Bayes’ Theorem is just a logical formula. Like any logic, it can be used to argue silly things (like Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory trying to predict the future of physics on a whiteboard). Because bad premises, always lead to bad conclusions, even with straightforward syllogistic logic. As atheists well know when they face-palm at William Lane Craig’s continuing obsession with the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Which is perfectly valid. It’s just its premises are all bogus. But that being the case, does not discredit logic. It’s no argument to say, “logic gave us that Kalam nonsense, therefore we should reject logic.” So it’s also no argument to say, “so-and-so used Bayes’ Theorem to prove God exists, therefore we should reject Bayes’ Theorem.”
I’ll be writing an article on some crank uses of Bayes’ Theorem to “prove God exists” later this month. The problem with them is not Bayes’. Just as the problem with the Kalam is not logic. Today, I’m going to cover how it actually works, and how not to fuck it up.
Why Should We All Be Using It?
If you believe in evidence-based-reasoning, if you believe in rationality, you must agree all your conclusions should be logically valid, and derived from premises you can be fairly certain are true (not just speculated…otherwise, it’s just speculation in, speculation out). But all conclusions from evidence are probabilistic. You never know anything about the facts of the world for certain. You only know such things to some degree of probability. But probability is mathematics. You therefore can never have a valid conclusion about what’s probable, without doing math. Never. Not ever. Sorry, mathophobes. Deal. Because that’s the fact of it: You are doing math. The only question left is, Are you doing it correctly or not?
Since there is no way to reach a logically valid conclusion about what’s probable, without doing math, what math should you be doing? There is only one formula for reaching a logically valid conclusion about what’s probable that is accessible to the average high school graduate today. And that’s Bayes’ Theorem. To be accessible to such an average person, generally necessitates requiring nothing more than sixth grade math (by 20th century U.S. education standards). You may have forgotten everything you were taught about math in the sixth grade; but trust me, you can re-learn it with ease. All you have to do is care to. It doesn’t even require a textbook. Although this one is fun. But sixth grade math. That’s all you need to use Bayes’ Theorem.
There are more advanced applications of Bayes that require more advanced mathematical knowledge. And they have their uses. But the average person doesn’t need them. Those applications are routine now in science, engineering, business, marketing, government, internet security, spam filtering, cognitive science, AI, economics, political & military intelligence, the insurance industry, search and rescue operations; nearly everywhere now. Alan Turing used it to crack the Enigma code. Nate Silver uses it now for political & economic forecasting. There are strong cases being made that it should be introduced into the legal system and replace over-reliance on mere frequentism in all the sciences. In fact, it already is being used in some legal systems, and many courts are only skeptical now when “the underlying statistics” aren’t firmly established…in other words, when the premises suck.
But that more basic formula?
You are already using it. Every time you reach any conclusion about how probable something is. You are unconsciously assuming a prior probability. You are unconsciously assuming a likelihood of the evidence. You are unconsciously feeling whether the one is enough to outweigh the other. And then that causes you to feel confident that something is true or false. Or more likely the one than the other. Or else you feel you aren’t confident either way. And that feeling? A product of Bayes’ Theorem. Already running in your head. Only, like all intuition, by not examining it, you often fuck it up.
That’s why we know intuition is highly prone to biases and errors. One way to start bypassing or controlling for those, is to get serious about understanding the logic of what you are already doing. So you can be more certain you are doing it correctly.
Bayesian Reasoning about the Past
This is why I use Bayes’ Theorem to analyze highly uncertain problems in history. All historians use it, unknowingly, to generate every claim they make about history. But by not examining whether they are using it correctly (often because they don’t even know they are using it at all), they are highly susceptible to being wrong, when the data is not overwhelmingly clear.
Of course, when the data is overwhelmingly clear, you don’t need to do the math anyway. You could. But it’s a needless waste of headache and time. Just like when you assume an asteroid won’t crash into your house tomorrow…that is a mathematical calculation you just did in your head, whether you realize it or not; you made an informed but obviously imprecise guess about the frequency of that happening to people like you, based on a vast body of data. But you didn’t need to “do the math.” Because no matter what a precise working out of the math would get you, you can already tell it’s going to get you some extremely low probability. And that’s all you need to know to plan your party tomorrow.
But then, if the news suddenly reports that indeed, an asteroid is going to vaporize your neighborhood tomorrow, you know the probability of that being mistaken is lower than the probability of it happening in general, and therefore the probability of it happening is now nearly certain. The exact opposite of what you concluded in the absence of that evidence. Because otherwise, the news would not likely report it with such confidence, without being gainsaid by the science community, which you responsibly would check for. And based on vast background data, you know the science community is not so flippant as to not have already done the math on this, and accounted for the prior probability of a collision in general, and of a specific collision zone. You feel confident the odds of that are lower than the odds of just anyone being hit by an asteroid ever.
That’s Bayesian reasoning.
And accordingly, archaeologists are using it more explicitly now (Richard Carrier, Proving History, p. 49), and philosophers are concluding all historians are already using it (Aviezer Tucker, Our Knowledge of the Past). They just don’t know it’s what they’re doing. Most of the time, they don’t need to. Their intuition gets it right, well enough to warrant their confidence, when the data is overwhelming or at least strong. Because the variables there are so extreme, they wash out most if not all biases. At least often enough to relegate resistance to an obviously irrational fringe. Hence, the data for the Holocaust is vast. So resisting the conclusion that it happened, so obviously requires denying and explaining away so many thousands of pieces of really good evidence, that even a layperson can tell that’s insane. But when the data is highly scarce, uncertain, and problematic, the innate biases that drive all humans can easily overwhelm the intuited math anyone is doing unconsciously in their head. And that’s when you need to pop the hood and look inside at what logic your intuition is actually following, so you can draw out the math and see what you are actually doing. And thereby evaluate whether you are doing it correctly.
