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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Science as Religion (other objections to Wingate's article)
Message-ID: <1112@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Nov-84 19:20:44 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1112
Posted: Wed Nov 14 19:20:44 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Nov-84 07:55:27 EST
References: <704@umcp-cs.UUCP> <209@cybvax0.UUCP> <770@umcp-cs.UUCP> <221@cybvax0.UUCP> <975@umcp-cs.UUCP> <235@cybvax0.UUCP>
Reply-To: mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 48

In article <235@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:

> Besides  the strong assumption that the resurrection occurred and was
> recorded (rather than faked or ficticiously reported), the above statement
> ignores the fact that Occam's Razor can be applied as a heuristic in
> history, as well as science.  And why not theology as well?

Occam's razor is only usable when you don't care that the explanation that
it indicates is wrong, in the sense that the explanation produces the
observations, but is not in fact what produced the original observations.
In science this is not a problem, because we are only concerned with the
predictive power of the explanation.  You have to be able to re-test the
explanation.  I am hesitant to allow its use in history, because the
explanation stands entirely in isolation and cannot be shown erroneous
without introducing new data-- and there is not an infinite supply of new
historical information.  With regard to the claims of christianity, it
is quite obvious that selecting the "wrong" explanation is quite devastating.
While claims that the gospels are lies and claims that the resurrection
actually happened as stated may explain the beginnings of christianity as
it is recorded, the truth of one versus the other produces quite different
implications.  In this case, Occam's razor is less useful, because we do
care whether or not the explanation is the same as the actuality, as well
as caring that it explains the data.

> Another problem with the above argument is the implication that there is a
> sample size of one for the resurrection, which leaves too little data for
> any useful analysis.  This is not so.  There are NUMEROUS other claims of
> resurrections (even in the Bible-- remember Lazarus?) in many other
> writings.  There's the claim of reincarnation going on around us daily.
> I say that claims of miracles should be lumped together to be considered
> with the Razor.

You can only lump together if you assume that they all have the same
"cause", i.e., that they can all be explained through the same process.
This is O.K. in science, because we can always disprove this assumption
with new observations.  We can't assume that with history because there's
no way to go back and disprove the assumption without new data, which
is decreasingly forthcoming.

Lazarus is totally independent of Jesus.  It is possible that definitive
evidence will appear showing that Jesus rose from the dead and that Lazarus
did not.  Given the current evidence, however, there is no way to distinguish
this from the other possibilities.  I admit that the conclusion that Jesus
rose from the dead makes the resurrection of Lazarus seem MUCH more likely.
I should also point out that the gospel narrations in the two cases are
quite different; the evidence indicates two different processes (or lies).

Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe