Sunday, April 30, 2006

Really bad math

The blog Good Math, Bad Math has a wonderful smackdown of Richard Swinburne's flimsy argument for the resurrection:
This stunning conclusion was made based on a series of complex calculations grounded in the following logic:
(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.
Where to start with shredding this? Is it even worth the effort?

By a similar argument, I can say that probability of pink winged monkeys flying out of my butt is one in two: that is, either they will fly out of my butt, or they won't. The probability that those monkeys will fly to the home of this Oxford professor and pelt it with their feces is one in two. If pink winged monkeys fly out of my butt, that's an argument for the likelyhood of a fecal attack on his home by flying pink monkeys.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"The chance of Christ's resurrection not being reported by the gospels has a probability of one in 10."

I didn't get that. why 1 in ten?