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A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

nautil.us

1–10 of 72 posts

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#3
"Hume, the probability of people inaccurately claiming that they’d seen Jesus’ resurrection far outweighed the probability that the event had occurred in the first place."

Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed? What is the point of examining the claims of fictional characters about a fictional event?

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#4

"Hume, the probability of people inaccurately claiming that they’d seen Jesus’ resurrection far outweighed the probability that the event had occurred in the first place." Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed? What is the point of examining the claims of fictional characters about a fictional event?

> Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed?

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_figures_ident...

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#5

"Hume, the probability of people inaccurately claiming that they’d seen Jesus’ resurrection far outweighed the probability that the event had occurred in the first place." Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed? What is the point of examining the claims of fictional characters about a fictional event?

That's a great question! There is lots of corroborating evidence regarding many people and events (not all people and all events, but further discussion would branch a bit further off topic). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#7
Clickbait title.

A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs.

So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the story.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#9
post #7

Clickbait title. A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs. So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the sto…

It's not clickbait; this is the angle the article took to present the material. Whether or not it is novel or particularly good may be up for debate, but it's not clickbait.

Re: A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

#10
post #7

Clickbait title. A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs. So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the sto…

The fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking?

I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality.

I.e., either Bayes' theory has implications (not argument-ending proof) regarding the claims of the divinity of Jesus, or it is not relevant at all today.

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