Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis: McCullagh, Craig, Cavin, and Colombetti

In this post, I want to consider the assessment of historical hypotheses such as the alleged resurrection of Jesus (R), using the writings of William Lane Craig as a foil. In doing so, I will rely heavily upon a recent article by philosophers Robert Greg Cavin and Carolos Colombetti, but I want to be clear that I have not reviewed this post with them, so any mistakes in this post are entirely my responsibility.

While Craig's position regarding the use of Bayes' Theorem has evolved over the years, to my knowledge one thing which has not changed is his reliance upon the work of historian C. Behan McCullagh.[1] Following McCullagh, Craig argues for R using an argument pattern called "inference to the best explanation" (IBE).[2] In this post, I will argue the following three points contra Craig. First, Bayes' Theorem is the foundation for logically correct arguments for any historical hypotheses. Second, neither McCullagh's IBE criteria nor Craig's restatement of them are sufficiently clear to enable a rigorous assessment of historical hypotheses, whereas the Bayesian approach avoids these problems. Third, Craig's defense of R fails to establish that the alleged event is more probable than not.

Baggett's and Wall's Proposed IBE Criteria

In an earlier post, I attempted to steelman the abductive moral argument set forth by David Baggett and Jerry Walls (hereafter, "B&W") in their book God and Cosmos. In this post, I want to pick up where that post left off and turn to my second question for evaluating the schema of B&W's schema for their abductive moral argument. Recall that my second question was as follows:

Are the proposed criteria for explanation candidates meaningful, unambiguous, and justified?

Biological Evolution as Evidence against Theism

Many conservative Christians and lay atheists alike claim that if biological evolution is true, then God does not exist. Ironically, while many conservative Christians have attacked evolution because it supposedly entails atheism, no contemporary atheist philosopher has used evolution as evidence for atheism. Indeed, the only philosopher who has formulated an argument for the claim that evolution is evidence against theism and for metaphysical naturalism is agnostic philosopher Paul Draper.

Draper defends an evidential argument from evolution for naturalism. In other words, Draper's argument does not claim that evolution is logically inconsistent with the existence of God. Rather, it claims that known facts about evolution that are consistent with theism nevertheless provide evidence against it.

This argument is focused on God in general, not necessarily the Christian God. Draper argues that, all other things held equal, known facts about the origin of complex life are prima facie evidence against theism.

Catalog of Bayesian Arguments in Philosophy of Religion

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 21, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

I've created a new page, with a permanent link near the top of the screen, to a catalog of Bayesian arguments in the philosophy of religion, including Bayesian arguments for and against God's existence. This is a work-in-progress, so please leave a comment on that page to let me know of any additions, edits, etc. I need to make.

The Argument from the Biological Role of Pain and Pleasure

Informal Statement of the Argument

The naturalistic explanation for this is obvious. If animals are the products of evolution by natural selection, we would expect physical pain to aid survival. But not all physical pain and pleasure aids survival. For example, think of the horrible pain that inflicts many people with terminal illnesses. If naturalism is true, this is what we would expect: evolution by natural selection is not an intelligent process; there seems to be no way for creatures to have evolved so that they only feel pain when it will aid survival. In contrast, if theism were true, God could "fine tune" humans so that they experience pain only when it is necessary for some greater good. If God did exist, what possible reason could he have for allowing people with terminal illnesses have to endure such agonizing pain until they finally die? The chances that such a reason would intersect with the biological goal of survival is pretty slim. Thus, the biological role of pain and pleasure is more likely on naturalism than on theism.