THE SUB-ARGUMENT FOR PREMISE (3b)
Here is Craig's sub-argument for premise (3b):
1b. IF Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be historically established with a reasonable degree of confidence AND alternative naturalistic explanations for Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be shown to be implausible, THEN IF IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e. God raised Jesus from the dead) has been shown to be more implausible than the alternative naturalistic explanations for Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate, THEN the best explanation for Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate is the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e., God raised Jesus from the dead).
2a. Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be historically established with a reasonable degree of confidence AND alternative naturalistic explanations for Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be shown to be implausible.
A. A historical claim C is an established historical fact IF AND ONLY IF historical claim C can be historically established with a reasonable degree of confidence.
THEREFORE:
3b. IF IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT the resurrection hypothesis (i.e. God raised Jesus from the dead) has been shown to be more implausible than the alternative naturalistic explanations for Craig's three key established historical facts concerning Jesus' final fate, THEN the best explanation for Craig's three key established historical facts concerning Jesus' final fate is the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e., God raised Jesus from the dead).
In Part 10 of this series, I argued that all three premises of this sub-argument for (3b) are unclear, and their unclarity is significant enough that it precludes rational evaluation of the truth or falsity of these premises. For this reason, Craig's sub-argument fails to provide us with a good reason to believe that (3b) is true.
However, if we can manage to clarify the meaning of the premises in this sub-argument, then we might well be able to rationally evaluate the truth or falsehood of these premises. So, clarifying the premises would give Craig's sub-argument for (3b) a chance of being a successful argument.
PROPOSED CLARIFICATIONS OF THE PREMISES
There are at least two unclear phrases in the premises of Craig's sub-argument for (3b):
"historically established with a reasonable degree of confidence"
"shown to be implausible"
In Part 11 of this series, I proposed an interpretation that would clarify the phrase "historically established with a reasonable degree of confidence". I argued that a "reasonable degree of confidence" means that the historical claim in question is "highly likely" or "very probable" (which I take to mean that the historical evidence shows the claim to have at least an 80% chance of being true).
In Part 11 of this series, I pointed out that the phrase "shown to be implausible" was ambiguous between two possible interpretations:
"shown to be categorically implausible" (without reference to the plausibility or implausibility of the alternative hypotheses)
"shown to be comparatively more implausible" (than the alternative hypotheses)
Although it is unclear which of these two interpretations is correct, I will try out the comparative-implausibility interpretation first, because the meaning of the premises is clear on that interpretation. The categorical-implausibility interpretation leaves the meaning of the premises vague. Further work will be required (at a later time) to narrow down what is intended by a claim of categorical implausibility.
A REVISED AND CLARIFIED VERSION OF THE SUB-ARGUMENT FOR (3b)
Here is a revised and clarified version of Craig's sub-argument for premise (3b):
1c. IF Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be historically established as highly likely to be true AND alternative naturalistic explanations can be shown to be comparatively more implausible explanations of Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate than the Resurrection Hypothesis, THEN IF IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e. God raised Jesus from the dead) has been shown to be more implausible than the alternative naturalistic explanations for Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate, THEN the best explanation for Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate is the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e., God raised Jesus from the dead).
2b. Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be historically established as highly likely to be true AND alternative naturalistic explanations can be shown to be comparatively more implausible explanations of Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate than the Resurrection Hypothesis.
A1. A historical claim C is an established historical fact IF AND ONLY IF historical claim C can be historically established as highly likely to be true.
THEREFORE:
3b. IF IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT the resurrection hypothesis (i.e. God raised Jesus from the dead) has been shown to be more implausible than the alternative naturalistic explanations for Craig's three key established historical facts concerning Jesus' final fate, THEN the best explanation for Craig's three key established historical facts concerning Jesus' final fate is the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e., God raised Jesus from the dead).
Given this revision and clarification of Craig's sub-argument for (3b), the first premise of this sub-argument now seems to involve redundant requirements making that premise longer and more cumbersome than is necessary. This is a reason for doubting the correctness of the comparative-implausibility interpretation of the unclear phrase "shown to be implausible".
