[Cameron] How would you explain your response to Hume's exclusion of miracles
to someone in high school or someone who doesn't follow probability calculus too well? [Craig] Well
I had to smile when I saw this question because in the class lectures, I go into Bayes Theorem and
try to explain this in some detail because people like Bart Ehrman, for example,
completely misunderstand the probabilities involved. How would you explain this to a high
school kid? Well here's my best shot. Tell him it's like a law court where someone is accused
of a crime. Now what is the probability, say, that the husband is the murderer of his wife?
Well, if you don't look at any evidence, suppose you just ask that question prior to
the prosecution presenting its evidence; what's the probability of that? Well it might not be
very high. But then you recalculate the probability of the evidence based upon
the DNA, the fingerprint evidence, the motive, the lack of an alibi, the eyewitness testimony of
someone who saw the husband going into the house just at the time the murder occurred,
and then you can say based upon all of this evidence, the hypothesis that the husband is the
murderer makes much better sense of the evidence than the hypothesis that he is innocent. And
in that case, that can outbalance any intrinsic improbability in his being the murderer that you
estimated apart from the evidence. So one of these is the prior probability without any evidence;
what's the probability he's guilty? The other, then, you figure what is the probability of the
evidence given that he's guilty versus that he's not guilty? And when you put these together,
that will give you the total probability. What is the probability that he's guilty given the general
information we have plus the evidence? And then it may turn out that indeed it's highly probable that
he's guilty. [Cameron] So how does this relate to David Hume's argument? [Craig] Oh, the way it
relates to David Hume's argument is that Hume only considers the prior probability; he only considers
the probability of someone raising from the dead relative to the background information alone,
which he takes to be the laws of nature, and he says relative to the laws of nature,
the probability of someone rising from the dead is terribly, terribly low.
But he never considers that other probability that I mentioned, namely,
which makes the evidence more probable: the resurrection hypothesis, or the denial
of the resurrection hypothesis? And so Hume's argument is mathematically demonstrably
fallacious, because he only considers the prior probability of the resurrection hypothesis
and not the probability of the evidence given the resurrection hypothesis versus its alternative.
But now, you see, you've already gotten beyond the high school student, and made
it too complicated. If you want to explain to the high school student, I think the law court analogy
ought to make it clear. What's the probability of the resurrection without any evidence. Now,
what's the probability of the resurrection once you bring in the evidence?