Bible in a Year -- My experience
So I listened to the Bible in a Year podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz where Fr. Mike Schmitz reads the entire bible across 365 days. I had read the Bible …
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Category: religion
Why the fine tuning argument is not convincing to me (Part 1 of 2)
The fine-tuning argument is an argument in philosophy and cosmology that suggests the existence of a fine-tuned universe points towards the existence of a intelligent designer or a purpose behind …
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Claims are not (always) evidence
Here's my short rambling rant about the claims-evidence distinction. In a number of debates, but more famously this one with Jonathan McLatchie, Matt Dillahunty states that "claims are not evidence …
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence a probabilistic analysis
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan
I think no pithy quote has caused so much angst with apologists than this one from Carl Sagan, directed in particular to religious …
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Probability and the Independence of Testimony
In a previous post I examined a simple model of the interaction of testimony with scientific inquiry, and how it can affect the probabilities of the truth of miracle claims …
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The "God" of the Philosophers Is Empty
So I recently had a bit of a discussion which ended somewhat abruptly with complaints of category errors on my part and implied scientism. The initial Tweet was:
https://twitter …
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Bad Apologetics on Bayes - Part 3
In this YouTube episode, Bad Apologetics Ep 18 - Bayes Machine goes BRRRRRRRRR I join Nathan Ormond, Kamil Gregor, and James Fodor to discuss Timothy and Lydia McGrew's article in The …
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Bad Apologetics on Bayes - Part 2
In this YouTube episode, Bad Apologetics Ep 18 - Bayes Machine goes BRRRRRRRRR I join Nathan Ormond, Kamil Gregor, and James Fodor to discuss Timothy and Lydia McGrew's article in The …
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Why undesigned coincidences are not compelling to me
An "undesigned coincidence" is used in an argument for the reliability of the Gospels, notable by Jonathan McLatchie, Tim McGrew and Lydia McGrew, and is defined as
When you have …
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Sometimes more testimony is worse. Scientific methods impact source reliability
When asked the question raised by McLatchie,
I would have to say that new testimony does not raise my probability for a miracle, mostly because all prior attempts to do …
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Bad Apologetics on Bayes - Part 1
In this YouTube episode, Bad Apologetics Ep 18 - Bayes Machine goes BRRRRRRRRR I join Nathan Ormond, Kamil Gregor, and James Fodor to discuss Timothy and Lydia McGrew's article in The …
#religion
Miracles are rare except when they aren't -- how science actually makes miracle claims unlikely
In this week's Unbelievable Podcast the topic was miracles. I've written about miracles a number of times, but there always seems to something new to say. In this episode, the …
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Sometimes there really isn't enough evidence to believe a claim
A particular response has now happened twice in an ongoing discussion about extraordinary claims, and I felt I needed to think about it more deeply. The response is, essentially, that …
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Ongoing Conversation with Jonathan McLatchie including what would convince me, a visit from Jean Luc Picard, and more
I'd like to thank Jonathan McLatchie for the detailed response to my two-part response.
If you're following along, we have:
- Unbelievable podcast episode Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Jonathan …
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Bad Apologetics miscellaneous topics from Jonathan McLatchie
In the Unbelievable podcast episode Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Jonathan McLatchie vs Jonathan Pearce I was struck by several claims and points, especially made by Jonathan McLatchie. I …
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Proton Decay and the Resurrection of Jesus -- Rare Events
In the Unbelievable podcast episode Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Jonathan McLatchie vs Jonathan Pearce I was struck by several claims and points, especially made by Jonathan McLatchie. I …
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Science as a metal detector
In my post about "naturalism of the gaps" I stated that in evaluating claims,
- Methodological naturalism is the only choice we have available, because no one has demonstrated any procedure …
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Skepticism and Dubious Medical Procedures
In my discussion with Jonathan McLatchie on the Still Unbelievable podcast, I said that there hasn’t been a verified miracle claim even since Hume’s essay on miracles. Here I look into the papers he references in response.
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Probability of the Resurrection Discussion through Calculation
In a recent discussion about the use of probability in a religious context I saw another poor job of a calculation of the Resurrection (I had read several others that …
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Book Review - "Unbelievable?" by Justin Brierley
Structure of the Review
As I finished this review it became apparent that there are two main audiences for what I wrote - those that have yet to read the book …
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A Cookbook Response to Jordan Peterson
I've reproduced below Sam Harris' incredible example of interpreting texts. Harris brought this up at the end of a long podcast with Peterson, but didn't press Peterson on it.
Make …
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