Nevertheless, the categorical-implausibility interpretation of the unclear phrase "shown to be implausible" has its own problems, so this problem of redundancy in the first premise is not a decisive reason for rejecting the above comparative-plausibility interpretation.
The redundance in premise (1c) is between the requirement that "alternative naturalistic explanations for Craig's three key historical claims...can be shown to be comparatively more implausible than the Resurrection Hypothesis" and the requirement in the conditional statement in the second half (the consequent) of that premise: "IF IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT the Resurrection Hypothesis...has been shown to be more implausible than the alternative naturalistic explanations ...".
It is obvious that if each of the naturalistic hypotheses is more implausible than the Resurrection Hypothesis, then the Resurrection Hypothesis is NOT going to be more implausible than the naturalistic hypotheses! Thus, the requirement that the Resurrection Hypothesis NOT be more implausible than the naturalistic hypotheses is redundant and makes the statement of this first premise unnecessarily complicated and cumbersome.
EVALUATION OF THE CLARIFIED SUB-ARGUMENT FOR (3b)
In fact, on this interpretation of the sub-argument for (3b), the conclusion need not be a conditional statement at all. The implied conclusion appears to be this:
The best explanation for Craig's three key established historical facts concerning Jesus' final fate is the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e., God raised Jesus from the dead).
In any case, premise (1c) appears to be true, assuming that the five naturalistic hypotheses discussed by Craig are either ALL of the available alternative hypotheses, or that they constitute the best (the most plausible) of the available alternative hypotheses. If each of the available alternative hypotheses is more implausible than the Resurrection Hypothesis, then the Resurrection Hypothesis is the most plausible explanation, and is thus the best explanation.
However, if there is just one available hypothesis that Craig has failed to examine, then that unexamined hypothesis might be as plausible as or more plausible than the Resurrection Hypothesis. In that case, the Resurrection Hypothesis would NOT be the best explanation of Craig's three key historical facts.
On this comparative-implausibility interpretation, the weight of the sub-argument is borne primarily by the second premise:
2b. Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be historically established as highly likely to be true AND alternative naturalistic explanations can be shown to be comparatively more implausible explanations of Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate than the Resurrection Hypothesis.
The second conjunct in premise (2b) basically asserts that the Resurrection Hypothesis provides the most plausible explanation of Craig's three historical claims. Given this understanding, Craig's sub-argument for (3b) is unnecessary.
A CLEAR AND SIMPLE ARGUMENT FOR KEY PREMISE (5c)
Craig could have used this strong claim made in (2b) to make a simpler and clearer argument to directly support the key premise (5c) of his core argument:
2c. Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate can be historically established as highly likely to be true, AND the Resurrection Hypothesis can be shown to be a more plausible explanation of Craig's three key historical claims concerning Jesus' final fate than any available naturalistic hypothesis.
A1. A historical claim C is an established historical fact IF AND ONLY IF historical claim C can be historically established as highly likely to be true.
THEREFORE:
B. The Resurrection Hypothesis can be shown to be a more plausible explanation of Craig's three key established historical facts concerning Jesus' final fate than any available naturalistic hypothesis.
THEREFORE:
5c. The best explanation for Craig's three key established historical facts concerning Jesus' final fate is the Resurrection Hypothesis (i.e., God raised Jesus from the dead).
So, if we go with the comparative-implausibility interpretation of the unclear phrase "shown to be implausible", then we should ignore Craig's overly complicated sub-argument for premise (3b) and reformulate it as the above simple and clear sub-argument for the key premise (5c).
Note that in the paragraph immediately following the long paragraph where Craig presents his core argument, Craig gives a summary of his argument in just one sentence:
If these three facts can be established, and no plausible natural explanation can account for them as well as the resurrection hypothesis, then one is justified in inferring Jesus' resurrection as the most plausible explanation of the data. (Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed., p.361)
This one-sentence summary looks very similar to the above sub-argument for premise (5c). This is evidence that my re-statement of Craig's sub-argument for (5c) represents the reasoning that Craig had in mind (but that he stated in a somewhat unclear and overly complicated manner).
I will attempt to critically evaluate this re-stated sub-argument for (5c) in the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment