Odds
Wait – what?
It is 97 per cent certain that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead – based on sheer logic and mathematics, not faith – according to Oxford professor Richard Swinburne…This conclusion was reached after a complex series of calculations. In simplified terms, it began with a single proposition: the probability was one in two that God exists. Next, if God exists, the probability was one in two that he became incarnate.
A single proposition – that the probability is one in two that God exists. Um.
We talked (or wrangled) about this last year, when this article on a similar but not identical theme appeared.
A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God exists. Dr Stephen Unwin has used a 200-year-old formula to calculate the probability of the existence of an omnipotent being. Bayes’ Theory is usually used to work out the likelihood of events, such as nuclear power failure, by balancing the various factors that could affect a situation. The Manchester University graduate, who now works as a risk assessor in Ohio, said the theory starts from the assumption that God has a 50/50 chance of existing, and then factors in the evidence both for and against the notion of a higher being. Factors that were considered included recognition of goodness, which Dr Unwin said makes the existence of God more likely, countered by things like the existence of natural evil – including earthquakes and cancer.
Big assumption to start from, as we said at the time. A commenter knowledgeable (at least apparently, and as far as I could tell) about probability, said yes, it’s quite reasonable to take as a starting point a 50/50 shot of God, or the Easter Bunny, Spider-man, Attila the Hun, or anything else, existing if you don’t know better. If you don’t know better. If you start from zero, with no idea either way of the likelihood that the Easter Bunny does or does not exist. But we’re not starting from there, are we. So – why should the probability be one in two that ‘God’ exists? (Not to mention what exactly Swinburne means by ‘God’ in this, er, equation.) No doubt Swinburne says why in his book, but the probablity is 492 in 493 that I would be unconvinced. And then the business about becoming incarnate – please.
“Does he have reason to become incarnate? Yes, to make atonement, identify with our suffering and to teach us things, ” Professor Swinburne said. Even Jesus’ life is not enough proof, he said. God’s signature was needed, which the resurrection was, showing his approval of Jesus’ teaching.
Bollocks. He has reason to become incarnate so that he can have sex, and go hang-gliding, and eat peach ice cream, and get a new hairdo and a sweatshirt with the B&W logo on it. ‘To teach us things’ – well is it working? I’m not so sure. I think we must need somebody cleverer to teach us things, because the things we know seem to get us into some bad places. So skate off back to disincarnateland, Goddy baby, and let someone else take over.
Another item from the ‘Yes religion is mandatory, why do you ask?’ file.
The next big debate for Democrats concerns the r-word: Do they need to get — or at least start talking about — religion? A progressive evangelist and an aggressive secularist have at it.
Perfect, isn’t it? A ‘progressive’ evangelist and an ‘aggressive’ secularist. Good job, American Prospect! Don’t tip your hand or anything.
Absurdity and manipulation – whatever it takes to win, eh.
“Does he have reason to become incarnate?”
Wrong question. “Do human beings have a reason to suggest the possibility that he not only exists but also has reason to become incarnate?” is a bit closer the mark.
I much preferred the reason you gave, except I like to think of him doing all that at the same time (hell, if he’s god, he can, so why not?).
Well, hell, if you ASSUME a 50% probability that the current reincarnation of Alexander the Great is an unemployed 32-year-old former linguistics major living in Emeryville, CA–and hey, why not?–then I stand a pretty damn good chance of conquering the known world. Fantasy is fun!
As to TAP’s suggestion, I’d prefer to hear a debate between a fiercely intelligent, silver-tongued atheist and an overbearing, fatuous fundamentalist. Much more educational.
BTW, I wish the MSM would stop their stupid confusion of secularism and atheism. The two terms aren’t synonymous.
Please – it really is standard procedure when you start a Bayesian analysis to adopt a uniform prior (in this case, 50:50) if you have no other information. How the process gets twisted by the subsequent assumptions is their problem, but don’t take it out on the Reverend Bayes.
Yes, I gathered that from the guy who explained it last year – but we do have other information.
