Indagine Post Mortem/Capitolo 7: differenze tra le versioni
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Riga 145:
{{q|But to call first-century Judaism ‘ignorant and barbarous’ would be itself historically ignorant, and to suggest that this absolves us of taking the testimony of the eyewitnesses seriously is a classic example of trying to dismiss evidence without doing any actual argumentative work.}}
Di nuovo, Hume non nota l'evidenza dei primi cristiani che dubitavano della risurrezione (vedi Capitoli 2 e 3) come anche il pubblico dei primi cristiani che dubitavano della risurrezione ({{passo biblico2|1Corinzi|15:12}}; {{passo biblico2|Atti|17:32}}, cfr. Capitolo 1). Le prove indicano che, nonostante la loro ignoranza della scienza moderna, le persone del I secolo sapevano che i morti non risorgevano naturalmente e non avrebbero creduto facilmente a una cosa del genere. In tale circostanza, la domanda su cosa abbia indotto i primi cristiani a credere che Gesù fosse risorto e a scommettere tutto su di ciò ({{passo biblico2|1Corinzi|15:17}}) deve ancora trovare una risposta, ed è stato mostrato nei Capitoli precedenti che la risposta è che Gesù era veramente risorto.
[[:en:w:Lawrence Shapiro|Shapiro]] (2016, pp. 63-68) offre un altro argomento contro i miracoli basato sulla [[w:fallacia del tasso di base|fallacia del tasso di base]], che è essenzialmente il seguente: supponiamo che una persona sia risultata positiva per una malattia rara X, il test è affidabile al 99,9% (solo uno su mille che risultano positivi non hanno realmente la malattia), ma poiché la malattia è così rara (1 su 10 milioni), la possibilità che la persona abbia X è ancora molto bassa (1 su 10.001). Per accertare che la persona abbia davvero X, sarebbe necessario un test più affidabile. Ciò dimostra che un'affermazione straordinaria richiede prove straordinarie.
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Shapiro applies this to the case of Jesus’ resurrection: suppose a group
of people claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus, the testimony of the
group was 99.9% reliable, yet because resurrection (if it happens) would be
so rare, the chance of the group having seen the resurrected Jesus would still
be very low. Citing Shapiro, Shermer (2017, p. 78) writes, ‘of the approximately
100 billion people who have lived before us, all have died and none
have returned, so the claim that one (or more) of them rose from the dead is
about as extraordinary as one will ever find.’
In reply, the case of rare disease mentioned by Shapiro is disanalogous
to Jesus’ resurrection. In the former case the probability is calculated based
on the assumption that it is a random sample, i.e. the chance of randomly
finding a person who is tested positive and has the disease. However, in the
case of Jesus’ resurrection, the probability is not that of randomly finding
someone claiming to have seen a resurrected person and that the person
resurrected. One needs to consider the extraordinary religious context concerning
the claim that Jesus resurrected (see later).5
Moreover, with regards to testing for a rare disease X, saying that ‘the
chance of the person having X is still very low (1 in 10,001) even though the
test is positive’ is too superficial. One should ask the deeper question of why
the test would give a false positive in 0.1% of cases. What are the specific
alternative explanations for a positive result? One possible explanation is that
there could be other things (e.g. other proteins in the blood) which can also
cause a positive result. If such alternative explanations can be excluded, then
no matter how low the base rate of X is, as long as the test shows a positive
result, the person has X. Likewise, one can eliminate the alternative explanations
to Jesus’ resurrection, such that, no matter how low the base rate is, we
can conclude that it happened. The moral of the story is again the exclusion of
alternative hypotheses, and this has been accomplished in previous chapters.
Shapiro (2016, p. 130) objects that we have less historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection compared to the historical evidence we have for events such as the destruction of Pompeii, the sinking of the Titanic, or Lincoln’s
assassination. He claims:
Because miracles are far less probable than routine historical events (volcanic
eruptions, sinking ships, assassinations), the evidence necessary to
justify beliefs about them must be many times better than that which
would justify our beliefs in run-of-the-mill historical events. But it isn’t.
The evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is simply not as good as that which
historians normally require of events that happen with greater frequency.
In reply, Shapiro’s argument confuses the evidence we have with the evidence that is required. We have more evidence for (say) Lincoln’s assassination, and even more evidence for (say) the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981 which was watched live by millions. Assassinations are less frequent than weddings. Yet we do not reject Lincoln’s assassination simply because the evidence for it is not as good as the evidence we have for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, because the evidence we have in the case of Lincoln’s assassination is already sufficient to rule out alternative hypotheses and to establish that it happened. Likewise, even though the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is less than the evidence we have for Lincoln’s assassination, as argued in previous chapters the evidence we have in the case of Jesus’ resurrection is already sufficient to rule out alternative hypotheses and to establish that it happened.
5 In personal correspondence, Dr Timothy McGrew explains, ‘The base rate fallacy is the
fallacy of ignoring the base rate—ignoring, that is, what you know about the statistical
distribution of the feature of interest in your reference class. If you know that you’re dealing
with a disease that is very rare among Asian women, and your patient is an Asian woman,
and you have no other information relevant to her having that disease, then the base rate is
low and it will take a great deal of evidence for you to come to a rational belief that she has
the disease. But if you know that she has three female relatives who all have the disease, your
reference class will be different. If there were a population that formed a clear appropriate
reference class, and our only means of evaluating the probability were by direct inference
from the frequency of resurrections within that class, then the base rate would be relevant to
P(R|B). But what would that reference class be? Living organisms? Human beings? Human
males? Human males whose lives uniquely fulfil millennia of messianic prophecy? The latter
seems to be a great fit. Unfortunately, the number of members in that reference class is . . .
one. And that’s the one about whom we’re trying to reason. So the reference class approach
isn’t very good.’ The consideration concerning reference class illustrates that religious context
should not be ignored.
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== Potrebbe essere un'anomalia scientifica? ==
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