Mathematical Proof of the Resurrection

When I was in high school, I saw Tom Stoppard’s play “Jumpers” on Broadway. Twice. It was amazing, opening up all kinds of vistas of language and showmanship and Oxbridgian hoopdeedoo. That’s why I liked this story:


So God’s Really in the Details?. Last month, Richard Swinburne, a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, invoked probability theory to defend the belief that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.


I particularly loved this graf:



In plain English, this means that, by Mr. Swinburne’s calculations, the probability of the Resurrection comes out to be a whopping 97 percent.


I kind of thought that the whole point was to have faith in the face of what was surely impossible. But what the hey — if you can prove it anyway, how bad could it be?

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