According to a posting today at SydneyAnglicans.net:
… an Oxford don is prepared to show Sydneysiders how probability formulas can prove Jesus was almost certainly his [God’s] son.
World renowned British philosopher Professor Richard Swinburne will be presenting his calculations next week at the University of New South Wales.
Professor Swineburne says probability arguments using Bayes’s Theorem can show university students how they can be 97% certain of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
His use of complex mathematics and historical evidence to transform matters of faith into fact have ignited a storm of controversy, and provided the central themes to his recent book The Resurrection of God Incarnate.
I’d read about Swinburne’s book but haven’t read the book itself, which was published in 2003. Reading the Amazon excerpts makes me immediately wary. On page 10, he claims, “That memories are to be trusted—i.e., that they make it probable that that which they report occurred—in the absence of counter-evidence is a fundamental a priori principle.” Obviously the man has never taken a deposition or cross-examined a witness, or he’d know that “probable” is a very flexible term.
Here’s a review of the book.
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