I’m sorry, but you just don’t get a Bayes Factor of 10^40 by considering the alleged testimony of people who have been dead for 2000 years. There have to be thousands of things which are many orders of magnitude more likely than this that could have resulted in the testimony being corrupted or simply falsified.
You don’t even need to read the article to see that 10^39 is just a silly number, but for those interested, it is obtained by assuming that the probability of each of the disciples believing in the Resurrection is independent of the probabilities for the other disciples. Despite the fact that the independence assumption is clearly nonsense, and they themselves describe it as a “first approximation”, they then go on to quote this 10^39 figure throughout the rest of the article, and in the interview.
I’m sorry, but it’s this section where the paper just starts to get silly.
One hypothesis that need not detain us for long is that the disciples themselves did not believe what they were proclaiming, that they were neither more nor less than frauds engaging in an elaborate conspiracy.
Well, ok, that does sound pretty unlikely. But is its improbability really even on the order of 10^39? Have the authors actually thought about what 10^39 means?
If you took every single person who has ever lived, and put them in a situation similar to the disciples every second for the entire history of the Universe, you wouldn’t even be coming close to 10^39 opportunities for them to make up such an elaborate plot. Are they really suggesting that it’s that unlikely?
“The fellow who sneers at our combined Bayes factor on the grounds that we are assuming independence appears to have overlooked the fact that we have an entire section discussing that very issue and offering, as far as I know, a new technical point in the literature concerning the question of whether assuming independence strengthens or weakens a case and relating this to the question of situations of duress.”—link
You don’t even need to read the article to see that 10^39 is just a silly number, but for those interested, it is obtained by assuming that the probability of each of the disciples believing in the Resurrection is independent of the probabilities for the other disciples. Despite the fact that the independence assumption is clearly nonsense, and they themselves describe it as a “first approximation”, they then go on to quote this 10^39 figure throughout the rest of the article, and in the interview.
Just from very quickly skimming the paper, what bentam said seems denotatively true but connotatively very incomplete, not totally untrue though.
McGrew argues that, assuming independence, the Bayes Factor would be 10^39, and they do use it throughout the paper. It is a silly number, and they do reach it by assuming independence—which is a ridiculous hypothesis.
bentam implies that, had they not done so, they would have reached a more sensible figure, and that by assuming the generous (to them) hypothesis in the paper, true they have not argued against the least convenient likely position for them, which makes the paper dismissible.
What they actually do is conclude that, the less independent the testimony of the apostles, the more likely the whole story is to be true, by virtue of the evidence going from the likelihood of the supposed apparent conviction of them to the likelihood of the event’s truth swamping out that of the evidence going the other way.
Yes, you read what I wrote correctly, and I didn’t misspeak. I think that’s what she’s saying.
So McGrew does her intellectual duty by arguing throughout the paper for what she believes to be the lower bounds of the Bayes Factor, the true least convenient possible world, contrary to as implied by bentam.
She’s not arguing dishonestly, so she has to compensate with unreasonable assumptions that lead to conclusions like 10^39 being the lower bound.
John DePoe, Western Michigan University has a paper on this too. He calculates the probability of the resurrection, given 10 fair and independent testimonies ≈ 0.9999.
I’m sorry, but you just don’t get a Bayes Factor of 10^40 by considering the alleged testimony of people who have been dead for 2000 years. There have to be thousands of things which are many orders of magnitude more likely than this that could have resulted in the testimony being corrupted or simply falsified.
You don’t even need to read the article to see that 10^39 is just a silly number, but for those interested, it is obtained by assuming that the probability of each of the disciples believing in the Resurrection is independent of the probabilities for the other disciples. Despite the fact that the independence assumption is clearly nonsense, and they themselves describe it as a “first approximation”, they then go on to quote this 10^39 figure throughout the rest of the article, and in the interview.
I’m sorry, but it’s this section where the paper just starts to get silly.
Well, ok, that does sound pretty unlikely. But is its improbability really even on the order of 10^39? Have the authors actually thought about what 10^39 means?
If you took every single person who has ever lived, and put them in a situation similar to the disciples every second for the entire history of the Universe, you wouldn’t even be coming close to 10^39 opportunities for them to make up such an elaborate plot. Are they really suggesting that it’s that unlikely?
Lydia McGrew addresses your post saying:
Just from very quickly skimming the paper, what bentam said seems denotatively true but connotatively very incomplete, not totally untrue though.
McGrew argues that, assuming independence, the Bayes Factor would be 10^39, and they do use it throughout the paper. It is a silly number, and they do reach it by assuming independence—which is a ridiculous hypothesis.
bentam implies that, had they not done so, they would have reached a more sensible figure, and that by assuming the generous (to them) hypothesis in the paper, true they have not argued against the least convenient likely position for them, which makes the paper dismissible.
What they actually do is conclude that, the less independent the testimony of the apostles, the more likely the whole story is to be true, by virtue of the evidence going from the likelihood of the supposed apparent conviction of them to the likelihood of the event’s truth swamping out that of the evidence going the other way.
Yes, you read what I wrote correctly, and I didn’t misspeak. I think that’s what she’s saying.
So McGrew does her intellectual duty by arguing throughout the paper for what she believes to be the lower bounds of the Bayes Factor, the true least convenient possible world, contrary to as implied by bentam.
She’s not arguing dishonestly, so she has to compensate with unreasonable assumptions that lead to conclusions like 10^39 being the lower bound.
John DePoe, Western Michigan University has a paper on this too. He calculates the probability of the resurrection, given 10 fair and independent testimonies ≈ 0.9999.