It’s perfectly possible to craft an argument where you argue that each alternate hypothesis is improbable by objective scientific criteria, and leave the probability of the Resurrection hypothesis as a function of one’s prior probability that God exists. Perhaps this argument alone cannot convince someone who thinks that the probability that God exists as very low based on other considerations. But it might persuade genuine agnostics who have more even prior probabilities for God’s existence. I think most Christians would agree that no single argument can prove beyond a doubt that Christianity is true.
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I certainly agree that IF God does not exist, the Resurrection could not have happened.
What exactly is your point?
I have a number of points. But one of them is that we could apply this “But if there IS a God…” to any number of possible scenarios.
e.g. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury , it is true that there appears to be incontrovertible physical evidence that demonstrates that my client committed the crime of which he is accused. Security cameras show him entering and leaving the victims apartment at the exact time that the murder took place. Also, his fingerprints and DNA were found at the scene, and a gun was recovered from his home that matches exactly the ballistics of the weapon used to commit the murder.
“But what if all of this ‘evidence’ was created by an omnipotent being who wished to frame my client? We must at least remain agnostic to this possibility and, as such, must entertain reasonable doubt as to my client’s guilt. Therefore, the only verdict this court can reach is Not Guilty.”
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@Faizal_Ali, your courtroom fable is highly disanalogous for at least one reason:
I.e. in your scenario, there is a naturalistic hypothesis that is plausible and explains all the evidence extremely well; in fact, it is directly supported by the evidence in a pretty clear way, not merely coherent with the evidence.
There is no such naturalistic hypothesis in the case of the resurrection, which is what Loke’s book demonstrates.
Maybe this will help:
If we believe that the eyewitness reports of Bigfoot are true, then we also have to explain exactly what this large, hominid-like creature stalking the forests of the Pacific Coast of North America is, and how it has managed to evade capture or leave any uncontested physical evidence of its existence for so long.
But when we simply accept that these alleged eyewitness accounts are not sufficient evidence for Bigfoot’s existence, no further explanation is needed. It is not necessary to provide a comprehensive explanation for why so many people are convinced that Bigfoot has been seen in order to justify one’s position that Bigfoot’s existence has not been demonstrated.
In the case of the alleged resurrection of Jesus, the situation is even more clear cut, because we do not even have any claimed eyewitness reports that can be demonstrated to be such.
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Straightforwardly false. There are countless simple naturalistic hypotheses for the putative “resurrection”. Here’s a really simple one: How Christianity (Probably) Began… No Resurrection Required.
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I don’t agree with that. It is physically possible for all the gas-molecules in my living room to sort themselves through mere brownian motion such that all the oxygen ends up in one corner, it’s just extremely unlikely. The same could happen to Jesus dead body, one among many still-living microstates of the atoms and molecules in Jesus’ body could spontaneously obtain. Again extremely unlikely, but consistent with the laws of statistical mechanics. That would probably be among the least-likely of all naturalistic hypotheses, but it isn’t impossible. A simpler one would be that Jesus died, got buried, didn’t return, a single grieving person who knew him had halluscinations about him later, and then the story grew as legend as he passed it on.
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And what probability do you compute for the God resurrecting Jesus on this hypothesis? Even assuming for the sake of argument that a God exists, how do you get to the conclusion that [this God resurrected Jesus] is the most likely among all possible candidate explanations? Please show your work.
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Sure, that does not entail a logical contradiction. A very low bar. He could also in principle decide to abstain. Mere logical possibility does not get you to a likelihood. And you don’t show that the God-hypothesis for the resurrection is likely by inferring that any particular naturalistic hypothesis is unlikely.
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Wrong.
The naturalistic explanation is that early members of the cult of Christianity believed their founder came back from the dead, but they were wrong.
Just as Christians believe Muslims are mistaken about their founder receiving messages from God, or as every other believer of every other cult or religion is mistaken about his beliefs except those beliefs that are compatible with Christianity.
People believing in things that never happened is a very common, even trite, occurrence. Resurrections, not so much.
