But ultimately I think the book is disingenuous. It doesn’t read as a mathematical treatment of the subject, and I can’t help but think that Carrier is using Bayes’s Theorem in much the same way that apologists such as William Lane Craig use it: to give their arguments a veneer of scientific rigour that they hope cannot be challenged by their generally more math-phobic peers. To enter an argument against the overwhelming scholarly consensus with “but I have math on my side, math that has been proven, proven!” seems transparent to me, more so when the quality of the math provided in no way matches the bombast.
via A Mathematical Review of “Proving History” by Richard Carrier | Irreducible Complexity.
Oh look… a real mathematician…
HT – JM < TS via FB
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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Thanks Joel. I’m not sure I’m a ‘real mathematician’ though, I have to say. My doctorate work was in the mathematics of evolution, but that was 15 years ago. A real ‘real mathematician’ would eat me for breakfast, I’m sure!
[...] beliefs are a little mercurial, I find). Because my review was criticial, I got linked to from various sources who defend the academic consensus against Mythicism, who presumably agree (though for [...]