The assassination of Caesar vs. the resurrection of Jesus

[Juice]

We all accept there being degrees of evidence. For example, video evidence is considered the strongest. Next comes eyewitness testimony. Then second-hand testimony (hearsay) comes third. (Because hearsay is so weak, courts normally won't accept it, although they do sometimes - there are many exceptions to the rule against hearsay.)

Let’s consider the assassination in light of this. Obviously we have no video evidence. There is also not one single eyewitness narrative. We don’t even know if the “second hand” data we have is actually second, third, fourth, fifth…

If we don’t accept hearsay in the court of ancient history we have very little evidence to work with. In fact I would say we’ll have almost no evidence to work with for Caesar’s assassination in that case. As far as I'm aware there are no coins that date close to the event that depict the assassination. How do you plan to raise the probability to something reasonable from such a low intrinsic probability if we don't allow hearsay, Zack?

Corroborated evidence (multiple witnesses saying same thing) is stronger than uncorroborated evidence (only a single witness).

But the accounts of the assassination of Caesar don’t say the same thing, Zack. They contradict each other on some significant details.

But to the degree the witnesses are truly independent; if they have or might have conspired to give the same evidence, then the evidence is less strong.

But how do we demonstrate the evidence for the assassination is truly independent? What is your criteria for establishing independence?

So if two witnesses give the same evidence, their evidence is stronger if they don't know each other (and hence would not have the means or reason to conspire), less strong if they are known to each other (and thus could have the means to conspire perjury, and would be more likely to have a reason to also.)

But if two witnesses give the same evidence how do we know they didn’t know each other or weren’t somehow familiar with one another’s story? Especially if we consider one person writes decades after the other?

Reliability of evidence is also determined by the attributes of the witness. If the witness is a convicted perjurer, their evidence is less reliable than that of a person whose honesty and truthfulness we have no good reason to doubt. Also factors like age, intelligence, soundness of mind come into play - the evidence of a small child is less reliable than that of an grown adult; the evidence of a hallucinating schizophrenic is less reliable than that of a person of sound mind. (That's not to say we can never rely on the evidence of children, or of schizophrenics - but we need to be aware of the ways in which their evidence might be less reliable, and take that into account.)

In the case of the assassination we have just a couple cryptic allusions to Caesar being assassinated in some letters from Cicero who was biased in his own right. The first full narrative was written by Nicolaus of Damascus who wrote about 60 years after and he was not an eyewitness. Nicoluas shows evidence of embellishment and heavy bias. Now what? How do you plan to climb this monstrous hill to get the assassination to an 80% probability, Zack?

[Juice]

Using these numbers, you still have the probability of assassination three ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more likely than resurrection. Please. You have a hill and a mountain. You're only case here is to pretend that 'maybe assassinations didn't actually happen' in which case anyone can (more easily) claim that neither did the resurrection. Because, according to your own stated concepts, stating that the resurrection occurred (in order to derive a probability) is also begging the question.

Hi Carrikature. I’ve not claimed there is no hill for the resurrection. I’m arguing the hills are probably about the same length in terms of rationally justifying belief. If the assassination is a mountain so then is the resurrection and vice versa. As far as the intrinsic probabilities go, a lot of it will depend upon how one selects data. My point here is that we can cherry pick and incorrectly categorize data in an attempt to inflate certain numbers and deflate others to make our arguments seem superficially stronger.

To your point on orders of magnitude, I disagree. Well, I disagree depending upon what we allow into some categories and for what reasons. I’ve expanded the number of assassinated people by one order of magnitude from 1,000 to 10,000 to make up for any missing assassinations (because, well, the list is taken from wiki – not always the most reliable source and because Zack was generous by allowing an estimate of 5,000 for Matthew 27:52). I think I’m being generous there as well for if I were to only allow assassinations of heads of state there would be very few, only 70 on that list in fact. I suppose we could expand that number to also include heads of government with 65 and presidents. However, these additional numbers are not really that impactful. We would need an increase in the number of assassinations of leaders of countries to increase by several orders of magnitude for it to make any meaningful difference because of such a large number we are dealing with in terms of total human deaths in history. The reality is, despite what others in this thread have claimed, assassinations of prominent political figures really are rare, even extraordinary.