Which requires you to know how to do that. Complaining that you don’t like math is not an excuse. It amounts to saying “thinking correctly is too hard; therefore I just won’t bother.” Which is simply admitting you aren’t thinking correctly. Or don’t know if you are. Which, if you wish to act rationally, warrants agnosticism about any claim you are intuiting in that case. Because you cannot rationally be confident in any conclusion, when you don’t even know whether you are arriving at it correctly.
How Do You Use Bayes’ Theorem
I’ve written on this before. You can peruse my archive; read my book. But the shortest version is this: the odds that a claim is true, equal the prior odds it’s true, times the likelihood ratio. Meaning:
- The prior odds are the odds on any such claim being true. That’s the odds you’d always intuitively assign the moment you hear a claim, before you check or hear any of the evidence for or against it. If you are behaving rationally, you will base that assignment on your past experience and knowledge, of what’s typical and what’s not. If you are not behaving rationally, you will simply codify your biases and false beliefs, and substitute them for facts at this point. And then it’s just garbage in, garbage out.
- Meanwhile, the likelihood ratio, is the ratio of two probabilities: (1) how likely is all the evidence we have (including the evidence we don’t have) if the claim is true; and (2) how likely is all that same evidence, if the claim is false. Which means, if the claim is false, something else caused the evidence to be that way; so you are always comparing different explanations of how the evidence got to be the way it is. Bias and error can arise here, when you either fail to consider a plausible alternative explanation of the evidence, or you grossly misestimate how well the evidence we have fits what you’d really expect on each competing explanation.
Now, all that? That’s always true. Always. On matters of fact, you have never reached a valid conclusion in your life, that didn’t follow exactly that formula: [prior odds] x [likelihood ratio] = [odds a claim is true]. That is the only valid formula for arriving at the probability of any claim to fact (other than more complicated formulas that still only model the same mathematical relationship). So it certainly helps to know that formula, so you can correct or avoid mistakes in applying it. Just as it certainly helps to know logic, so you can correct or avoid mistakes in applying that. Same principle. Same point. Only, logic is almost useless, really; since it only deals in deductive certainty, which never exists for facts. Almost all assertions you make and conclusions you reach, are on matters of fact, which means matters of probability. And when you want to work out how to reach conclusions about that logically, Bayes’ Theorem is what you get.
The intuitive reason you always rely on, already does this. If you are at all good at critical thought, then the more bizarre a claim you hear, the more it goes against what you know to be true, the more skeptical of it you are. That is an intuitive estimate of prior probability. “Usually, it’s this,” is a statement about priors. Likewise, the more expected the evidence is on one claim, than on any other explanation of how that evidence came about, the more that evidence supports that claim, over against all competing alternatives. When you think like that, when you see a body or item of evidence as “strongly favoring” one claim over another, you are intuitively “feeling” your brain’s estimate of the likelihood ratio. How you put them together, then depends on the logic of Bayes’, and that you can either do well, or poorly. Better to learn how to do it well.
Every time in your life you’ve been right about something, and it wasn’t simply by blind chance that you were right but because you credibly reasoned out what was correct, you did so using Bayesian reasoning, by importing credible premises, and deriving the correct conclusion from their conjunction. Credible premises means a prior odds and a likelihood ratio that actually make sense on the evidence of the world actually available to you. Those premises become defensible when you can actually articulate that that’s the case; that is, when you can lay out why you are concluding a claim is initially unlikely or likely, or by however much, and the evidence of the world matches what you’re saying (without having to lie about that evidence, or make any of it up); and likewise when you can lay out why you are concluding the evidence is so many times more likely on one claim than on any other competing explanation…and the evidence of the world matches what you’re saying (without having to lie about that evidence, or make any of it up).
Basically, for example, if the prior odds really are 2 to 1 against a claim, but the evidence really is 4 to 1 more likely on that claim than on any other, then it’s factually the case that the odds are 2 to 1 that the claim is true (1/2 x 4/1 = 4/2 = 2/1). And this requires no precise knowledge. You can be amply certain that the prior odds are at least 2 to 1 against a claim…as for example, when it’s obvious the real odds (if you surveyed the database of human knowledge and worked out all the math) would easily be beyond even 10 to 1. And likewise, you can be amply certain that the likelihood ratio can’t be more than 4 to 1…as for example, when it’s obvious the real ratio (on any closer examination), would easily fall below 3 to 1. So you can say “the prior odds are at least 2 to 1 against a claim, but the evidence is no more than 4 to 1 more likely on that claim than on any other; therefore it’s factually the case that the odds are no more than 2 to 1 that the claim is true.” You can be as sure of that, as you are that the prior can’t be better than 2 to 1 against and the evidence can’t be better than 4 to 1 in favor. And this is literally what you’ve always been doing, the whole of your life.
The odds you end up with, are really just a measure of your confidence in the claim. If you feel a claim is only twice as likely to be true as false, what you are feeling is that you’ve been wrong, or will be wrong, one out of every three times you face a similar situation of evidence. Which is a bit too high a rate of failure to gamble on. But when you feel highly confident, then what you are feeling is something more like a 99 to 1 chance you’re right—which means, only once out of a hundred comparable situations, would you expect to turn out to be wrong. The probabilities in Bayesian reasoning do start with estimates of the frequencies of events and outcomes; but they end with a frequency of your being wrong about the claim being true (were you to assert it’s true). Because the latter frequency, is directly a product of the other.
Doing It Better & Testing Your Models
I mentioned you can go wrong at any of three places. You can be illogical, and incorrectly multiply your prior and your likelihood. For instance, you might estimate the prior is low and the likelihood is weak, and yet still incorrectly conclude the claim is true, when in fact those two premises wouldn’t validly entail that. In short, you can ignore the premises, and just believe whatever you want. That’s failing at math. Or you can grossly misestimate the prior. Or you can grossly misestimate the likelihood ratio.
