NaClhv

Theology, philosophy, math, science, and random other things
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
2023-08-07
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A quick update on my trip to Svalbard

If the movie "Frozen II" takes place in fantasy Norway, then Svalbard would be the location of Ahtohallan. Glaciers are rivers of ice, and I never understood that as much as I did when I took this picture:
2020-01-06
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Transmitting the image of God

This is a short follow-up to my work on Interpreting the Genesis creation story, exploring what it means for us to be made in the image of God, and how that image gets transmitted, particularly in relation to any possible "non-Adamic people", and how we are to treat them. I already discussed this at length in […]
2018-07-09
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A small addendum to the Bayesian evaluation of the resurrection

When faced with the argument presented in Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection, a common tactic is to try to push the prior lower. After all, this is one of the very few options available when one has no evidence on their side. But as I argued in the post itself, this will not […]
2017-04-10
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Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection (Part 52)

This is a kind of epilogue for my series on Jesus's resurrection. The series is now concluded - or, at least, the first phase is done. What happens next? Longtime readers of my blog know that I generally consolidate long, multi-part posts into a single post in the end. This gives me a way to […]
2017-04-03
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Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection (Part 51)

At long last, we can summarize this entire series. First, we calculated the prior odds for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This prior cannot be zero. That would violate one of the fundamental tenets of Bayesian thinking, and it is not empirically justified, since we have not observed an infinite number of people who did […]
2017-03-27
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Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection (Part 50)

We will consider some more miracles from other religions, but the conclusions here are not difficult to reach. A full-blown analysis is not necessary, as none of them reach anywhere near the level of evidence in Jesus's resurrection. We can just draw parallels to our previous analysis. So, for example, there's a story of Ichadon, […]
2017-03-20
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Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection (Part 49)

Let us now consider some miraculous stories from the works of Josephus. Josephus was a Jewish historian who was active in the latter half of the first century. His works include The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews. They deal with the contemporary and the ancient history of the Jews, from the perspective of the […]
2017-03-13
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Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection (Part 48)

The following are the accounts of the healing miracles of the Roman emperor Vespasian. Vespasian himself healed two persons, one having a withered hand, the other being blind, who had come to him because of a vision seen in dreams; he cured the one by stepping on his hand and the other by spitting upon […]
2017-03-06
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Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection (Part 47)

A common argument from skeptics is that we cannot accept the miraculous stories about Jesus while simultaneously rejecting them for all non-Christian miracle-workers in world history. But that is nonsense. Of course we can discriminate between these stories. It just comes down to discerning which ones have enough evidence. So, for instance, we've already shown […]
2017-02-27
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Bayesian evaluation for the likelihood of Christ's resurrection (Part 46)

So then, what would count as replicating the evidence for Christ's resurrection? It's simple. The replication would be a new religious movement based on a "resurrection", which must match or exceed all of the essential components of the original evidence for Christ's resurrection. These components are merely what we've been discussing throughout this series of […]
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