From: bill r wald <billwald@juno.com>
>>>>>
> "It is unlikely that all these events would have converged in the life
> of one man. Mathematicians (Stoner, 108) have calculated the
> probability of sixteen predictions being fulfilled in one man (e.g.,
> Jesus) at 1 in 10^45. That forty-eight predictions might meet in one
> person, the probability is 1 in 10^157. It is almost impossible to
> conceive of a number that large." (Geisler N.L., 1999, p.613).
><<<<
>
>This is a gross mis-use of probability. It is meaningless to talk about
>the probability of historical events. If an event occurs then all you
>can say is that it happened so the "probability" was 100%. I would like
>to hear from a real mathematician about this.
It is perfectly acceptable to say that, under hypothesis X, the probability
of event Y was Z%. For example, having observed that a die roll gave a
result of 3, you can say that, under the hypothesis that the die roll was
fair, the probability of rolling a 3 was 1/6. However, if you want to claim
that the occurrence of the event had some significance, e.g. that it was so
unlikely that it can't reasonably be attributed to chance, then you run into
the problem of "specification", the problem that Dembski tried
unsuccessfully to solve in the Design Inference.
If the predictions were clearly specified in advance, then the argument
might be valid (though there's still the problem of choosing suitable chance
hypotheses). The problem is that, as we saw with the Daniel prohecy, the
predictions have been interpreted to fit the facts after the event. It's
also possible that predictions have been used selectively, with statements
that could be taken as unsuccessful predictions being ignored. Also, of
course, ruling out chance would not necessarily mean that the prophets
really foresaw the future. Other possibilities, such as Jesus or the New
Testament writers making the facts fit the predictions, have already been
discussed.
Richard Wein (Tich)
--------------------------------
"Do the calculation. Take the numbers seriously. See if the underlying
probabilities really are small enough to yield design."
-- W. A. Dembski, who has never presented any calculation to back up his
claim to have detected Intelligent Design in life.
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