For instance, if you have no evidence that a particular kind of cause of the evidence you are observing is frequent, and even plenty of evidence it very much isn’t usually the cause of such evidence, and yet still assign it a high prior. As when Christians argue from an empty tomb to a resurrection. They actually are ignoring the vast database of evidence that when bodies go missing, it is rarely because of a resurrection (if ever). They are misestimating the priors. They are ignoring reality. And that’s failing at reality-based reasoning. Likewise, when those same Christians insist “it’s unlikely there’d be no evidence of a theft if a missing body was stolen, therefore we can reject the thesis that the body was stolen.” Which is a Bayesian argument from likelihood ratio: unexpected evidence on a given theory, entails a likelihood ratio that makes odds against that theory. But this again ignores tons of reality.
First, we know from vast background experience with people and the world, that when the person advocating a claim controls all the evidence that gets to be preserved, it is not likely that evidence against their claim would survive (if ever there were any), exactly the contrary conclusion from the Christian’s. Moreover, we all well know, throughout all history—and especially before modern forensics—most thieves are never caught. That’s why there are still thieves. Also exactly the contrary conclusion from the Christian’s. Once again, their probability estimates are in defiance of reality. Rather than based on reality.
Second, there is evidence of a theft: the Christians themselves recorded it—inadvertently, by trying to claim an eyewitness report of the theft was a lie (28:11-15), which claim itself is more likely to be a lie, because to claim that, they had to claim knowledge of a conversation they weren’t even present at! A secret conversation among a select few of their enemies, regarding a conspiracy nowhere else attested, is among the least likely things a Christian could be telling the truth about. Thus, failing to take into account the reality-based likelihoods of the evidence, will of course get you false premises—and thus false conclusions. As in any other logic.
Over-estimating or under-estimating frequencies is common (whether for priors or likelihood ratios). But you can only evaluate whether that’s happening, when someone admits what frequency they are estimating. Thus, we need to be able to articulate our “intuitive” reasoning in Bayesian form, so we can actually spell out what frequency assumptions we are making. Only then can we vet those assumptions against reality, and thus know if they are plausible or ridiculous. And whatever confidence you can maintain at that point, logically transfers to the conclusion. “I am reasonably sure the frequencies (of the priors and likelihoods) cannot be more than X and Y” will get you a logically valid conclusion that “I am reasonably sure the probability this claim is true cannot be more than Z.”
So what makes you reasonably sure of those frequencies? What makes you reasonably sure the frequency with which bodies go missing because of resurrections rather than theft, misplacement, or faked or misdiagnosed deaths, is extremely low? What makes you reasonably sure the frequency of having evidence against a false claim is extremely low, when no one against that claim had any control of what evidence you get to see? And so on. The answer will be appeals to real world facts and experience. And lots of it. That’s how you get robust premises into a Bayesian formula. The formula then necessarily entails the conclusion. If those premises are true, then so is the conclusion.
How Misusing Bayes’ Theorem Sustains Delusions
On the matter of avoiding error in all this, two lessons are so basic yet I keep finding myself having to school people who resort to them. Because they are so ubiquitously at the heart of delusional thinking: wanting to believe a thing, despite overwhelming evidence against it. Desire-based, rather than evidence-based, belief. The deluded fail to recognize two facts (or at least one of them).
No probability in matters of fact is ever zero. The only things that can ever have a zero probability are things that are logically impossible; and yet even they cannot have a zero probability, because there is always a nonzero probability we are wrong about something being logically impossible! So if you think it makes sense to ever plug a zero into the math, you are wrong. So don’t. That’s acting exactly like creationists, anti-vaxxers, holocaust and climate-science denialists, and every crank ever: they are immune to evidence. No amount of evidence, no matter how vast, ever convinces them. Which is precisely what happens when you adopt, like they do, a prior probability of zero (or always a likelihood of the evidence of zero) for any alternatives to their own belief. Being immune to any quantity of evidence is irrational. Thus, assigning a zero probability anywhere in any Bayesian equation is irrational. A probability can be cosmically, even absurdly small. But never zero.
And then…
Making excuses for why a claim fails to predict the evidence we observe, does not rescue it. One of the most common and illogical ways people try to avoid the conclusions of sound logic, is to make up reasons to reject them. Reasons that don’t work logically. But that sound satisfying….to fucked up brains that don’t know how to think. When presented with the fact that all observations contradict your pet theory (like, that God exists), you will be tempted to invent a dozen excuses for why, actually, your theory did predict all those observations all along. In Bayesian terms, what you are trying to do is get the likelihood ratio back to where you want it, to make the evidence not be unlikely on your theory. But the problem is, every single “excuse” you add to your theory, reduces your theory’s prior probability. You can’t gain a better likelihood that way, without “paying for it” with a lower prior. Which leaves you back where you started. Or worse.
This is because every excuse you make up has its own probability of being true. If it’s almost certain to be true already (as one should be able to show on background evidence), then it will have negligible effect and is fine to presume. But if you have no evidence for it, then its probability of being true can’t be better than 50/50; and if there is even evidence against it, then it’s probability must be lower than even that. And that gets multiplied by the prior you started with before you made that up. Which means even a single ad hoc excuse cuts your prior in half. Two of them will cut it to a quarter. And so on. In geometric progression. Excuses that are actually improbable, cut it far more still. But because people don’t know how Bayesian reasoning works, they intuitively think they can stack up excuses to rescue any theory they want to believe in, with no penalty. Because their unconscious brain doesn’t know how to compensate for the trick their conscious brain just pulled. So their intuition continues giving an output as if those stacked up excuses weren’t affecting the prior but only the likelihoods.
