Scott Alexander (author/host)

You're dismissing all the historical evidence for miracles as insufficient?

You won't consider the evidence for Jesus Christ persuasive due to a mere two eyewitnesses and five contemporary reports?

Footnote.

I'm presently inclined to believe Mark and John are eyewitnesses, but that we also have the synoptics as a unit drawing on the plausibly eyewitness author of Q, as well as Josephus and Paul's letters.

Back to the text.

You won't believe in anything without evidence more than sufficient to convince a court.

Okay, have 115 witnesses to miracles that nobody could avoid recording because they altered the course of European history.

Now, what were you saying about how you're not a Christian because you're a rationalist?

On the other hand, I still do have my atheist model.

Here, I suppose, is what it recounts.

Imagine that you sought all the people in the world by how good evidence they are for God.

If you restrict yourself to people alive today, you expect 1 in 8 billion people is going to be so extraordinarily good evidence that you would only expect 1 in 8 billion people to be that impressive by chance.

Now, sort everyone who has ever lived by how good evidence they are for God.

But that's still a lot of people.

And Joan's at the head of the list.

You aren't reading about Joan because she's a random person.

You're reading about her because she's fascinating, precisely because she's such an unusually good evidence for miracles.

She's not the product of random chance.

She's the product of a sort-the-entire-planet-by-how-miraculous-they-seem function.

Footnotes after random chance.