Miracles and Probability

[liamconnor]

Suppose a new school that was highly secular: no Bible. no creation. no miracles. pure science.

This school is comprised of twenty-three 13 year olds

Now, in one of the classes--history--the teacher assigns her students (all 23) the task of explaining the origins of Christianity--that is, the first proclamation that God had resurrected a man into a new mode of life--but the explanation of this event had to be explained in purely naturalistic terms (given this is an advanced secular school). Lying, hallucination, deceit, anything goes. There are no restrictions other than that it is natural. They can explain the story of the empty tomb as a myth; as real but misunderstood; or ignore it entirely. They can make up as complex a scenario as they please: Pilate can be involved as a conspirator for a Roman test on crucified victims; the Mongols can have smuggled drugs to make Jesus look dead. Heck, there was no Jesus at all. All that matters is that the explanation is naturalistic.

Now, interestingly, every 13-year old, being very creative, came up with an explanation that was significantly different from the others (none of them were of the options above). That is, we have 23 distinct naturalistic explanations for the origins of Christianity.

Now, we do not know the details of any of these explanations. All we have is reliable evidence that all 23 middle-school students presented different accounts, and all are entirely natural.

Q for D: Without knowing the details of each and every thirteen year old student's explanation, would all 23 explanations still be more probable than the Christian supernatural one?


Or is there some probability that some explanations are less probable than a supernatural one?

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 3 by Divine Insight]

The problem being that even if we allow that a supernatural God exists, that doesn't help Christianity. The Biblical stories are simply too self-contradictory concerning the supposed character, behavior, and directives of the Biblical God.

This is about the identity of the power behind the supposed resurrection. Perhaps it is not the Biblical god. The question is whether any natural explanation, in theory, is automatically more (or equally) probable than that there is a power behind the universe, and this power intervened in one special case.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 4 by Bust Nak]


So, there is an a priori case against a God intervening in history.

Is this not what we call presuppositionalism?

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 6 by benchwarmer]

How about you create your own OP, and answer the questions of this one?

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 5 by Mithrae]

I assume the direction we're heading here is what if one of the explanations involved aliens with advanced technology - perhaps Jesus himself being ET's older cousin - or something even more far-fetched, would it still automatically be considered more probable (without even knowing just how vivid these kids' imaginations were) than the existence and intervention of God?

Actually, I hoped to keep it entirely on the theoretical level: that exposes the presuppositionalism of a good many of the atheists here.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 9 by rikuoamero]

Where can we point towards another a priori example of the god liam wants?

We can point to the historical evidence of the resurrection. If natural explanations fail in Explanatory power and scope, or are grossly guilty of ad hoc assumptions, then a miraculous account seems a viable option.

However, presupossitionalists will hold that theoretically, any natural explanation is a priori superior to the supernatural one; just as fundamental literalists will hold that any defense of a discrepancy is a priori stronger than an argument that threatens the literal interpretation of scripture.

The two camps really have a lot in common: an unassailable faith in their position.

[Inigo Montoya]

[Replying to post 9 by rikuoamero]

Where can we point towards another a priori example of the god liam wants?

We can point to the historical evidence of the resurrection. If natural explanations fail in Explanatory power and scope, or are grossly guilty of ad hoc assumptions, then a miraculous account seems a viable option.

However, presupossitionalists will hold that theoretically, any natural explanation is a priori superior to the supernatural one; just as fundamental literalists will hold that any defense of a discrepancy is a priori stronger than an argument that threatens the literal interpretation of scripture.

The two camps really have a lot in common: an unassailable faith in their position.

No sir. If natural explanations fail in explanatory power and scope, or are grossly guilty of ad hoc assumptions, then we continue to scratch our heads and keep up the work of finding out what happened. We don't suddenly allow that miracles are viable and toss them into the mix to explain away what we don't understand. What precedent would justify the sudden treatment of historical inquiries in such a way? Well, we haven't quite figured out X, Y, and Z from our digging into ancient stories, so what do you say we solve this bugger with magic instead?

How many threads are you going to create before you realize you can't get a resurrection from the historical method? Do you feel the lack of support behind your bazillion threads on the subject by the best apologists on here? Don't you think Historia or WinePusher or Goose would be here with you in these threads if a miracle could be established by employing the methods used to demonstrate the likelihood of every other non-miraculous historical claim we take as part of human history?


