Dale has a sprawling thesis that includes his 11 premise argument, religion-affirming miracles, and a math-based decision theory showing why belief in god is mathematically justified. Our discussion focused on the latter. But it must inevitable cover other aspects as they are all intertwined. Since I am writing this before the conversation, I can't say for sure where it will go. But I can talk about some of my thoughts on the themes that might not make it into the show. This might go long. Let's get started:

In the beginning, god

The entire bible begins with the famous words, "In the beginning, god..." This is also the beginning of Dale's 11 premise argument. When we discussed this a couple of weeks ago, I granted him the possible existence of the god he defines so that he could continue his thesis. Otherwise, we would never get to the 2nd premise. It starts with god existing. This week I don't intend to grant that idea so easily.

On the subject of miracles, Dale has stated on a recent show he did that he doesn't view miracles as proof of god. Rather, one needs to start with the idea that a god exists. From there, the case for miracles is much easier and flows more naturally. Again, his starting point is that god exists. I contend that his calculous project also doesn't work without giving favorable weight to the idea that god exists.

Dale acknowledges that he still has to make the case publicly that god exists. He has made the case for himself. But at some point, he has to make the case publicly. How many times must the skeptic grant the existence of a god to help the Christian make their case. Their promise is that they will eventually come back to the central point of god's existence. But that time never happens. If all of these cases depend on proving that god exists, then it seems that should have been the first presentation so that the other themes would have a proper foundation. Temporary and conditional grants from one's interlocutor is not a solid foundation for anything. Therefore, my first objection to the thesis at hand is that we are still waiting for a convincing case for god's existence. This is not just a knock against Dale, but a knock against most Christians. We can move on to explore the other aspects of the argument. But I do not grant that god exists. Christians must be held to account for that work. At some point, we will have to do that debate so that the work can be shown.

50/50

Dale and I have gone a few rounds on the initial numbers for getting the Bayesian math started. He favors the idea of beginning all propositions with the starting probability of 50/50. I believe that is a huge mistake which skews the results. Here is my case:

When approaching a subject where you have no idea whether or not it is true, you have to find the null position. 50/50 is not neutral. It is favorable. If you are told that you can purchase a lottery ticket for a billion dollar prize and it would cost you $1, you might not think it a good idea to waste a dollar on the ticket. But if you are told there is a 50/50 chance of you winning, then you would be a fool not to enter. Suddenly, those odds are too good to pass up.

If you are trying to use probability math to determine if god exists, starting at 50/50 is the same favorable position as the lottery example. You have biased the result by suggesting that the chances are equal that a god exists.

The more accurate starting point is zero. That is exactly how much evidence you have that a god exists. You cannot show that the odds are even. You climb a mountain by starting at the base, not halfway up. Dale's view is that if you have no background knowledge, the fair thing to do is to say that neither proposition gains an advantage. There is a god, there isn't a god. I have no problem with that. But you don't gain fairness by starting both propositions with an unfair number. You start both propositions at zero and each participant has to build a case from there to get to greater than 50%.

What I see in Dale's numbers (and I could very well be wrong) is that he starts at 50% and gives numeric values to the various bits of evidence. If all of the positives and negatives leave the final number at plus one, his case is proven that a god is more likely by 51%. The problem is that he doesn't have a 51% case. He has a 1% case and he added 50% for free. In the above case, he has only actually worked out 1% of probability for the god case. He has to get past 50% the hard way. Starting at 50% is an unearned shortcut to probability.

The same is true for the other side of the equation. If the calculations show a -1 probability, it doesn't put the number at 49% likely to be true. The new number is -1% because the true starting number was zero. If you have to have a number to start the calculations, start it at 1 and work from there. Then at the end of the calculations, subtract the fake number you started with so as not to gain an advantage.

51% is not enough

Dale and Jordan had a debate about miracles recently. Jordan agreed with Dale that he would believe a proposition if it was 51% probable. That is an interesting way to go about living one's life. But it is not sufficient for me and for many like me. I don't even know how I would go about determining whether something is 51% probable. It doesn't matter. Some things need a lot more than a simple majority to move the needle.