Hey, do you have any information that Alexander the Great ISN’T currently reincarnated in the body of an unemployed 32-year-old linguistics major living in Emeryville? So, it’s 50:50, then. Watch out, world!
FYI: Bayes is a punk.
Well, I believe that it is 97% certain that at least one of these statements is true of Professor Swinburne: he is an idiot who was dropped on his head as a child, got his first degree by fraud, his second by plagiarism and his appointment by bribery.
Since I don’t know any of these things, I’ll estimate the probability that they are true as 50%. The chance that ALL of them is false is then 0.5^5. Thus, the chance that at least one is true is 1 minus this result, or 97%!
While it is true that Bayesians sometimes use uniform priors to represent cases where nothing is known about the prior, the whole point is to obtain sufficient information that the effect of the prior fades (with sufficient observations the prior and posterior should converge). In this case it seems that the selection of prior has a massive effect on the final probability, which undermines the analysis – and that is not even taking into account the arbitrary probabilities he assigns to everything else (50% probability a god would become incarnate?). Seems to me that if you want to use the 50% probability for everything you don’t know you have a potentially infinite number of things you don’t know and can therefore calculate that the probability of god existing is infinitesimal.
As I think I mentioned last time, at least the theists have lowered their prior from 100% to 50%, at this rate they will be clinging to any positive finite probability, however small.
Is there a word for the odious tendency to use pseudo-quantitative methods and to strive for “scientific” pseudo-exactness in areas where they are absolutely not applicable?
Merlijn
In honour of the great man himself,
how about “pig’s-dick scratchings”?
(geddit? – groan!)
47.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
BB
“The Manchester University graduate, who now works as a risk assessor in Ohio, said the theory starts from the assumption that God has a 50/50 chance of existing”
That’s why one can never loose at roulette. After all you have a 50/50 chance of winning or not winning, yet the casinos pay out at 36-1. Better still, play the lottery: again one has a 50/50 chance of winning or not winning and the payout is even better.
And this guy is a Risk Assessor!!!
‘Hey, do you have any information that Alexander the Great ISN’T currently reincarnated in the body of an unemployed 32-year-old linguistics major living in Emeryville?’
I have no clue where Emeryville is, but if ever I happen to go there, I’ll certainly be on the lookout for them Macedonian pikes!
If the probability that God exists is 0.50, then the probability of any event that is conditional on God’s existence CANNOT be greater than 0.50. So how does Swinburne get 0.97 ( > 0.50 ) for the probability that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, an event that is conditional on God’s existence? Quite Easily Demolished.
I suspect that Swinburne has set up a chain of 5 events, each conditional on the previous event in the chain, and each with a conditional probability of 0.50. The probability of the last event in the chain (presumably God’s raising Jesus Christ from the dead) would then be 0.50^5 = 0.03 = 3% (and not 97%). Then, 97% ( = 100% – 3% ) would be the probability that God DID NOT raise Jesus Christ from the dead. Oops! I don’t think that this is what Swinburne hoped to demonstrate.
Lara, sadly not. What he has done is make claims like, ‘if god didn’t exist, what are the chances that the gospels would have been written’, and he then assigns a really low probability to it (which is funny if you consider that the book of Mormon got written). What this conditional probability does is to up the final estimation of the probability of god. 50% is only the initial estimation of the probability of god existing, before adding in other evidence.
‘if god didn’t exist, what are the chances that the gospels would have been written’. . .
I surmise that the chances that the gospels would have been written are about the same as the chances that Flavius Philostratus would write a _Life of Appolonius_. Neither Philostratus nor the gospel writers were writing biography or history as we understand them. They were writing hero stories. And a hero story just isn’t a hero story unless it ends with the apotheosis of the hero.
Okay, scratch the second paragraph that I wrote above.
So, if “50% is only the initial estimation of the probability of god existing,” what is the final estimation/calculation of the probability that God exists, according to Swinburne? Whatever it is, it had better be no less than 97%.