Apologia puts faith in lap of the odds
By Barney Zwartz
July 19, 2005
It is 97 per cent certain God raised Jesus from the dead - based on logic and mathematics, not faith - says an Oxford professor, Richard Swinburne.
"New Testament scholars say the only evidence are witnesses in the four gospels: that's only 5 per cent of the evidence," said Professor Swinburne, a leading philosopher of religion.
"We can't judge the question of the resurrection unless we ask first whether there's reason to suppose there is a God, second if we have reason to suppose he would become incarnate, and third, if he did, whether he would live the sort of life Jesus did."
Professor Swinburne, who gave a public lecture at the Australian Catholic University last night, said probability calculus showed a probability of 97 per cent. The probability God existed was one in two. That is, God either did or didn't. And it was one in two that God became incarnate.
Professor Swinburne suggested a one-in-10 probability that the gospels would report the life and resurrection of Jesus as they did. The chance of all these factors coming together, if the resurrection was not true, was one in 1000.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
But Colin Sutherland, a professor of mathematics at the University of NSW - and an agnostic - said he suspected the resurrection was something mathematics could not prove.
"In general, mathematics is able to tell you that if one thing is true, that something else is true. But you have to make your assumptions very clear," he said.
"The conclusions you reach in this kind of discussion often simply reflect the assumptions that you put in at the beginning."
Professor Sutherland questioned the assumption that there was a 50:50 probability that God existed and a 50:50 probability that he became incarnate.
If you find the figures baffling, the mathematical calculations in full appear in Dr Swinburne's book The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Oxford University Press).