Sorry, Teal, but I'm extremely disappointed that you would support (let alone Amen) Juice's post. I fully concur that 'extraordinary' tends to be extremely relative. That said, any occurrence which took place ONCE in the history of the world (regardless of the ages/death you choose to arbitrarily assign), is still less likely than an occurrence which took place multiple times.

I agree. That said if we look at the details of Caesar’s assassination it becomes increasingly unlikely to have happened and we could argue the same for Jesus’ resurrection. If we look at each event as simply an assassination and as a return from being dead without considering the details that make each claim unique in its own right, then each claim though extraordinary in its own right, is at least not unprecedented in the sense that there have been other assassination claims and claims of having returned to life after being dead. And we probably end up with about as many resurrection claims throughout history as claims that heads of state were assassinated. Certainly not as significant of a difference to cause a result of three orders of magnitude difference as you have claimed above.

[Jaecp]

1. I don’t think you or anyone else actually practices “ECREE” in real life. Let’s say it’s reported Bob rolled five consecutive sixes playing Monopoly and Steve who bought only one 6/49 lottery ticket won. Let’s consider these two claims in light of what you wrote earlier regarding the comparison between the murderer Joe and Jesus returning from the dead. The intrinsic probability that Bob rolled five consecutive sixes is 1 in 7776. To get to an 80% probability that he did roll these sixes we need good enough evidence to raise the probability 6,220-fold. Steve winning the lottery on the hand has an intrinsic probability of 1 in 14,000,000. To get Steve that same 80% probability as Bob we need good enough evidence to raise Steve’s probability by a factor of 11.2Million. In a manner of speaking then the claim that Steve won the lottery requires at least 1,800 times stronger evidence than the claim that Bob rolled five consecutive sixes while playing Monopoly to reach the same level of probability. But you don’t really do that in real life situations when you are determining whether you’ll accept one claim and reject the other, do you? I suspect you don’t. And if you do what does that mean in practical terms anyway?

For any individual, sure,

But with stuff like monopoly or the lottery, we have millions of players every day. Improbably things happen when your sample sizes get into the thousands or millions or more.

Monopoly is actually a great example, since Hasbro has a compiled trivia list
http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/en_US...er/history.cfm

Notably,” Over 200 million MONOPOLY games have been sold worldwide. More than five billion little green houses have been "built" since 1935.” And “And over its 65-year history, an estimated 500 million people have played the game of MONOPOLY!”
So, you know, while the intrinsic probably of bob rolling this is low, the odds are that hundreds of thousands of people have rolled five consecutive sixes just in monopoly let alone other d6 based games.

On the other hand is it correct to class Jesus’ resurrection in with the general populace? Would it be correct to class Roy Sullivan with the general populace? No, Roy would need to be in a special class because the probabilities that apply to general populace fro lightning strikes to do not apply to Roy for the reasons I gave earlier. So the question then becomes do we have any good reason(s) to class Jesus as different from the general populace? Yes, I think we do. Jesus claimed to have a position as the Son of God that if it were true would give him some special ability to raise people from the dead. Further supporting this is that it was reported Jesus resurrected other people which implies he may have held that position and/or may have had some special ability for returning people from the dead. Therefore Jesus should be classed not with the general populace but rather in a different class with those that have made similar claims and performed similar acts.

This seems tautological. Whats the usefulness of reaffirming Christian belief regarding jesus to the overall discussion?

Secondly, you calculate the odds of dying by murder in any one year is 50 in 100,000 but offer no sound reason for the high number 50. You just arbitrarily pull that number out of the air because, well, it makes sense to you. But it doesn’t to me. This goes to highlight how easily one can work the numbers in one’s favor. The world rate of intentional homicides in 2010 was 6.9 in 100,000 yielding a 1 in 14,492 or a 0.007% chance of being murdered across the globe. Personally I find those quite low odds. In light of this I’m inclined to see them as low enough for a murder to be considered extraordinary. To put this in perspective there is a higher probability that an American will be struck by lightning in their life time. I don’t know any rational person that would say it is not extraordinary to be struck by lightning in one’s life time. Why wouldn’t it be considered extraordinary to be have been murdered in 2010 then?

