Topics: Apologetics; Easter; Jesus Christ; Resurrection
References: Matthew 28:6; John 20:18; 1 Corinthians 15:20
In April 2002, the well-respected Oxford University philosophy professor Richard Swinburne used a broadly accepted probability theory to defend the truth of Christ’s resurrection. He did this at a high-profile gathering of philosophy professors at Yale University.
“For someone dead for 36 hours to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable,” Swinburne said. “But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because he makes them operate.” Swinburne then used Bayes’ Theorem to assign values to things like the probability of God’s being real, Jesus’ behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after Jesus’ death. Then he plugged the numbers into a probability formula and added everything up.
The result: a 97 percent probability that the resurrection really happened.
—Emily Eakin, “So God’s Really in the Details?” The New York Times (May 11, 2002)