In American governance, some things require a supermajority and not just a simple majority for it to pass. We know better than to allow ourselves to be ruled by the tyranny of simple and transient majorities. If the chances of making it to your destination alive were only 51%, no one would fly. We have to be convinced that the odds are exceptionally high that everything will be alright. Otherwise, we would be test pilots.

For low-stakes propositions, 51% might be okay. It is exceptional odds for the lottery. It is terrible odds for flying. We calibrate the degree of certainty needed based on the size of the bet we are making. If you think Christianity is a low-stakes proposition, you have never read Jesus. You have also never sat through a thousand sermons on counting the cost of discipleship.

No one in their right mind would ever bet their life on a 51% probability. So why would a Christian who believes deeply in the high cost of discipleship encourage people to bet their one life on such a small percentage of favorability? For me, there is a serious disconnect.

This leads to the question of how much certainty is needed for one to bet their life on faith in Jesus. The answer will be different for different people. It is one that I don't think a third party can impose. It is like asking how much and what type of evidence is sufficient for faith. For some, the simple testimony of early believers in the Bible is enough. That doesn't work for me. It is wrong to say that I am unreasonable for wanting more and better evidence. It is a grave mistake to suggest that a person is reasonable only when they meet your standard or evidence or percentage of certainty.

Forced belief

There is no such thing as forced belief. No matter what the math shows, one cannot be forced to believe a proposition that they don't actually believe. One can't even force themselves to believe something they don't actually believe. Doing math to calculate probability seems like an effort to force belief. At best, it turns faith in god into a mere intellectual pursuit. But without real faith produced in the heart, it is meaningless.

I know that I am not great at math. I can be fooled by numbers, especially numbers derived in a questionable manner. So show me all the numbers you like and convince me that the numbers show a 60% probability that god and Christianity is real. It doesn't matter because in my heart, I still don't believe. By the way, Both Christians and atheists have used the same kind of math to prove their positions. I have no faith that either side has any convincing argument based on the numbers.

You can use Bayes to show that it is more probable than not that if you are carried by a tightrope walker across a high place, you are more likely than not to survive. Great! Congratulations on the math. I still don't believe it and wouldn't be carried across that high place. There is a huge gulf between intellectual ascent and emotional conviction. I can give intellectual ascent to a lot of things without really believing them. I am not always the smartest person in the room and can be fooled by smarter people using motivated reasoning. But I believe what I believe and don't believe what I don't believe. I'm not sure what the internal mechanism is for generating true belief. But a mathematical formula for things that don't naturally lend themselves to math isn't one of them.

Assigning numbers to propositions

How do you assign a numerical value to a non-numeric proposition? I have no idea. If I understand Dale correctly, the numbers he assigns to religious propositions are emotional numbers. They are based on how one feels about the likelihood of a proposition being true. With enough of these numbers to plug into a formula, you can come up with the Bayesian math and final answer.

We must remember the old adage: garbage in, garbage out. For the final output to be reliable, the inputs must be reliable. How do we determine the emotional reliability of emotional numbers? We know that our emotions are not highly tuned for precision. Fear causes us to react in ways that sometimes help us survive. But it does not give us an accurate picture of what is really happening.

Emotion can also cause us to give a higher level of probability to something than it deserves. In the same way, it can cause us to give less probability to something that we don't want to be true. Emotion enhances our biases. We need a method that decreases the effects of our biases. We will always have reasons to doubt numbers that lean so heavily on emotions. Good math helps to eliminate the effects of bad emotions.

What is the likelihood of a virgin birth literally happening? I place it at zero, or as close to zero as I can get and it still be a valid number. I don't believe such things can happen in humans. A Christian would place it quite a bit higher because they believe it is something that is child's play for a god to accomplish. Which of us is right? Neither of us can say for sure that we are being more reasonable. Asexual reproduction happens naturally in some animals. We are animals and it is not inconceivable that some human could have some defect or mutation that would allow for such an event in a human. I don't believe this will ever happen. But my biases might place the probability for such an event too low. You should not trust my emotional number any more than you should trust a believer's emotional number. They both represent garbage in.