This is how people delude themselves. All by failing at Bayes.
Lessons for the Historicity Debate
All too often critics of my argument in On the Historicity of Jesus neither understand the math nor make any attempt to correct it. Yet, if I am wrong in my conclusions in that book, then I must be wrong in the math. You therefore should be able to show that. If you can’t, then you can’t claim to know I’m wrong. So far, critics of OHJ just make up excuses to ignore the math, or make up different math on no evidence whatever, all just to rationalize the result they want—rather than critically examining if what they want the answer to be is wrong.
You certainly can’t use bad Bayesian arguments to defeat good ones. For example, all too often a critic will say “the prior probability of the historicity of Rank-Raglan heroes can’t be 1 in 3, because it’s possible for a Rank Raglan hero to be historical.” That statement is 100% illogical. Formally speaking, it’s a non sequitur. If the prior probability of the historicity of Rank-Raglan heroes is 1 in 3, then this premise already asserts that 1 in 3 of them are historical! It therefore cannot be contradicted by claiming some of them are historical. People who make this argument are just like someone saying “the prior probability of winning a lottery cannot be a million to one against, because there are people who win the lottery.” And if you don’t catch the absurdity there, keep rereading that sentence until you do.
If you want to assert that the prior is not 1 in 3, you have to show that it’s something else. There is no other way to get around it. Even if you try to insist “we have no idea what the prior is,” you are saying it’s 1 to 1—because if you admit you don’t know what it is, then you can’t say it’s higher or lower, which leaves you with equal odds for all possibilities so far as you know. And if you wish to deny even that, then it’s even worse for you. Since the probability of a thing is always the prior odds time the likelihood ratio, if you assert no one knows the prior odds, then you are asserting no one knows the final odds either. Which entails agnosticism: you can’t claim to know Jesus probably existed, if you are claiming not to know even the prior probability that Jesus existed. Likewise if you claim no one knows the likelihood ratios. If you don’t know, you don’t know. And that means you don’t know Jesus existed.
So the only way to get to “Jesus probably existed,” is to assert a prior probability that he did. And if you wish to assert it’s different than I find in Chapter 6 of OHJ, you need to actually show that. What critics tend to do is either make irrational arguments like “we don’t know the probabilities, therefore we know Jesus was probable,” or they make shit up, to rationalize their prior assumptions; rather than actually engage with the peer reviewed literature that already exposed those rationalizations to be logically ineffective. They are intuitively just “sure” the prior must be higher, and so they scramble around to “invent” any excuse they can come up with to get that result. Ignoring everything I wrote in OHJ already refuting them. Indeed, that they didn’t even check, proves they have no rational basis for their belief: like Christian apologists, they need the comfort of anything they can invent; they are unconcerned with whether what they invented actually even works.
The difficulty with getting a different prior is that any reference class you isolate for Jesus, like “founders of religions,” might get you a prior you like. But as soon as you put the background evidence back in that you left out (like, the fact that Jesus also belongs to several myth-heavy reference classes), you end up back where I did: with at best a 1 in 3 prior expectancy that Jesus would really have existed. I demonstrate this repeatedly in Chapter 6. If you aren’t engaging with that, then you are simply advertising to all and sundry that you don’t really care whether anything you are saying is correct. Anyone who actually cared, would scruple to make sure, by testing their theories against what I’ve already demonstrated regarding them. Finding another reference class won’t work unless it is large enough and distinct enough to be more predictive than the Rank-Raglan class. So far, no one has presented any such reference class for Jesus (see OHJ, Chapter 6.5, “The Alternative Class Objection”).
What critics will try next is to change the frequency for that reference class. By trying to insist more than 1 in 3 Rank Raglan heroes existed. But as there is absolutely no evidence that that’s the case, that approach is dead on arrival. But be that as it may, it remains the case: if you want to assert that that frequency is higher than 1 in 3, then you need to get and present the evidence that it’s higher than 1 in 3. There is no other logically valid, evidence-based way to proceed here. Because I base my conclusions on the existing evidence. I expect you to do so as well. Everything else is bullshit.
Likewise critics could try arguing for different likelihood ratios, but so far no critic has honestly even understood how, much less actually tried. Yet if they don’t know how to get a different likelihood of the evidence, they can’t know Jesus probably existed.
And that’s the final conundrum…
You can’t assert Jesus probably existed, if you don’t know how you can even know that. And you can’t know the probability Jesus existed, if you don’t even know what the prior probability is that he existed. And you can’t assert a prior, without evidence to back that prior. A prior is a frequency, a frequency of comparable persons turning out to be historical. That means you need actual comparable persons. And enough of them to give you a usable frequency. You need, in other words, evidence.
You also can’t know the probability Jesus existed, if you don’t know how much more likely the evidence is if he existed, than if he didn’t. And you can’t assert that it was “a lot” more likely, if you don’t even know what the best competing alternative is—or any of the background evidence again, which tells us how frequently certain things would turn out as they did, given the causes proposed (see my analysis of the fate of King Henry, for example, in Proving History, pp. 273-75).
You likewise have to know what the evidence actually is. And not lie about it. So far, most critics of OHJ simply lie about the evidence; or are literally clueless about it. They certainly have never, so far, tried to argue that the actual evidence that there actually is, would be more likely on historicity than I estimate, or less likely on mythicism than I estimate. But that’s what you have to do, if you want to argue for a different likelihood ratio than I end up with. And if you can’t get around my prior, you have to argue for a different likelihood ratio than I end up with. There is literally no other way to argue Jesus probably existed.
