Update, 4/7: The event was be broadcast live on The Cypress Chronicle Media Network. Check above for the stream. -Ed.
Did Jesus rise from the dead? Robert Greg Cavin, Professor of Philosophy at Cypress College, and Calum Miller, an Oxford University Professor, will be debating the question on April 7, 2 p.m. in Lecture Hall HUM-131.
Cavin and Miller will debate on the authenticity of documents attesting to Jesus’s resurrection and on the probability of the event to have actually occurred. Both professors will exercise Bayesian probability in their arguments. As such, the crux of the debate will be on the probability of Jesus rising from the dead (in the light of textual evidence, historical documents, and modern knowledge).
Last April, Cavin, with Carlos A. Colombetti, Professor of Philosophy at Skyline College, published “Comments on Stephen Law’s ‘Evidence, Miracles, Existence of Jesus’”, in the journal Faith and Philosophy. The paper sought to prove the existence of a historical Jesus using Bayesian Theory. More precisely, Cavin and Colombetti worked to detangle what Stephen Law called the “Contamination Principle”: how the scientific impossibility and/or historical inaccuracy of certain events in the Bible bring into question Jesus’s existence.
The debate will be composed of a brief discussion on Bayesian Theory, presentation, rebuttal, and a Q and A with the audience. “People need to think critically about religion and the bible,” Cavin said.
