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| SFReader Forums > SFReader > Anything Goes! > Math Proves Christ's Resurrection? | Forum Quick Jump
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BarbT
Acolyte
      
Date Joined Feb 2005
Total Posts : 390
| Posted 3/28/2008 8:12 PM (GMT -4) |   |
Anthony G Williams said...
My, there's a lot been going on since I last dropped in!
Let me put it in non-controversial terms to illustrate the point. A man goes to a restaurant with four dishes on the menu, two of them vegetarian. Of the meat dishes, one is beef, one lamb. There is a one in two probability that the man will choose to eat meat. If he chooses to eat meat, there is a one in two probability that he will eat beef. But the overall probability that he will choose beef is only one in four. What Swinburne seems to have lost sight of is that it is the overall probability that matters; and that includes the assumption that there is only a one in two chance that God exists at all.
But if the man is a vegetarian, there is zero chance that he will choose to eat meat, so the overall probability that he will eat beef is zero.
I now withdraw to admire those who enjoy argument (and brain-bruising math). :)
Barb
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Anthony G Williams
Greybeard
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 403
| Posted 3/28/2008 10:21 PM (GMT -4) | |
nathan said...Hey Tony, great post--glad you're having fun. All good. If you start out with a equal chance of either A then assume A (and I mean assume in the math/logic sense) and go down A then for the purpose of the equation creation the A is no longer .50--it's 1. One is 100% a whole. 97% would then be less.
Nathan, you're making the same basic mistake of ignoring the overall probability.
Let me invent another example to make the point:
A person walks into a room. There is a one in two chance that it will be a man.
If it is a man, there is (for the sake of argument) a one in ten chance that he will have blonde hair.
If he is a man with blonde hair, there is a four in five chance he will have blue eyes.
Therefore, there is a four in five chance that the person walking into the room will be a blonde man with blue eyes!
That is essentially what the prof is saying (in fact, it's even worse than that, because he somehow multiplies things together to get to 97%, but I'll leave that for now).
In fact the overall probability that the person walking into the room will be a blonde man with blue eyes will be (1 in 2) x (1 in 10) x (4 in 5), which with a rough scribbling of the pencil, comes to 1 in 25, or 4%.
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2111
| Posted 3/28/2008 10:57 PM (GMT -4) | |
Anthony G Williams said...
Swinburne said...
5. Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.
making the... basic mistake of ignoring the overall probability.
These statements can't both be correct. 
If he's considering all the factors together then how can he be ignoring the overall probability?
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Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Anthony G Williams
Greybeard
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 403
| Posted 3/29/2008 5:24 AM (GMT -4) | |
nathan said...
Anthony G Williams said...
Swinburne said...
5. Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.
making the... basic mistake of ignoring the overall probability.
These statements can't both be correct.
If he's considering all the factors together then how can he be ignoring the overall probability?
I can think of only two reasons why he would publish anything which is so obviously wrong: either he has a mental blind spot where statistics is concerned and just doesn't realise what a major error he's made; or he is being intellectually dishonest for some reason.
I find the second possibility unlikely because the mistake is so obvious that anybody with any familiarity with statistics - or even logical thinking - would spot it immediately.
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G.L. Douglas
Arkrider
Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 90
| Posted 3/29/2008 12:27 PM (GMT -4) | |
Anthony G Williams said...
1. The probably of God's existence is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't.
2. The probability that God became incarnate, that is embodied in human form, is also one in two.
3. The evidence for God's existence is an argument for the resurrection.
4. The chance of Christ's resurrection not being reported by the gospels has a probability of one in 10.
5. Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.
It seems to me that there is a huge logical flaw in the reasoning. I won't argue with the point that the probability of God existing is one in two (50%). However, points 2, 3 and 4 all depend on God existing, so only affect that one in two chance: they have no bearing on the one in two probability that God does not exist, which remains at 50%.
To work through Professor Swinburne's calculations more logically:
The probability that God is incarnate is one in two (the first probability) multiplied by one in two (the second one), i.e. one in four (or 25%).
The proposition that God was resurrected depends on his being incarnate, so is a fraction of that one in four figure and must be less than 25%. So even accepting his proposition (as I understand it) that there was only a one in ten chance that the reports of the resurrection were wrong (where did he pluck that figure from?) the chance that the resurrection happened was about one in four-and-a-half (roughly), or 22 percent - not quite the same as 97 percent mentioned, let alone the one in a thousand chance of being wrong (how does that match up with 97%?) also mentioned!
Hi, Anthony, I have a different mathematical take on this than you do. If the probability of God existing is one in two, and Swinburne assumes that God exists, then this becomes the primary focus and now represents 100%.