One way to do that would be to agree with all my assessments, but claim I left some evidence out. Then present that evidence, derive a credible estimate of its likelihood ratio (one that a sane and honest person can’t reasonably deny is at least plausible), and complete the math, to see what effect it has on the final probability Jesus existed (see OHJ, Chapter 12.2). The only other way to do it, would be to disagree with some of my assessments. But that means you have to show a different likelihood ratio should be preferred. And that requires presenting evidence that that’s the case. But my a fortiori estimates are already wildly generous to historicity, so getting evidence for more favorable likelihoods is going to be really hard. But that’s what an honest critic has to do.
Conclusion
The bottom line is, if you want to assert “Jesus probably existed,” then you need to be able to explain how you know that. How do you know that probability is high? If you can’t answer that question, in any logical way from the actual evidence there is, then you cannot honestly claim to know Jesus probably existed. And yet answering that question, requires rolling up your sleeves, figuring out Bayes’ Theorem, and presenting evidence for different frequency estimates than mine, as presented in On the Historicity of Jesus (master table in Chapter 12.1). So if that’s what you want to assert, please get to doing that already.
And this same reasoning follows for every claim you wish to assert or deny. If you want to win any argument, if you want to be right about anything, you have to know you are right and show you are right. And that requires knowing and showing how you get a high probability for your conclusion. And that requires knowing and showing how you get your priors and likelihoods. Because that’s what you are already doing intuitively. So you should know how to do it explicitly. So you can vet the accuracy of your own intuition, and so someone else’s intuition can be educated to see what it’s missing or how it’s erring.
Hi Richard great article!
I had a question regarding infinite regress. I’m not too familiar with the arguments for or against, I have people saying it’s a fallacy (Homunculus)?
I heard a debate where you explain how it’s not a fallacy, however, I have trouble understanding it in layman terms.
Is the argument basically, if god created the world, then who created god, ad infinitum?
I usually say, if god doesn’t need a designer, why would everything else? Then I see comments like: it’s a false equivalency since we have the material world and god is outside time and space and all those assumptions.
I do know that either way, whether there is a so called designer/god it doesn’t mean it’s a personal or anthropomorphic. Which would be a bigger burden of proof on the theistic side since they assume right off the bat, that it’s exactly the Bible version of it.
I think a Pantheistic view would be more plausible than a Theistic one. Though I am more incline to agree with Metaphysical Naturalism thanks to your book!
What is the best, quick and easy response to the infinite regress in your view?
Thank you!
Justin
Infinite regress can refer to several different things. In this case, I think you are asking about causal regress rather than epistemic: that “everything has a cause” entails an infinite past of causes, and therefore it either cannot be the case that God is without cause, or it cannot be the case that “everything has a cause.” Infinite regress itself is not a fallacy (contrary to WL Craig, actual infinities are fully possible and entail no logical contradictions, nor would one contradict any present observations). But Christians despise the possibility that their god is caused (even though they have no evidence he isn’t caused). So it chafes them when people point that out. The fallacies then arise from the Christian’s attempt to avoid the conclusion he doesn’t like (that God is caused).
Theists got annihilated with this one long ago, since indeed “everything has a cause” entails God is caused, too; so they had to invent “exceptions” to the statement “everything has a cause.” They’ve tried many different ways to justify those exceptions. They always amount to a fallacy of special pleading, e.g. insisting God (and often, only God) is an exception, even though we have no evidence there is a God, or an exception of any kind, or that God would be the only exception; so this line of argument quickly becomes circular, presuming the conclusion in its own premises.
Either there are exceptions to “everything has a cause,” or there are not. The traditional theist cannot accept the latter (for personal reasons, not logical ones; a caused-god theology would be perfectly logical). Even though we actually have no evidence that “everything has a cause” or that “something does not have a cause,” so really no one should be saying they know either to be the case. It’s typical of theology to confuse wishes and speculations, with facts. Fact is, we do not know if everything has a cause; nor do we know that anything doesn’t have a cause. We are totally ignorant on that matter. And claiming otherwise is the fallacy of argument from ignorance.
But still, the traditional theist is left with having to insist there are exceptions to “everything has a cause.” They have to build those exceptions into their God hypothesis, making their God hypotheses even more improbable (since the probability of “only an uncaused God exists” is logically necessarily always lower than the probability that “either a caused or an uncaused God exists”; denying otherwise is a conjunction fallacy, made famous with the Feminist Banker analogy, and Google will lead you to that). But worse, if we are allowing exceptions to “everything has a cause,” then almost any exceptions are possible. They cannot special plead their way into insisting only gods get the exception. Because there is no evidence gods even get an exception, and no evidence that something else doesn’t get the same exception. So it’s entirely possible the first cause isn’t a God. Which destroys their cosmological argument for God. Which they find eternally annoying, so they try to delusionally rationalize their way around this fatal flaw in their argumentation.
A really good candidate for an uncaused cause is the beginning of time. Because a cause by definition is an initiating event that precedes the effect in time, and it is logically impossible for any time to precede the origin of time, therefore a cause of time is logically impossible. Therefore, time appears to be a logically necessary exception to “everything has a cause.” Notably, this is also problematic for God, because God can’t exist before time, because there is no time there for him to exist at. That leads to the Argument from Nonlocation against God.
Theists try to wriggle out of this consequence by insisting God existed “simultaneously” with the beginning of time, but once you are allowing a simultaneously existing entity to be a cause, you no longer can claim only God can be that thing. If something can spontaneously and simultaneously exist with time and at the same time cause time, then almost anything can be that something. The properties of a God are no longer necessary. Indeed, the universe could have caused itself, if something can exist simultaneously with its cause. Theists have no rational response to that. It’s a problem.
Other candidates for uncaused causes are available. The originating quantum chaos from which the universe emerged could be without cause. We can’t say otherwise, because being inside an ordered effect, we have never observed, nor likely ever can observe, whether a mindless quantum chaos can arise uncaused or not.
