Outshine The Sun: Karlo Broussard

Showing posts with label Karlo Broussard. Show all posts

Tuesday, 12 July 2016

Estranged Notions: 5 Reasons Why the Universe Can’t Be Merely a Brute Fact

Today's post:

5 Reasons Why the Universe Can’t Be Merely a Brute Fact

As usual, the proponents of the PSR find themselves making unjustified claims for the very basic reason that they have no valid criterion for defining what an ‘explanation’ is.

Thursday, 7 July 2016

Estranged Notions: Why Wouldn’t God Perform More Miracles?

Today's post:

Why Wouldn’t God Perform More Miracles?

Wednesday, 11 May 2016

Estranged Notions: How Do You Know You’re Not in the Matrix?

Today's post:

How Do You Know You’re Not in the Matrix?

You don't, and it doesn't matter. But Broussard's arguments get nowhere at all.

Estranged Notions: Why Miracles Are Not Incompatible with Science

Yesterday's post:

Why Miracles Are Not Incompatible with Science

“not incompatible”—as long as you define ‘law of nature’ in a useless way.

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Estranged Notions: What Constitutes a Miracle?

Today's post:

What Constitutes a Miracle?

Wednesday, 6 April 2016

Estranged Notions: Why the Resurrection Was Not a Conspiracy

Today's post:

Why the Resurrection Was Not a Conspiracy

Broussard here starts off badly by attacking a strawman. The idea that the disciples stole Jesus' body and made up the resurrection story is not something that anyone necessarily needs to take seriously. It is more likely as an explanation of an empty tomb than an actual resurrection would be—people involved in founding religious sects often do engage in frauds, just see Joseph Smith for an example—but we don't have any particular reason to believe that there was an empty tomb at all, even assuming Jesus did exist as a historical person. If there were strong evidence for an empty tomb, then we would have to consider the question of how that happened.

But even so, Broussard's argument is remarkably weak.

Estranged Notions: Is It Reasonable to Believe in Miracles?

Today's post:

Is It Reasonable to Believe in Miracles?

Broussard makes a bit of a dog's breakfast out of what is actually a fairly straightforward subject. Hume had it right in what the modern Bayesian recognizes as being the precisely correct way: a hypothesis with low prior probability has to be supported by evidence which would be more improbable were the hypothesis false.

Broussard's examples all either ignore major relevant evidence or make Hume's argument a strawman (or both). Why do we believe that the Big Bang happened? We have evidence that not only would be vastly improbable had it not happened, but which was predicted in advance from theory, which eliminates a whole class of post-hoc justification biases. We don't say that scientific laws can't be revised, because the revised laws must not be inconsistent with the previously established evidence, while new evidence may be inconsistent with the old laws. Hume never said that merely being rare would make it impossible to believe in some event; indeed, he gives examples of the kind of evidence that would justify belief even in highly unlikely propositions.

So Broussard's claim that Hume is setting too high a bar is completely unjustified, and the modern Bayesian knows (as Hume did not) that this can be justified mathematically.

And then the whole thing degenerates into farce when Broussard claims that human activities such as lying or stealing bodies are somehow more improbable than an actual resurrection of a dead person. And the argumentum ad martyrdom is ridiculous: we have no good reason to believe that any church figure from the 1st century was martyred at all, and we especially do not have any reason to believe that of any actual disciple of Jesus.