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Well that is the point. It is a low bar, and does not require a strong presupposition. @Faizal_Ali’s argument was that Loke’s case only made sense with the presupposition that God exists. I explained, however, that this is not the case. All one needs is the ability to reason with counterfactual conditionals. This is, indeed, a very low bar, and that is the point.
That doesn’t make sense. How can your point be to deliberately set a low bar, and then say the presupposition that God exists and would resurrect Jesus isn’t a strong presupposition? Yes it is, that basically assumes your entire position right out of the gate. It’s the most direct and uneconomical possible presupposition to make.
Imagine I did the same just the other way around. It’s possible God doesn’t exist and wouldn’t resurrect Jesus. And the point is that is a low bar, and does not require a strong presupposition.
What position could not be defended by setting the bar at mere logical possibility and insisting the presupposition isn’t strong? Anything that does not entail a contradiction could be defended in this way. But you have done no work to show that belief in the proposition is rational, or that the hypothesis is any more likely.
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@Faizal_Ali, @Rumraket - I think we should be discussing Loke’s specific arguments against these naturalistic hypotheses in this thread. Go and download the book and take issue with specific points, instead of re-litigating things from scratch.
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I see no reason to defend positions I do not hold, so I have no interest in arguing in favour of these “naturalistic hypotheses”, which I think are entirely besides the point.
By the same token, if someone wanted to argue that Bigfoot is real because it’s very unlikely these people were all hallucinating a big hairy monster walking thru the forests of the west coast, I would not consider that a very worthy argument. Would you?
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I’m not interested in a free debate about the Resurrection with you. I think we’ve done enough of that in the past, and we will just repeat the same arguments again. Your point about Bigfoot fits into that category. I’m only interested in keeping up with a thread which deals with new material, which is the topic of the OP.
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This simply ignores my reference to Loke’s work, the very topic of this thread. @Andrew_Loke has broken down all possible alternative explanations into a few categories and given arguments against them or that basis. Paulogia’s suggested explanation, which you linked, relies heavily on the hypothesis of legendary development (for just one example), and so is subject to the criticisms of that hypothesis that Loke notes and which are further developed in the literature he cites. To say, as he does, that his suggestion explains all the evidence is just to gloss over or ignore the problems with it that have been raised.
As @dga471 has said, Loke’s book is available for free if you care to engage with those criticisms…
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Hi Faizal, I asked you to read Chapters 4 and 8, you said you have read chapter 4, but based on what you wrote on this thread it seems that you haven’t read chapter 8, haven’t you? In your previous reply to me, you mentioned your objections concerning Chapter 4, but the objections you mentioned are addressed in Chapter 8! It is not right of you to take chapter 4 out of context of the argumentation of my whole book. Please read carefully chapter 8 on ‘The Problem of Miracle’ and also the methodological issues discussed in Chapter 1, and let me know if you have any more remaining questions
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This is the point, by the way, I am most skeptical of @Andrew_Loke’s argument. It is very difficult to produce a logically exhaustive list, which also captures all meaningful variation, and that is what Loke claims he has done.
My guess is that this is where his case is most likely to be shown incomplete. I’d be interested to see if we can imagine any alternate hypotheses for the Resurrection that do not fit well into his Kirt.
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This is another example of what I am talking about. There are some ideas that have been formulated regarding how legends arise, and the circumstances under which these may be more likely to happen. It is far from an exact science, of course, but lets say this is as well-established as the fact that dead people do not ordinarily come back to life.
So we have two possible events that would defy the usual expectations: A legend developing where one would not ordinarily expect it, and someone coming back to life where one would not ordinarily expect it.
The claim is that we cannot rule things out based on prior probability, because maybe there’s a God and therefore prior probability cannot really rule anything out.
OK, then. So how do we rule out legendary development if we are not going to allow prior probability to be a factor?
We can’t.
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I hadn’t then, but I have now. It does not address the issues I have raised. I am not certain you understood the argument I am making here. Probably my fault, I have a habit of favouring terseness sometimes at the expense of brevity. If you are interested in an ongoing discussion, please re-read my comments here and if you still believe you have addressed my objections, then refer me to the exact pages where you have done so. Or if you find you do not understand what I am saying then feel free to ask.