So that’s the real problem.
But another problem, which is often being invoked with the infinite regress argument, is that God is a highly complex entity. In fact, by definition, God has the highest specified complexity of every possibly existing thing. Which means God is infinitely complex (just the arrangement of his knowledge, being total and all true, and not linked anywhere incorrectly or possessed of any false beliefs, is infinitely complex). But infinite specified complexity, entails infinitesimal probability of existing…without a cause. So by insisting God has no cause, Christians are asserting it is pure random chance that we have such a perfect and massively complex God with all those conveniently improbable properties (power, knowledge, virtue; and without any body to manifest them no less!). But the probability of getting that chance to be realized is literally infinity to one against. Which is effectively zero.
This is why theism requires modal arguments, to try and prove God is logically necessary. As otherwise, the probability of God is infinitesimal. Alas, no logically valid modal argument for God exists. So theists are left with a vastly improbable God, literally by their own defined terms the least probable hypothesis conceivable.
By contrast, the universe is much less specified in its complexity, being finite and imperfect and containing much that is comfortably random. Which means no matter how improbable it is that such a universe would spontaneously exist, the probability a God exists to cause it is always vastly lower. Which means the relative probability of the universe being spontaneously created is always billions upon billions of times more likely than that a God existed to do it.
Unless you start granting God is imperfect. Which theists will never do.
Note, many theists (following Aquinas) will try to argue that God is not complex, but simple, usually conflating a different understanding of complexity (such as what you or Dawkins discuss) with Aquinas’ understanding of complexity (being a body, being composed of matter and form etc.). I’ve previously addressed this issue, responding to Craig and Plantinga misrepresenting Dawkins, here:
https://civitashumana.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/thomas-aquinas-on-divine-simplicity-and-richard-dawkins-ultimate-boeing-747-gambit/
Yes. Well said.
Indeed, the theists have already boned themselves on this, by accepting the infornation theory definition of complexity advanced by creationists Dembski and Behe now. Which of course Aquinas was too primitive and medieval to have anticipated. It turns out he was wrong and they (ironically) are right. They err in the way they claim information cannot arise spontaneously (Dembski in fact agrees it can, and calculates how much can do so, but his calculation errs in presuming the visible universe is all that exists). But they are correct that prior probability is a function of the complexity of the informational structure of a thing, formally called the Kolmogorov Complexity (aka Descriptive Complexity). The more specific the thing you propose, the more improbable it is on prior considerations alone. What material it is made of is irrelevant.
Swinburne and Plantinga never got this message. Or pretend they didn’t. They’re still using the logically invalid definition of Aquinas.
Thanks for your detailed reply Richard! 🙂
You covered a lot there which will be useful for subsequent conversations with theists.
Theists in other words have to assume and speculate too much because of their preconceived notions when they have no way of providing scientific justification or that it’s demonstrable in any way.
So you’re saying if you let “God” slide by as an exception then anything could essentially be an exception.
WLC’s Modal Ontological arguments are annoying.
“The very possibility of god existing, entails that god exists”….Euh, WHAT?! How can any “Scholar” say this? I can say the possibility of pixies created the universe entails that pixies created the universe” Or that “The possibility that Islam is true, entails that Islam is true” (I’m sure he’d disagree with that).
He also discredits certain historians by not having specific credentials in theology or ancient history etc. But then he’ll talk about Cosmological arguments and other topics where he has no credentials. I believe he only has theological degrees? Could be mistaken.
I feel he is such a convincing orator and makes things sound convincing. Upon further examination you realize he presupposes too much for his arguments, uses big words to sound logical, eloquent and cogent, to ultimately mislead the audience. He often reminds me of Bart Ehrman about discrediting people because of their credentials.
It’s not the person, and their credentials. Surely, if you have credentials in a specific field you have a better chance of knowing what you’re talking about. However, it’s the arguments that are important not who said it. The arguments will hold and fall on their own merit. WLC is dishonest and I believe he knows he is. Ehrman, well concedes that there’s basically no reliable evidence for the historicity of Jesus, yet it’s foolish to think he may not have existed (Makes an assertion without reliable evidence that he ironically admits).
I agree with you that they desperately need god not to be caused if not their whole theological world view is shattered.
It at least then becomes up to debate what can or can’t; and without evidence regarding what “laws” limit causation outside of time and outside an ordered universe, anything outside of time and universes has as much chance of being an exception as any god. What to focus on is that they have no evidence-based or logically demonstrated reason to say that “supernatural persons” or “disembodied minds” can arise uncaused; at all, much less that only they can. And the only other option is eternal existence or simultaneous existence.
So they try to resort to those options. But then they no evidence-based or logically demonstrated reason to say that “supernatural persons” or “disembodied minds” can be past eternal but that time (and thus any universe) cannot (that’s actually a logical contradiction; it’s impossible for a person to be past eternal if time cannot be, and if time can be, anything in time can be, including impersonal stuff). So that’s when they resort to insisting God is not past eternal but co-exists simultaneously with the start of the universe. So when they get to there, ask them for what evidence or logical proof they have that an impersonal first cause can’t co-exist simultaneously with the start of the universe. After all, they can’t say there weren’t things around at the start of the universe that can cause stuff to happen. This is their Catch-22: it’s logically impossible for any cause to exist before time does; but as soon as time exists for things to exist at, anything can exist there to cause what happens next. There is no evidence it was or had to be a “person” or “mind.”
What they’ll do then is start in on the Fine Tuning argument. So stop them at that point and get them to admit that by switching to the FT, they are admitting the cosmological argument is a failure. Don’t argue the FT until they admit they are conceding the cosmological argument does not afford any proof or evidence god exists. The FT and the CA are not the same arguments. And they’ll be loathe to admit that.
