Quote:
Originally Posted by NotReady
I've skimmed through this. Just for the record I'm not sure Craig is correct in his use of Bayes' - what he calls the probability calculus. I would appreciate any input on this and whether it makes any difference in how you think about his argument. He's stated elsewhere that he doesn't like using probability arguments but does so mostly to counter similar arguments from the opposition.
I'm glad you spotted this. I thought it was the worst part of the debate for Craig, mostly because most people will not be able to see the liberties he is taking so I thought it was kind of dishonest.
For one thing his notation is kind of weird. The letter B should be removed from the formula altogether, it's already implied that the probability of resurrection or its compliment are based on background information. What he fails to mention is that, as a historian, one must place the probability of resurrection as extremely low. Because we have no cases of a person coming back to life and then never dying (even if I grant you the Jesus resurrection it doesn't matter much), the "P(R/B)" term in his formula would have to be at best something like 1 in 10,000,000,000.
Where Craig goes wrong is that he claims the other terms are enough to overcome the very small probability of a human resurrection. But what he fails to realize is that even if we say there is a 100% chance of the evidence turning out the way it did given resurrection,
and only a 1 in a million chance the evidence would turn out the way it did given no resurrection, then no resurrection is STILL a huge favorite.
Reference his formula here for which numbers represent what:
P(R|E) = [(1/10,000,000,000)*(1)] / [(1/10,000,000,000)*1 + (~1)(1/1,000,000)] = ~0.00001
This is why Sklansky is always talking about Bayes' theorem. Because if someone looks at the evidence and concludes that it's a 1 in a million shot that the evidence could be the way it is if there was no resurrection, they will generally conclude the resurrection is a huge favorite. But they will be wrong.