However, presupossitionalists will hold that theoretically, any natural explanation is a priori superior to the supernatural one; just as fundamental literalists will hold that any defense of a discrepancy is a priori stronger than an argument that threatens the literal interpretation of scripture.

There are zero means to test for supernatural explanations, so I'm not sure where your incredulous pouting comes from each time you make this charge. It's as absurd as accusing someone of a priori disallowing gods and magic into the mix for explaining data. You confuse the two. I'm not saying spells and incantations and miracles and god-men are impossible. I'm asking on what grounds would I, or anyone, be justified in assigning any such agency a higher probability of occurring than something we're aware of actually existing.
Answer this, and enlighten many.


You make such a big deal about making the opposition come up with Why answers. Why would so-and-so do that? Or think that? Or lie about that? Or invent that? Why does anyone lie about anything ever? You can't tell me the motivations of anyone 2000 years ago, and neither can I. You don't think so and so was lying? So what? What good is what you think to the historical method? What can you demonstrate? For you, one guy reporting 500 people saw a risen Jesus is enough for you to forever refer to the event as having 500 witnesses. And because you can't fathom why it couldn't be false, it's true.


Liam. You are NEVER going to demonstrate a resurrection or a miracle or a god using the historical method. You understand this yes? Certainly not to the satisfaction of anyone but yourself and other believers, despite how badly you need it to be true. It isn't the job of history to treat supernatural claims. There are no provisions for the treatment of miracles, hence no history of anything miraculous apart from their claims and the resulting history of cultures that believed in them.

This is easy to disprove. Just show me one. Show us all one. Show everyone an established historical miracle, from any religion or any culture, arrived at through the method you demand we all employ if we have any aspirations of being ''good historians.''

[benchwarmer]

[Replying to post 6 by benchwarmer]

How about you create your own OP, and answer the questions of this one?

Apparently you don't even read replies. I did answer your question. I wrote:

After all the papers come in, I expect any explanations that are offered will be more probable than the supernatural given the probability of a supernatural event approaches 0% (practically by definition, since we cannot predict something which is not natural to happen).

Granted I prefaced that with what might happen in the class, but I still answered your question. Just because you don't like the answer is not my problem.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 16 by Inigo Montoya]

No sir. If natural explanations fail in explanatory power and scope, or are grossly guilty of ad hoc assumptions, then we continue to scratch our heads and keep up the work of finding out what happened.

Perfect. You have an unassailable FAITH in a natural explanation: even if you cannot find one today, yet there MUST be, one to be found. You just KNOW that nature is as it seems to you.


That is precisely the point of this entire OP. Naturalism is a Faith based philosophy; no less than Christianity is.


I turn my attention to other OPs.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 17 by benchwarmer]

After all the papers come in, I expect any explanations that are offered will be more probable than the supernatural given the probability of a supernatural event approaches 0% (practically by definition, since we cannot predict something which is not natural to happen).

Is it 0%? Or is it N/A? Since you have admitted that only natural things permit a probability, therefore, probability only applies to natural events, then 0% probability applies only to natural events.

But the resurrection is not a claimed natural event. Therefore it does not have a 0% probability, but rather a N/A probability: probability does not apply. It is neither probable nor improbable that the supernatural will intervene.

Is that what you are saying?

[Mithrae]

Yup. When it comes to aliens, we have an a priori example that you, I and liam can agree on. Assuming the aliens to have come from a planet, we can point to our own planet which has life.
Where can we point towards another a priori example of the god liam wants?

[Replying to post 4 by Bust Nak]

So, there is an a priori case against a God intervening in history.

Is this not what we call presuppositionalism?

Just to clarify folks...

• The Latin phrases a priori (lit. "from the earlier") and a posteriori (lit. "from the latter") are philosophical terms of art . . . .
  
  These terms are used with respect to reasoning (epistemology) to distinguish "necessary conclusions from first premises" (i.e., what must come before sense observation) from "conclusions based on sense observation" (which must follow it). Thus, the two kinds of knowledge, justification, or argument may be glossed:
  
  • - A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience, as with mathematics (3 + 2 = 5), tautologies ("All bachelors are unmarried"), and deduction from pure reason (e.g., ontological proofs).[3]
    - A posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence, as with most aspects of science and personal knowledge.