He has two Ph.D.’s, one in philosophy (dissertation: the Kalam), and one in theology. His dissertation for that was at least on the historicity of the resurrection, so he has some credentials in doing history at a graduate level; it remains arguable whether theology departments really properly train anyone in historical methods.
Right thanks for the tips!
So basically, they are essentially, special pleading to make their god an exception which they can’t demonstrate in any way.
I often feel like they just assert by saying “I know god exists” which I remind them why they haven’t won the Nobel Prize for proving the biggest mystery of humanity. For not only proving a god exists but their specific religion and their specific denomination. I ask them to show me how they came to that conclusion and their justification for it. I ask them to demonstrate instead of asserting it. We can all assert things without evidence.
They usually respond with “I just know” or “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you”. They like to rely on personal experience which is anecdotal thus biased and unreliable. I tell them that I don’t deny they had an experience, but that their justification for the conclusion they reached isn’t justified and they can’t demonstrate it. And other faiths have their personal experience that they surely discount outright.
After long debates, when they can’t come up with logical arguments or see that I call out their fallacies. They result in the appeal to faith “You just have to have faith”.
My response is usually, “faith is believing without evidence. You can believe anything on faith, as I’m sure you think Muslims who have faith are wrong, thus, faith is not a reliable path to truth”.
Then, they get angry or disgruntled and start saying “I’ll pray for you” (Which my response is, have fun talking to yourself) I respond that way because their comment is essentially arrogant and condescending and I feel like reciprocating.
When cornered I’ve noticed they often avoid questions and just use threats of hell and eternal damnation (Argumentum Ad Baculum).
I feel like they often don’t really want to debate critically, only want to proselytize.
Thanks for taking time to reply to my questions.
As for WLC, his theological degree which doesn’t mean much if the consensus of the field is derived from a poor methodology or they are contractually obligated to assume certain tenants without question is a bad way of doing history (Which I believe you and Hector Avalos point out).
I whole heatedly agree that Bayesian method of reasoning (If used correctly) is the best and most consistent and reliable method to get the most accurate representation of history. Until Biblical Studies adhere to such method, I don’t think we can grant theological degrees as honest.
Would the Ehrman calling you out on being fringe mythicist position be considered the ad populum fallacy on his part? We need to remind him that Christianity was also a fringe for a long time, until Constantine was likely the biggest reason why it succeeded for so long, including inquisition. The problem lies in theological studies and the limits they set to what we can question.
What would you say is your biggest frustration when it comes to debating Theists (Average joe’s) or educated apologist like WL Craig? I seem to get frustrated with their constant circular reasoning and I point it out to them and they KEEP doing it…
Promise this is my last long message! Thanks for reading and responding. 🙂
My biggest frustration? Exactly that.
It seems to me that there is a limitation to our logical and linguistic notions of “causality” due to our being limited in existence to our 4 dimensional spacetime and never having interacted with anything outside spacetime, if that’s even possible. Time is a dimension no different than space. Can anything exist outside of space or time? Can any transcendent cause bring spacetime into existence? Can anything possibly exist “before” time, if time even had a beginning? Those questions seem to be pretty much unanswerable and neither religion, nor science and philosophy can tackle such a question.
I would say we are in a better epistemic position than that. It is inherently illogical that something could exist “before” time; just as it is illogical to be located north of the north pole. If someone is claiming x exists at a location they themselves say doesn’t exist, then they are saying x doesn’t exist.
Even if we posit another dimension (or a whole matrix of dimensions) from which time emerges, it cannot be located in time before time. It’s location would be simultaneous with the first moment of time. So it would not actually exist before time. And inventing a meta-time in which something can exist in a time before our time, is saying something exists in time, just a different timeline than ours.
Multiverse theories already do pretty well of making sense of possible hypotheses like this, and are much more sophisticated and scientifically plausible than theistic alternatives, for example. As hypotheses they actually pass peer review in physics journals. No theology has ever accomplished that.
But yes, if time has a first point and thus there is no place anything can be located “before” that point in any time, then we can no longer apply temporal causation to explain the origin of time. We would need some other theory. But (a) we actually don’t know there has ever been a first point in time and (b) there are plenty of hypotheses already proposed in physics of the nontemporal causation (or at least explanation) of the first moment of time, and none require gods.
I recommend two minor corrections, both in paragraph 4 of “Doing It Better & Testing Your Models.” (1) The NT citation “28:11-15” needs to be preceded by “Mt.” (2) Perhaps the word “eyewitness” should be deleted, because the story (Mt. 28:13) says “asleep” (unless I’m misinterpreting an argument that there was an eyewitness to the theft).
As an aside, did you ever notice how theologians and apologists who assume the Bible is the Word of God, base so few of their arguments on the Bible? Instead, they just make up whatever fits their theological or apologetic needs.
Richard, could you clarify the third term in Bayes’ Theorem? You say it should be the odds for the evidence if the claim is false—i.e., P(E|~C)—but other sources merely state this term to be the odds for the evidence independent from the claim, or P(E). Thanks!
A summary:
P(C|E) = P(E|C)P(C)/P(E)
or
P(C|E) = P(E|C)P(C)/P(E|~C)
Thanks!
You are confusing the short form with the long form of the equation. This is explained in Proving History. The short form gives the combined term that includes all three terms—actually four, but the fourth is the converse of the first and therefore invariable once the first term is assigned, so I needn’t discuss it. Of those four terms that are encompassed by the combined term, one is the “third” term you are asking about.
In other words, when you see P(E) in the denominator, that is just a placeholder for the expanded all-four-terms: P(E) = P(H)P(E|H) + P(~H)P(E|~H). I’m talking about the expanded assembly of terms, which consists of four terms: P(H) (which entails P(~H) as its converse, so that “fourth” term doesn’t have to be discussed), P(E|H), and P(E|~H).