Example: You're walking down a road that comes to a two-way fork. You choose one path and continue to walk. After that, nothing from the path you didn't choose can affect what you encounter.
So the equation does not become one in four (25%), but is again at a 50/50 decision point in the new area.
(then again, I may be wrong. I was once before.  heh heh)
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
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Anthony G Williams
Greybeard
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 403
| Posted 3/29/2008 12:55 PM (GMT -4) | |
G.L. Douglas said...
Hi, Anthony, I have a different mathematical take on this than you do. If the probability of God existing is one in two, and Swinburne assumes that God exists, then this becomes the primary focus and now represents 100%.
Example: You're walking down a road that comes to a two-way fork. You choose one path and continue to walk. After that, nothing from the path you didn't choose can affect what you encounter.
So the equation does not become one in four (25%), but is again at a 50/50 decision point in the new area.
(then again, I may be wrong. I was once before. heh heh)
You are half right, but you're missing out the other - vital - half. At each fork in the road, there is a 50% chance that one path rather than another will be taken. But at each fork, the overall probability that a particular path will be taken drops further. So at the first fork, there's a 50% chance of choosing one path. At the second fork, there is a 50% chance of taking one path: but if looked at from the start, the chance is only 25%, and so on.
It's like flipping a coin: every time you flip a coin there is a 50% chance of it coming up 'heads'. But the chance of flipping heads many times in succession is well under 50%.
If the prof had said: "If God exists, and is incarnate, then there is a strong probability that the resurrection happened" then I wouldn't argue with him. But that is not what he is reported as saying. To quote from the article:
"It is faith, not proof, that makes Christians believe in Jesus Christ's resurrection, the central tenet of the religion. Until now. Professor Richard Swinburne, a leading philosopher of religion, has seemingly done the impossible. Using logic and mathematics, he has created a formula that he says shows a 97 percent certainty that Jesus Christ was resurrected by God the Father, report The Age and Catholic News."
The claim here is that he has proved with 97% certainty that the resurrection happened. No qualifications, no "assuming God exists". And so he is wrong. It's as simple as that.
Tony Williams
Scales (2007), The Foresight War (2004)
Homepage: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Blog: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.com/ >>
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2111
| Posted 3/29/2008 1:05 PM (GMT -4) | |
Anthony G Williams said...
I can think of only two reasons why he would publish anything which is so obviously wrong: either he has a mental blind spot where statistics is concerned and just doesn't realise what a major error he's made; or he is being intellectually dishonest for some reason.
I find the second possibility unlikely because the mistake is so obvious that anybody with any familiarity with statistics - or even logical thinking - would spot it immediately.
Well I think, as a general aside, the idea that the whole thing is a binary logic fork algorithm instead of,say, one long geometry equation is a possibility--but that's me applying only the basest of understanding, if that.
However there appears to be a third possibly that didn't seem to occur to you--perhaps because you have a mental blind spot where this subject matter occurs  : I got the following email from our much maligned Dick. *** I have no idea who put the piece which you enclose on the net. It is an extremely misleading account of my views, and has led many others beside yourself to think that I am very silly. I attach a lecture in which I summarised in prose the main argument to which you refer, contained in my book THE RESURRECTION OF GOD INCARNATE. For the mathematical calculation (which was not intended to give results quite as precise as the one you quote), you will have to get hold of the book (I don't have an electronic version of this) - the maths is contained in its Appendix. Best Wishes - Richard Swinburne*****
He did indeed send an attachement. I will of course email that attachment to anyone who wishes to read it. It's British lectures so be warned, lol.
It might be more fun to just mock though--the way the thread started--without getting a full grasp of what the man was saying or giving it a fair hearing.
Let me try; people who are curious about the intersection of the god experience and the sciences are poop-poo doo-do heads  Oh Christ, I slay me. 1+1+1=Oxford Don's are idiots! You know this is more fun.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Gustavo
Sage
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 1199
| Posted 3/29/2008 1:25 PM (GMT -4) | | Exactly, the staritng point defines the calculation of the probability - so if you take into consieration all the theoretical forks in the road, you end up a probability of getting the right fork each time of (0.5) to th nth power, where n is the number of possible choices.
The Schroedinger's cat thought experiment is meant to be an illustration of the non-intuitive properties of material's behaviour at the quantum level. As such, what it really says isn't that the cat has a fifty/fifty chance of being alive, but that the cat, sealed within the box is BOTH ALIVE AND DEAD until the box is opened. In this case, the act of opening the box - measuring - causes the waveform function to collapse and "choose" one state. As I said, it was meant to illustrate something completely different.
