Timotheos wrote:

I also found his complaints about Craig not having enough evidence by his weak theism arguments to support a claim to either belief or knowledge to be quite strange; I can somewhat see where he's going with the knowledge bit, at least if you think knowledge implies some sort of certainty, but then he seems to equate beliefs with this, which I think need not boast to any pretentions of certainty. And while he equates them in some places, I seems to remember it being crucial to his arguments somewhere that they keep these notions distinct; but I might just be remembering wrong.

Not that Craig couldn't have some wiggle room here even using his weak arguments to ground knowledge; while it may be true that each individual argument is at a somewhat dubious 51% likelihood of being correct, the precentage that at least one of the six 51% arguments being correct, taken as a cumulative case, has a likelihood of 98.6%*** (i.e. 1- the likelihood that all of the arguments are bad, which is 1 - 0.49^6), which fits his opponent's criteria for knowledge.

*** assuming of course that each of the arguments are independent of each other; each of his arguments that were mentioned I think could be formulated such that they don't share any premises, or at least very few, so I take it that my calculation is a good estimate.

Okay, good. This is a great point. 'Strange' is a common adjective for the weakness objection. I'm not sure why.

Either way, let's look at the issue. We have very strong reasons to think that people have beliefs and that people have confidence levels. Confidence levels are also called 'degrees of belief', 'credences', and 'subjective probabilities'. (I know you know this, but I'm saying it for everyone else.) The question is: what's the relation between belief and confidence? We have good reason to think that belief isn't just >50% confidence. Example: pick a ball from a bin with 500,000,001 white balls and 499,999,999 black balls. Do you believe that the ball will be white? No. It's more likely than not, but no one would seriously assert 'the ball picked will be white'. No one who did the math would seriously say 'I knew it!' if the ball picked turned out to be white.

It's natural to suggest that there's some threshold confidence level above which one believes and below which one does not believe. I think this is probably right as long as the threshold is context-dependent. (Note: that doesn't mean it's subjective.) So, where's the threshold? 60%? 80% (my example in the presentation)? 100%?

Here's an argument that it is greater than 60%. If I roll a six sided die, there's about 17% probability it turns up any particular one of the six numbers (1-6). So there's about a 33% probability that it will turn up a 1 or a 2. And that it will turn up a 3 or a 4. And that it will turn up a 5 or a 6. But that means there's a 67% probability it won't turn up a 1 or a 2. And that it won't turn up a 3 or a 4. And that it won't turn up a 5 or a 6. So that means we should believe that it won't turn up a 1 or a 2. And we should believe that it won't turn up a 3 or a 4. And we should believe that it won't turn up a 5 or a 6. But that's absurd. Therefore, the threshold is greater than 60%.

You can use similar argument to push the threshold higher (e.g., 83% it won't be a 1). Some people think that these arguments give out somewhere in the 90%s. Some think they push it to 100%. My assumption of 80% was very charitable.

Now, on to your calculation, which I love. You're right to think hard about how distinct argument impact confidence levels. This is a complex topic, and it is under explored in contemporary formal epistemology.

What do you mean by '51% chance of being correct'? What are correct arguments? Craig says that he argues that his premises are more probable than not. So he argues that they should get >50% confidence. I don't see how Craig's standard for his premises relates to your talk of arguments being correct. As a result, I don't think that your calculation is a calculation of what one's confidence level should be, given six arguments whose premises are defended to Craig's standard (i.e., >50%). How one should make this calculation, however, is something I'm currently working on, and I'm talking about it with some friends who are formal epistemologists. The calculation needs to use Bayes' theorem, and some other results, but figuring out how the conditional probabilities are supposed to work out is not exactly easy. I'll let you know when I get firm results on this.
 

iwpoe wrote:

I really don't like epistemology generally. What the hell am I listening to when I have to listen to Sharp talk to me about "51% confidence isn't good enough for belief" &etc? It, with all due respect to any epistemologists, sounds like horseshit when you just start presenting it as if it weren't contentious. I know enough about his language from game theory and the like in Political Science, but I have no idea why you would think it was importantly relivant to this discussion.

Craig is the one who has said it is relevant to the discussion. He's the one who has taken as his standard for a good valid argument that the premises are defended to >50% confidence. That's the basis for his entire system. I've argued that his standard for a good argument is inadequate. Does that clarify why my point is on topic?
 

I understand that a few of people that debate Craig go on to specifically refute his arguments (obviously, that's what they should do, so thank you.) Dr. Scharp, for the Thomist at least God conserves everything in Existence. What exactly a miracle is, is a question that is well debated within the Thomistic circle, whether a suspension of what we call 'laws' or 'intervention' or both. I think Fr. Ramlowe has written on miracles.

I thank you for coming here, but could you please expand on what you think to be the relevant scientific thesis's when we speak of the resurrection? Thanks.

Alexander wrote:

I have a few questions:
1) What is the relevant scientific theory when discussing the resurrection? I'm not sure I can think of one that doesn't beg the question in some way, but I may simply not get what you're trying to say.
2) What's the force behind your argument from general relativity? Can we not say something like "God prevented Jesus from falling beneath the water" without requiring an exception to general relativity? I don't see why, unless we make assumptions as to how God may have have brought this about (information which the Gospels do not relate).

In general, I suspect your arguments work only if God is thought of as something like a physical entity operating in the universe, bound by its limitations, rather than the transcendent cause of the whole thing. From the perspective of traditional theism, your arguments look far weaker than they would to, say, certain forms of deism.

1. Conservation of mass/energy. Conservation of momentum. CPT conservation. Others too, but that'll do.

2. No. General relativity provides equations that describe the way objects distort spacetime based on their mass. If Jesus walked on water, then the spacetime around him wasn't distorted by the mass of the Earth in the way predicted by general relativity.

I'm not assuming God is a physical entity; only that God would be a supernatural cause of certain natural events.

Timotheos wrote:

I don't think I understand what you're getting at with the general relativity business; black holes are allowed to bend space-time, so why not God? Sure, general relativity doesn't predict such an action, but neither does it predict black holes either; it only implies details about what they would be like if we found them, and what to look for to verify their existence.

As for the conservation of energy, how does God's adding energy to a system, from outside the system at it were, violate the principle? Presumably, since we are going to have to look outside the universe to explain its origins, which is the creation of all sorts of energy, why can't we do so again at some time later on? How does this "violate" conservation laws?

I would also like to thank you for coming here and adressing some of our concerns; it's truly a pleasure to have you.

Thanks, it's great to do this. I sort of live and breath this stuff right now, so it's nice to have an outlet.

General relativity predicts that the gravitational field around the Earth and all the other objects in the vicinity would be a certain way. If that prediction is right, then the spacetime around Jesus would be warped in a way that would result in him falling into the water. Yes, God could bend spacetime in some way that prevented Jesus from falling. But then spacetime wouldn't be the way predicted by general relativity. And so Jesus not falling would be incompatible with general relativity.

If God were adding mass/energy to the system, then the mass/energy after God's intervention would not be what is predicted by the conservation theory (given what the mass/energy was before the intervention). So the conservation theory would predict the wrong answer for after the intervention. So God's intervention would be incompatible with the conservation theory.