From another website:

Mathematics Proves Christ's Resurrection?

It is faith, not proof, that makes Christians believe in Jesus Christ's resurrection, the central tenet of the religion. Until now. Oxford University professor Richard Swinburne, a leading philosopher of religion, has seemingly done the impossible. Using logic and mathematics, he has created a formula that he says shows a 97 percent certainty that Jesus Christ was resurrected by God the Father, report The Age and Catholic News.

This stunning conclusion was made based on a series of complex calculations grounded in the following logic:

1. The probably of God's existence is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't.
2. The probability that God became incarnate, that is embodied in human form, is also one in two.
3. The evidence for God's existence is an argument for the resurrection.
4. The chance of Christ's resurrection not being reported by the gospels has a probability of one in 10.
5. Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.

"New Testament scholars say the only evidences are witnesses in the four gospels. That's only five percent of the evidence," Swinburne said in a lecture he gave at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. "We can't judge the question of the resurrection unless we ask first whether there's reason to suppose there is a God. Secondly, if we have reason to suppose he would become incarnate, and thirdly, if he did, whether he would live the sort of life Jesus did." He says that even Jesus' life is not enough proof. However, the resurrection is "God's signature," which shows "his approval of Jesus' teaching." The calculations that Swinburne says prove the resurrection are detailed in his book, "The Resurrection of God Incarnate."

One of the respondents was a mathematician and this was his answer:

First of all, the math is wrong. The probability decreases with the added number of conditions. The chances (for the few selected events or options) are together 1/1000 that Jesus was resurrected. But then you have to add, what are the chances Jesus was born, was a Jew, was son of God, was killed on a cross, died on passover... etc. For each one 1/2, and we could make up a couple of trillions of events that must have happened for it to be true, so in the end it's the chance of 1/infinity, which can be rounded of to 0 (zero).

What do you folks think?

Fails to take into acount deist stance that god exists but doesn't get involved, also fails to take into account God exists but not the chistian god.

if either is true then the story of the ressurection is false.



Wrong, you're assuming that if he became incarnete it was as Jesus, so that adds in another factor that he became incarnate but not as Jesus, totally altering the rest of the equation.

If true then ressurection is false.



Again false, this assumes that the christian god is the real god if any gods actualy exist, again another factor, a god or gods exist, but none are the christian god.

Again if true then ressurection is false



this fails to take into account that the people writing the gospels were in collaboration, or that they printed falsehoods.

If true then the ressurection is false.



This attempt fails, his numbers are way off.

What a ridiculous thing to say. I am sure that anyone with some basic mathematical knowledge can 'prove' anything in the world. I might prove today that there is a 87 percent probability that the world is in fact the result of an alien culture doing an experiment based on the size of the universe the likely hood there is other life in the universe and the unlikelyhood of life appearing from nowhere. on the other hand i could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the entire universe is just my dream and as such belongs to me. Math can prove anything if it used by people who are sufficiently closed minded

Calculation based on lack of knowledge. The probability that god exists can be far from one in two. We simply dont know what it is, so he assumes its 1 in 2.



Why? Same reason as abovee.



Why would it be? I can say that the evidence for god's existence is an argument for the lack of gods involvement.



I'm not quite sure where this one fits in, but I would like to see how he calculated that...



Calculations plz...

someone needs to go take a stat class.

I like the first responce.

You also got to take into account there are ZERO eye witnesses to the reserection and the only account we have was written over 100 years after it reportely happend.

~Thanato

40 years.

I dont think it was that soon.

~Thanato

the moderate view on the date of mark is around 70. of course Paul was aware of the resurrection and wrote about it in a few of his letters, so that would reduce my figure of 40 years to around 30.

does it really matter? that we waist our time trying to prove some man named jesus existed just over 2000 years ago, then was crusified for preaching against the leaders of the temple, and supposedly rose from the dead 3 days later. sounds too much like a fairy tale whose time has passed.

If Jesus did exist then he more than likely did rise from the dead. If you believe in the after life everyone rises from the dead. When we see them we usually call the ghosts.

When the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts!" Albert Einstein

nice one!!

Albert Einstein was the Messiah, and he is coming back, too. Discuss.

Yet none of the early Church Fatherswere aware of the gospels until 150 CE and not by name until 180 CE...That is really keeping things under wraps...something that people wanting to convert the entire world would want to do! We can easily see that Jesus and the resurrection was something that Paul made up, in his effort to make Judaism "Gentile-Friendly" and adopted and adapted by much later Christians:yes:

I have yet to read about or hear a xian explanation about where in tht Tanach it says the messiah comes three times.