Just to establish my credentials (because I see that they're important here), I have a degree (Masters equivalent - degrees are structured differently in Argentina, so a basic college degree equals a Masters in the US, with the extra knowledge to go with it) in engineering. That means three years of math, including proabability and statistics in extremely great depth. I also have a couple of qualifications that I consider irrelevant in this case: an MBA (more probabaility and more math), and have been accepted for a PhD position in the US (turned it down, possibly stupidly, for a more lucrative position in the private sector - didn't claim to be wise, merely well-instreucted). It's also irrelevant because it was for a management PhD.
Having said this, and hopefully established that I am not a complete layman when it comes to math, let's take a look at our don's numbers (I will take his probabilities at face value, even though there's no support for any of them, as others have póinted out, quite correctly)
God exists: 0.5
God incarnate: 0.5
Resurrection not being informed: 0.1
The resurrrection being informed = 1 - 0.1 = 0.9
So the probability of Christ's informed resurrection according to this is actually: 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.9 = 0.225 - a little less than one in four, which is not what the man says starting from the same numbers.
Unless there are premises not reported in the upper section of this post, the math doesn't add up.
That's without even questioning his assumptions, which are the most important part of any probabilistic analysis. Maybe the old don should stick with the philososphy.
As I said before, I respect any and all faiths and beliefs, I just laugh at bad math.
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2111
| Posted 3/29/2008 1:36 PM (GMT -4) | |
Gustavo said...
1}The Schroedinger's cat thought experiment is meant to be an illustration of the non-intuitive properties of material's behaviour at the quantum level. As such, what it really says isn't that the cat has a fifty/fifty chance of being alive, but that the cat, sealed within the box is BOTH ALIVE AND DEAD until the box is opened. In this case, the act of opening the box - measuring - causes the waveform function to collapse and "choose" one state. As I said, it was meant to illustrate something completely different.
2]As I said before, I respect any and all faiths and beliefs, I just laugh at bad math. 1} G, I'm going to assume the fault is mine in the writing and not your's in the reading. I used Schrody's Cat some what because it's the most famous 50/50 example of all--admittedly. But mostly I used the Cat because it is a well known thought experiment .
I wrote that because I didn't want literary characters, vampires, tooth fairy's and pink fuzzy unicorns (whichever, pick one) substituted for the human god experience in the discourse. If we treat the variable of the god experience in our language like a thought experiment or the equation "X" then there is a vast difference in apporach and respect while still having the fundamental starting point of "intangible".
By using silly or humorous analogies you are prepping the "battlefield" by using backhanded ridicule to prep the langauge--so I was hoping to change the nature of inserting god into a math problem to that of X or a thought experiment--rather than that of, say, cartoon characters.
2} apperently it is bad math and Swinburne has nothing to do with it.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Gustavo
Sage
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 1199
| Posted 3/29/2008 4:55 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Swashbuckler
One-man sword-and-sorcery machine
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 3/29/2008 6:12 PM (GMT -4) | | | | |
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Swashbuckler
One-man sword-and-sorcery machine
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 3/29/2008 6:17 PM (GMT -4) | | The lecture Nathan sent is mostly sermon, but it does include a bit of math toward the end.
--------------------
Swinburne wrote this:
If we suppose that the probability that we would have this combination of prior and posterior evidence if Jesus was not God Incarnate is 1/1000, then it can be shown24 that the total evidence gives a probability of 97/100 that Jesus was God Incarnate who rose from the dead. To take an analogy - if the background evidence gives a significant probability, say 1/4, that John would commit a certain crime; and so 3/4 that he wouldn’t; and the clues are on the whole not such as you would not expect if he did the crime (although there is a significant probability that they might occur), but are such that it is very improbable indeed that you would find them if he did not do the crime, then they make it probable that he committed the crime.
I conclude that unless my assessment of how probable the evidence of natural theology makes the existence of God is very badly mistaken, it is very probable that Jesus was God Incarnate and that he rose from the dead.
------------------------
OK, so that's where the 97 percent figure comes from, and that's the math involved in the lecture. The lecture itself is mostly assumptions about the probability of god's existance (which Swinburne says he's worked out elsewhere and so didn't include in the lecture he sent Nathan); assumptions about the veracity of witness testimony in the gospels (unwarranted assumptions, in my view); and assumptions about what god might do and why he might do it. The lecture has very little to do with logic and math, and a whole lot to do with trying to figure out and explain Christian theology.
Steve Goble
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