If you don’t understand what I just said, this article might help you.
(Meanwhile, in the Odds Form, I should note, there is no P(E). And the article you are commenting on is actually working from the Odds Form. So you may be doubly confused. But all three forms are mathematically equivalent.)
“The only things that can ever have a zero probability are things that are logically impossible; and yet even they cannot have a zero probability, because there is always a nonzero probability we are wrong about something being logically impossible!”
I can imagine a Pascalian trying to use that to defend Pascal’s Wager. ha.
I’m guessing we’re talking here about subjective/epistemic probability. Which makes me question whether even God could be certain of any given proposition. If he couldn’t, isn’t that irrational? If he could, is he really all-powerful/all-knowing?
I was wondering if you think we can have hybrid of subjective and objective probability? I can imagine some people (mistakenly) think subjective probability is “arbitrary”
Correct. This is epistemic probability. And God can never be certain he is not a victim of a Cartesian Demon fooling him into thinking he is omniscient and inerrant. It’s logically impossible for God to be certain of anything, even that he is really God. It can only be known to a certain probability.
I’m not sure what your last question means to ask. But in Proving History, esp. Ch. 6, I demonstrate how it is the case that subjective probabilities are always attempts to estimate some objective probability, and the accuracy of a subjective probability is a function of how likely it is to be near the objective probability it is estimating. More information, increases that likelihood. Although a Cartesian Demon hypothesis can avoid that consequence, it can only do so by adopting an extraordinarily low prior probability, which can never be increased without evidence the Demon exists. This means Cartesian Demons can never be detected (presuming they always succeed in their aim of ensuring they aren’t, a presumption that carries an extraordinarily low prior), but that fact is never evidence for their existence. See my discussion here. And my points about it not mattering anyway, in Sense and Goodness without God II.2.1.2, pp. 31-32.
Thanks for the response.
My question arose from a recent discussion I saw on youtube regarding Plantinga’s EAAN. The atheist’s objection was in regards to conditionalization and necessary truths. The theist replied by saying that there is a form of ‘objective’ probability that deals with this. He called it “objective-subjective” probability, but I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. He also said that there are different axioms once can adopt. From understanding of the various interpretations of probability, a lot of these issues are not settled.
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk3rWKMSoNs&t=1612s : timestamp is 27:40
I read Sense & Goodness a few years ago (on my bookshelf). I enjoyed it, and I probably need to re-read it to get refreshed. I plan on reading some of your other books, especially after hearing your recent discussion on Unbelievable?.
The probability of the falsity of the sentence “I do not exist”, each time it is affirmed, is 0. There’s no possibilty of it being true, because one has to exist in orden to affirm or deny something.
I’m not sure why you mention this. Is there a point to your comment?
If you mean to identify the set of properly basic knowledge (the uninterpreted irreducibles of present experience) as the only knowledge that obtains logical certainty (and thus isn’t subject to having a probability of being false), I discuss that often. I have a whole section on it in my book Sense and Goodness without God and mention it often here in my articles on epistemology.
Such statements are too void of ontological content to be of much use however. So their being certain offers little epistemological assistance to anyone. A point I also often discuss. See the right margin category index, “epistemology.”
What relevance do they have here? Please explain.
Correction: I shoud have said “the probability of the truth of the sentence…” etc.
And I shoud have said “possibility”.
Hello Mormons (LDS) are using Baysian statistics to try and prove the possible historicity of their sacred text the Book of Mormon. https://interpreterfoundation.org/estimating-the-evidence-0/ Is such a project plausible?
I doubt it. It’s probably just more Crank Bayesianism, just like the Kalam Cosmological Argument is Crank Logic. They claim they have evidence that has only a 1 in 10 to the 20th power chance of existing today unless the Book of Mormon were authentic (whatever they take that to mean). If that were true they could get this passed peer review at any prestigious science journal (even particle physics requires no more than a 1 in 10 to the 6th power). There is a reason they won’t.
I have watched some of Carrier’s debates on Youtube and reading this article is the first time I’ve read anything he has written. The article’s content is good, but its grammar is terrible!! Even if it’s deliberately dumbed down for a math illiterate audience, the jarring sentence structure makes it a lot less clear than it could be. How did he get a PhD with such terrible English?! He is a much better speaker than writer.
I write like people speak. Colloquial. This is why people read my stuff. It is in fact how more scholars should write. Writing like an elitist isolates you from the world rather than educating it.
I prefer colloquial writing as well. I don’t think normal full stops are elitist.
Another reason I found it so confusing to read your blog may have been regional differences in our language use. I live in Australia, I’ve never been to the U.S., and I’m a first generation English speaker un my family. Maybe there’s an additional cognitive load for me because of regional differences. That alone is not usually a problem for me, but without normal full stops the cognitive load adds up.
I see your point about reaching your audience better with colloquial speech and writing. If it’s a mutually exclusive choice between me and them, please continue choosing Americans. That’s where I believe the greater good of your work is.
I just re-read my own comment which you responded to. I should not have been so rude in criticising your writing. Sorry for my insensitivity.
I should clarify that my complaint was not about the tone or language. The difficulty I have reading your writing would be solved with exactly the same vocabulary and word order, if only full stops were used normally, to show where sentences start and end.
An alternative solution would be to use another character to indicate where sentences start and end, like a vertical bracket: |
I’m genuinely for your success in the U.S. The fact that I have difficulty reading without a clear sentence boundary indicates that your readership could be even greater than it already is.
Please don’t allow stereotypes to obscure what I’m saying. Again: if you keep exactly the same wording and just clarify when sentences start and end, the problem would be solved.