As far as I know, we have some of the lowest murder rates in human history. Steven Pinker wrote a book (article summary) called the better angels of our nature, about how violence has been dropping for awhile. We are, put simply, more civilized than we used to be.

On the long haul, over human history, murder rates really were probably more like Honduras and less like the global average, which includes places that are, by many counts, better places to live than the afterlives described in some holy books.

If you are going to dispute every modern resurrection claim I present I’ll dispute every modern assassination claim you present. For instance the cause of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s plane crash remains a mystery. It could have just been an accident. If Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber that also killed 14 others was that an assassination or was he nothing more than the collateral damage of a terror attack?
And you miss the point anyway. Roy claimed there were zero resurrections in the UK. He was wrong, that was my point. There have been at least two people return from being dead in the UK. Now, one may argue in a circle as you’ve done above and claim they couldn’t really have been dead because, well, dead people don’t return to life from being dead therefore there must have been a mistake or another explanation. But let’s not forget they were pronounced dead by medical professionals qualified to pronounce death so how they “seem” to you or I is irrelevant. And of course there are theories to explain these occurrences but the point is no one really knows why some people have spontaneously returned to life after being dead.

If your going to declare openly that your being contrary as some sort of argumentative ploy, people aren't going to trust you, you know.

Either way, you seem to be conflating claimed resurrections with actual Resurrection. Doctors that thought a person in question was dead, when in fact they weren't, is a far cry from the resurrection. People get misdiagnosed by doctors all the time, low odds, large numbers. It stands to reason that some of those misdiagnosis's are about whether the person is dead yet.
Were the specifics of those cases mentioned earlier in the thread?

It’s very important to know what the most common way for a Roman Emperor to die was. I’m surprised you would hand wave this. For if the most common way for a Roman Emperor to die was by natural causes (which it was) then shouldn’t we begin with the assumption Caesar probably didn’t really die by assassination but rather probably died by natural causes because the intrinsic probability of dying by natural causes is greater than assassination even among Roman Emperors, a group with a propensity for assassination claims? Or are you saying in the case of Caesar we just ignore this? If we can ignore this fact with Caesar why wouldn’t we ignore the fact the most common thing is for someone to stay dead after dying?

What’s the ratio for an emperor to die from assassination vs natural causes verses a regular person from premeditated murder vs natural causes?

I imagine that there is a huge difference there. What was it, 36 natural causes vs 28 murdered/assassinated? That’s a pretty crap ratio seeing as how our global murder rate is, what, 6.9 per 100,000, and since all other ways of them dying totals 31, that would put their murder rate, extrapolated out to 100,000 people, at 30,434 out of 100,000, or 4,410 times greater frequency than modern murder rates.

Yikes! Looks like murder/assassination was a pretty damn common way for roman Emperors to go! That’s practically one in three and, well, those numbers are a bit deflated compared to Roy’s, and Roy seems to have a good reason for picking his,
See, the 50th Roman Emperor, Diocletian, (list) started a practice of having multiple co-emperors. So, at this period we had many more emperors in shorter time periods and less glory/power/whatever to be sought after. The assassination rate drops dramatically starting with Diocletian. Out of the first few batches though? Damn, but wasn’t there a bunch of political backstabbing going on. In fact, we could make a case that under the single emperor model assassination was the most frequent form of death and this didn’t end until there was power sharing.

Or, basically, your number includes the “Co-Emperors” that had significantly less prestige than full Emperors did, which means you included data that wasn’t homogenous with your initial example.

I agree. That said if we look at the details of Caesar’s assassination it becomes increasingly unlikely to have happened and we could argue the same for Jesus’ resurrection. If we look at each event as simply an assassination and as a return from being dead without considering the details that make each claim unique in its own right, then each claim though extraordinary in its own right, is at least not unprecedented in the sense that there have been other assassination claims and claims of having returned to life after being dead. And we probably end up with about as many resurrection claims throughout history as claims that heads of state were assassinated. Certainly not as significant of a difference to cause a result of three orders of magnitude difference as you have claimed above.

