I didn’t bother listening to Craig’s rebuttal, because I agree with you that what Ehrman’s saying from 34:58 to 36:02 is poorly argued, and I don’t even need Bayes’ theorem to see it. My transcription of Ehrman:
Historians can only establish what probably happened in the past, and by definition, the miracle is the least probable occurrence. And so by the very nature of the canons of historical research, we can’t claim, historically, that a miracle probably happened. By definition, it probably didn’t. And history can only establish what probably did. I wish we could establish miracles, but we can’t. It’s no one’s fault; it’s simply that the canons of historical research do not allow for the possibility of establishing the probable, uh as probable, the least probable of all occurrences. For that reason, uh, Bill’s four pieces of evidence are completely irrelevant. There cannot be historical probability for an event that defies probability, even if the event did happen. The resurrection has to be taken on faith, not on the basis of proof.
But this is silly. If a historian, or anyone, can establish that X probably happened, they can establish that X’s complement probably didn’t happen (because P(X) + P(¬X) = 1). So how can Ehrman argue that history can establish what probably happened but not what probably didn’t? I suspect there are other issues (like playing definitional games with the word ‘miracle’ and suggesting an event ‘defies probability’ - what would that even mean?) but his claims about what historians can and can’t do is the most obvious issue to me.
I think we have a problem. While the default at LW is to not want to believe in possible miracles done by God, there’s considerable interest in knowing whether we live in a simulation.
Aside from logic or from careful examination of physics which find indicators of another level, the other category of evidence for this world being a simulation is transient anomalies. How do you evaluate reports of anomalies?
I think my main rule of thumb is to think about how anomalous the anomaly is, and the strength of the evidence for it. More anomalous and less well substantiated anomalies get taken less seriously.
I didn’t bother listening to Craig’s rebuttal, because I agree with you that what Ehrman’s saying from 34:58 to 36:02 is poorly argued, and I don’t even need Bayes’ theorem to see it. My transcription of Ehrman:
But this is silly. If a historian, or anyone, can establish that X probably happened, they can establish that X’s complement probably didn’t happen (because P(X) + P(¬X) = 1). So how can Ehrman argue that history can establish what probably happened but not what probably didn’t? I suspect there are other issues (like playing definitional games with the word ‘miracle’ and suggesting an event ‘defies probability’ - what would that even mean?) but his claims about what historians can and can’t do is the most obvious issue to me.
I think we have a problem. While the default at LW is to not want to believe in possible miracles done by God, there’s considerable interest in knowing whether we live in a simulation.
Aside from logic or from careful examination of physics which find indicators of another level, the other category of evidence for this world being a simulation is transient anomalies. How do you evaluate reports of anomalies?
I think my main rule of thumb is to think about how anomalous the anomaly is, and the strength of the evidence for it. More anomalous and less well substantiated anomalies get taken less seriously.