Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Skeptics tend to be far too quick to make two assumptions: 1) That it is easy to find a naturalistic alternative to any claimed miracle that does just as good a job as the miracle itself at explaining the evidence for it and 2) That the conjunction of "no miracle" with the evidence in question will always have a higher probability than the miracle itself.
For a well-attested miracle like Jesus' resurrection, maintaining these two assumptions, (whether or not one uses probabilistic terminology) depends on two types of laziness: Not bothering to consider in detail how hard it would be to explain the evidence if the miracle didn't happen, and letting anti-supernaturalism do the heavy lifting.
This is the book in which the essay by Arif Ahmed appears that I am discussing in these videos:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119103899
Skeptics tend to be far too quick to make two assumptions: 1) That it is easy to find a naturalistic alternative to any claimed miracle that does just as good a job as the miracle itself at explaining the evidence for it and 2) That the conjunction of "no miracle" with the evidence in question will always have a higher probability than the miracle itself.
For a well-attested miracle like Jesus' resurrection, maintaining these two assumptions, (whether or not one uses probabilistic terminology) depends on two types of laziness: Not bothering to consider in detail how hard it would be to explain the evidence if the miracle didn't happen, and letting anti-supernaturalism do the heavy lifting.
This is the book in which the essay by Arif Ahmed appears that I am discussing in these videos:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119103899