Well, issue here is that we know Assassinations happen. Any specific Assassination could be argued about, but we know that they happen. Hell, it even happened to a US President, on Camera (and, yeah, if you don’t want to watch a clip from the kennedy assassination don’t click the link.)

We don’t have that for resurrections.

[magellan004]

Well, issue here is that we know Assassinations happen. Any specific Assassination could be argued about, but we know that they happen. Hell, it even happened to a US President, on Camera (and, yeah, if you don’t want to watch a clip from the kennedy assassination don’t click the link.)

We don’t have that for resurrections.

I am not sure if you are saying 'We know assassinations happen because there is a video of one.' That would not make much sense.
Millions of people know about resurrections because there is a written record of them.

Magellan

[Jaecp]

A billion people also know that Mohammad fled to Medina on a flying horse because of a written record.

My point was that assassinations, in general, are a known thing. They happen, and their attempts happen, with some degree of regularity. The fact that we have one caught on tape is good evidence that they happen and its something that we can conceptually think of, in real world terms, how it happens. If anyone here had the means to carry out an assassination, they could. The same cannot be said for a resurrection, we do not know the means.

My point was that resurrections, in general, are an unknown thing. They are not known to happen with any degree of regularity. Claims of them are all highly contentious and believed solely by adherents of specific religious groups. I doubt you believe that the dali lama is actually the reincarnation of his predecessor. Non-Christians tend not to believe that Jesus was resurrected.

[magellan004]

A billion people also know that Mohammad fled to Medina on a flying horse because of a written record.

My point was that assassinations, in general, are a known thing. They happen, and their attempts happen, with some degree of regularity. The fact that we have one caught on tape is good evidence that they happen and its something that we can conceptually think of, in real world terms, how it happens. If anyone here had the means to carry out an assassination, they could. The same cannot be said for a resurrection, we do not know the means.

My point was that resurrections, in general, are an unknown thing. They are not known to happen with any degree of regularity. Claims of them are all highly contentious and believed solely by adherents of specific religious groups. I doubt you believe that the dali lama is actually the reincarnation of his predecessor. Non-Christians tend not to believe that Jesus was resurrected.

Earlier you has said 'Well, issue here is that we know Assassinations happen. Any specific Assassination could be argued about, but we know that they happen.'
But I don't think that is the issue. In the opening post Zack specifically referred to Julius Caesar's death.

I suppose you might have a point if you say 'X happens regularly so any report of a past X leads us to know that that X did occur in Year 1999. IF Y does not occur regularly then we cannot know if Y happened once.' But that seems tenuous. It leaves doubt over all once off events.

In a more general sense I disagree with your use of the term 'We know'. There is no way of differentiating between what an individual 'knows' and 'believes' - unless you ask them.

Magellan

[ZackMartin]

1. I don’t think you or anyone else actually practices “ECREE” in real life. Let’s say it’s reported Bob rolled five consecutive sixes playing Monopoly and Steve who bought only one 6/49 lottery ticket won. Let’s consider these two claims in light of what you wrote earlier regarding the comparison between the murderer Joe and Jesus returning from the dead. The intrinsic probability that Bob rolled five consecutive sixes is 1 in 7776. To get to an 80% probability that he did roll these sixes we need good enough evidence to raise the probability 6,220-fold. Steve winning the lottery on the hand has an intrinsic probability of 1 in 14,000,000. To get Steve that same 80% probability as Bob we need good enough evidence to raise Steve’s probability by a factor of 11.2Million. In a manner of speaking then the claim that Steve won the lottery requires at least 1,800 times stronger evidence than the claim that Bob rolled five consecutive sixes while playing Monopoly to reach the same level of probability. But you don’t really do that in real life situations when you are determining whether you’ll accept one claim and reject the other, do you? I suspect you don’t. And if you do what does that mean in practical terms anyway?

