furthermore thinks simply being a Christian affords him some special vantage point from which to evaluate the universe.

Pffft. "Properly arrogant" is more like it.

James Still

Kenny,

Two words: Josh McDowell. (Just joking.) It's true that many of my fellow atheists do not agree with me when I say that "belief in God and evidence have absolutely nothing to do with one another." And theists like Swinburne who take an evidentialist approach would not agree with me either.

But I am more like you in that such an approach in Christian theism has "limited value" if by limited value you mean something that does little to strengthen the connection between theistic belief and reasons to believe.

Why? Well I'll try to keep this abbreviated but I take seriously the common theme in Christian thought that faith transcends the evidence. Augustine's dialectic between human reason and Divine reason (borrowed from his roots in Neoplatonism) emphasized that understanding and faith are bestowed by God and not reached by looking at this fact or that phenomenon in the world around us.

Also, the proposition "God exists" is not like a normal proposition (despite its propositional form). The predicate existence is not contained in the essence of the subject. God's essence is said to be in principle unknowable to human beings so how could it? It's not like someone says, "a square is an object with four equal sides" where we understand that using reason alone. Even so squares are nothing but concepts in the mind. Kant pointed this out famously of course, arguing that elucidation of a thing, no matter how elaborate, can never lead to actual existence. That gives you two choices: fideism or evidentialism.

William Lane Craig, Swinburne, and many others have gone the evidentialism route. But what in our world could be predicated of God? If I say "a tree has many leaves" we can look at the evidence to derive "trees exist" as a true proposition and the cause of all of those leaves that drop on my lawn. But to do this with God we need indirect methods. We have to look at the whole enchilada and say that just as trees are the cause of those falling leaves so too is a being the cause of the whole world. But it seems to me that this is way out of proportion. There is a much narrower gap between the cause and effect of trees and leaves than there is between the cause and effect of the entire world. In short, we're out of our league. The effect is about a million times more knowable than its cause. That's why proofs are games between philosophers of religion and nothing that the laity take seriously.

That leaves fideism, which is unassailable from without (although it often crumbles from within). We atheists often rail against the gospels and say that there are a lot of bald assertions but nothing in the way of evidence. That's true, but this criticism is misplaced for the gospels were never written to provide evidence for faith. They don't say (and I'm paraphrasing Wittgenstein here) "here's the historical evidence so now believe." They say believe in spite of the evidence; believe regardless of the fact that you have not witnessed these things.

Kierkegaard's "deus incognito" was a brilliant insight. If you were there with Jesus while he performs miracles and raises the dead (and let's assume these things for the sake of argument) would your faith be stronger than that of a recent convert in Alexandria 100 years later? The disciples routinely lapsed into doubt and they saw the whole thing. And Paul got laughed off of the Areopagus in Athens when he tried to present the faith in philosophical terms; thereafter his cross theology abandons reason for faith. Faith does not seem to enjoy a strong correlation between the evidence and the subject. Christian theism is at its strongest when it embraces the universal concepts of love, charity, and peace, but in my opinion it becomes cheapened when belief is emphasized as a matter of the evidence.

James

Kenny

James,

Two Questions:

1.) Do you think that atheistic evidential arguments against theism (such as many forms of the problem of evil) have any validity?

2.) Is it appropriate for an atheist to say that she believes in metaphysical naturalism becuase that's where the evidence points?

God Bless,
Kenny