Mathematical proof of The Resurrection?

I didn't make it past Step 1...

The probably [sic] of God's existence is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't.
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The probability of the Queen of England offering me a free handjob tonight while balancing an armadillo-shaped pinata on her head are one in two. That is, either she will or she won't.

I like my odds.

They really let this guy teach at Oxfrord? He may wish to run his little theory by the Mathematical Institute.
 
You'll note that he is a professor of philosophy, not mathematics. I think we've had a thread on this guy before...
 
Upchurch said:
You'll note that he is a professor of philosophy, not mathematics.
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True, but doesn't he at least have a friend over in Maths kind enough to pull him aside and say, "Look, Dickie, you're my boy and all, and I know you really dig that JC chap, but don't go public with this thing. You'll look quite an ass."?
 
The probably of God's existence is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't.
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But if he is argueing for the resurrection, then he's argueing for the Christian god. Doesn't he need to take into account all the other gods? Personally I don't know how you'd do that so maybe I'm wrong, but something with this just looks wrong.

Plus this doesn't make sense because couldn't I say the probability of existence of the [boogeyman, tooth fairy, santa, IPU] is one in two? Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that for some reason.

The probability that God became incarnate, that is embodied in human form, is also one in two.
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Isn't this more of the same from above. Just grabbing something out of the sky and giving it a 1 in 2 chance of probability?

The evidence for God's existence is an argument for the resurrection.
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What evidence? And what god?

The chance of Christ's resurrection not being reported by the gospels has a probability of one in 10.
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Ummm....how did he arrive at this 1 in 10 probability? Can someone explain this to me :confused:

Also isn't he making the assumption here that the resurrection actually happened, by talking about whether it was reported or not, something he is trying to prove with the arguement itself? I don't know maybe I'm not looking at it the right way, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.
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I think there is something wrong with these factors. :)
 
Oh wait, they just forgot one bit:

The probably [sic] of God's existence, [if His existence was determined by a coin flip,] is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't.


~~ Paul
 
New Testament scholars say the only evidences are witnesses in the four gospels. That's only five percent of the evidence," Swinburne said in a lecture he gave at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne.
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That other 95% is very well hidden!

Maybe he's referring to the Turin cloth. :D
 
ShroudOfTureen.jpg


...or maybe the Shroud of Tureen?
 
Wow, for a philosophy professor that's pretty freaking low math/critical thinking skills.

/at my university, at least 2 if not 3 philosophy profs are pretty impressive mathematicians (or physicists) too.
 
  1. The probability that Swinburne's calcuation is based in Bayesian probability is one in two. That is, either it is or it isn't.
  2. The probability that Swinburne actually understands Bayesian probability is also one in two.
  3. The evidence for Swinburne's incompetence is his argument for the resurrection.
  4. The chance of Swinburne's fallacious argument not being reported by the press has a probability of one in 10
  5. Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that Swinburne has not, in fact, lost it. If, indeed, he had 'it' in the first place, whatever 'it' is.
    [/list=1]
 
Jorghnassen said:
Wow, for a philosophy professor that's pretty freaking low math/critical thinking skills.

/at my university, at least 2 if not 3 philosophy profs are pretty impressive mathematicians (or physicists) too.
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As was pointed out in another thread, Swinburne actually is a noted expert in Bayesian statistical theory.
 
ceo_esq said:
As was pointed out in another thread, Swinburne actually is a noted expert in Bayesian statistical theory.
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For an expert Bayesian, he doesn't quite seem to understand basic probability concepts. Or at the very least he uses very questionable priors.
 
Well, to be fair none of us have read the book yet. But if it's even remotely as reported...

Dumbest. Argument. Ever.

Never was a fan of Swinburne, I bought his book Is There a God? because he was a theistic philosopher I wanted to know more about, and just found it a collection of standard-fair apologia written at "intelligent pre-teen" level.

But hey, like I said, we could just be reading some hack's ill-read, exaggerated distillation of 12 chapters' worth of heavy maths. Or not.

Edited for spelling
 
I'd like to add that after a quick search on JSTOR (which yielded no results relating to math or stats) and MathSciNet, professor Swinburne seems to only have edited a handful of articles on Bayes theorem and those articles seemed to be more about the philosophical implications of Bayes theorem than anything else (i.e. no ground breaking theory, no pratical application). Being an expert in the philosophy of Bayesian statistics in this case makes a poor statistician.
 
Starting tomorrow, every week I will buy a ticket in the national lottery. Each time, either it will be the winning ticket, or it won't. Soon I will be rich!

The beauty of Swinburne's logic is that I don't need to waste money buying more than one ticket for each lottery. I like that.
 
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