The supernatural poisons the well

If we are including supernatural in the equation, there will be no way to come up with a good number. That is because with the supernatural, anything is possible. We are no longer working with natural probabilities. With the supernatural, the most unlikely event is mundane. It is like tossing an infinity into an equation, the results are useless. The supernatural is the infinity of probabilistic math. It is the million-sided die that can roll the same number a million times in a row. Why not? The supernatural is unbounded from any known restrictions. The laws of physics hold no sway in that realm.

How likely is it that a virgin birth happened? The only equation that makes sense to this mathematical neophyte is supernatural(infinity). Good luck parsing that. Since the god of the supernatural has infinite power and an inscrutable will, probabilities go careening out of the window. I suspect most Christians would be offended by the notion that a god event could be subject to Bayes theorem.

Part of the biases of one who believes in the supernatural is that anything is possible. And if anything is possible, everything is possible. This is an opinion also shared by people in general who don't have a firm grasp on science. Once that becomes a part of your underlying assumptions, I am at a loss as to what probability even means to you.

Theological conundrum

By now, it should surprise no one that I would appeal to theology for part of my argument. If the Bible is to be believed, the probability of Christian claims being true will always appear to be low. That is why the appeal is to faith rather than math. Paul tells us on more than one occasion that the gospel seems like foolishness to the unspiritual man. I'm pretty sure I qualify as an unspiritual man. If the gospel seems foolish to me, it is because I find the probability of it being true ridiculously low. That is Paul's expectation as well.

The bible recognizes that propositionally, its claims are hard to swallow. Attempting to prove that the Christian claims are highly probable is to deny the texts that suggest otherwise. How likely is it that by giving up houses, land, wives, and children, that you will eventually receive it back a hundredfold? No matter how you do the math, it is not bloody likely. How likely is it that humans will rise from the dead and live forever thereafter? It is not bloody likely. How likely is it that a man who was executed by the state is really the incarnation of the one, true god? It is not bloody likely. I could go on in this way for a long time. But I think you get the point. Faith is always in things that do not rate well on the scales of probability. That's why faith is needed in the first place. If it could be shown that the probability was much more likely than not, then we wouldn't need a gift of supernatural faith to believe it in the first place.

Conclusion: Believe without seeing

Thomas believed because he saw the evidence and was chided for it. Jesus said that it is better to believe without seeing the evidence. Probability that is heavily weighted toward a claim being true is just another form of seeing. We call it mathematical certainty. 1 and 1 is 2, not because the math says so, but because it simply is true. The math is a process that describes that existing truth.

Probabilistic math is still a way of providing a type of certainty. It is a way of saying that you must act if the percentage reaches a certain number. It is a way of believing because you see rather than believing because you don't see.

What do you do with aspects of the text that don't add up? I agree with the old-time preachers who say that were god to tell them that 1 and 1 is 3, they would accept it regardless of the degree to which it shatters their understanding of things. You can't second-guess the Christian god or his word.

Many Christians stop short of affirming the virgin birth. Their problem is they are using probabilities to decide which parts of the text they will believe. That is not how it is supposed to work. You accept god at his word, all or nothing. Faith is the substance of what we can only hope, and the evidence of things we can only imagine but not see. It is not that which is attained via our mechanisms to make it more reasonable for our human understanding.

If it makes perfect sense to you, then it is probably not god's perfect truth. For such a truth could not possibly be fully grasped by sinful creatures. We are not to lean on our own understanding. That includes math. For this and the other reasons I listed above, I reject the very idea of calculous for Christ. But it would be uncharitable and premature to do anything other than give Dale a fair hearing and full opportunity to make his case.

See you in the comments...

David Johnson