A few responses:

1) If someone is good at calculating probabilities on the spot, they'd realise one was a lot less likely than the other. However, if they are not, they might think they are both unlikely, yet roughly equally unlikely. And I don't think it is right to expect everyone to calculate probabilities as exactly as they can all the time. When the stakes are high, one should bring every tool one has to answer the question. When the stakes are low, and it doesn't matter that much whether you are right or not, should I spend my time sitting down trying to work out the probabilities exactly? If I believe their claim, and it is wrong, it has close to zero negative impact on anyone. Suppose I am a judge or juror in a criminal trial, and the defendant is facing a long prison sentence (or worse) if convicted, then I am obliged to be much more careful and precise in determining the relevant claims, than I am if a friend tells me a story about rolling five sixes in monopoly.

A good principle is: If what I believe in a case will make a big difference to my own life or that of others, I ought to expend significant mental effort on determining how likely it is, and use all the tools of reasoning at my disposal. If what I believe in a case will make little difference to me or anyone else, I can perform a quick cursory evaluation and accept or dismiss it on that basis. If the costs of being wrong are low, it's not worth it spending a great deal of effort on being right, instead one accepts that a cursory evaluation is more likely to be wrong, but the greater probability of correctness in a more thorough evaluation is not worth the more thorough evaluations' cost.

As I said before, I'm an agnostic with respect to the Resurrection, and would not be overly bothered either way to learn that it definitely did or definitely didn't happen. (I'd say the more literal accounts are unlikely, but not impossible; OTOH, I think it is highly likely that something happened, at least from the subjective viewpoint of the disciples.) However, I am interested in processes of human reasoning, which is my primary reason for arguing about this: even if the outcome doesn't matter that much to me, I feel the need to correct some of the (in my humble opinion) wrong ideas presented.

2) The claim the evidence needs to be 5,000 times stronger is entirely compatible with both pieces of evidence being equally strong. Because the need is a minimum. If A needs 5000 times stronger evidence than B for P(A)>80%, then if we have evidence strong enough for A for P(A)>80%, then we will also have evidence strong enough for P(B)>80%. If we consider each witness' testimony to be sufficiently reliable, then each witnesses' evidence will be strong enough to reach the relevant conclusion with 80% probability, even though one witnesses evidence is much more reliable than it needs to be. There is such a situation sometimes as a surplus of evidence, when one has far more evidence and far stronger evidence available than one actually needs to reach the conclusion at hand.

2. As far as I’m aware you don’t have a meaningful way to objectively assign numerical values to the evidence so we can begin to increase from the intrinsic probability to some arbitrarily selected percentage necessary to justify belief.

I agree that assigning probabilities is hard. But is it a bad goal to try to make our reasoning as rigorous as practicable? I don't think we will succeed completely; but we should try, and with time we will hopefully get better at it.

3. I can’t find any online dictionary that defines extraordinary as – that which has low intrinsic probability. Every dictionary I’ve looked at defines it as something like beyond that which usual, regular, or customary. Here’s a sampling.

The point being that, something "beyond that which usual, regular or customary", will have a low intrinsic probability, since rarer events have lower intrinsic probabilities than more common ones. It's not explicit in the definitions, but it is implicit in them. An extraordinary event is rare (if it wasn't, it would be ordinary instead); a rare event has a lower intrinsic probability.

4. You’ve entirely avoided my argument about why I think assassinations are extraordinary in previous posts.

I don't believe I have; but anyway...

5. No doubt you’d consider the claim that someone was struck by lightning in the U.S.A. in the year 2000 to be extraordinary because it carries with it a low intrinsic probability of 1 in 775,000. No rational person would claim being struck by lightning is not extraordinary. In fact, most people would probably recognize being struck by lightning is very extraordinary. But surely then you’d consider the claim that a murder had taken place in Qatar to be extraordinary as well because it has an intrinsic probability of about 1/600,000, not much different than the odds of being struck by lightning that same year in the U.S.A. So we see that even a regular murder claim can be considered very extraordinary. It seems to me the determination of what is and is not extraordinary will likely be quite subjective thus allowing one to arbitrarily apply “ECREE” as one needs it to escape belief.

Of course a murder could be extraordinary. We need to honestly ask ourselves to estimate the probability of the murder of a politician in ancient Rome? I'd suggest to start with that the murder rate in ancient Rome was a lot higher than in modern day Qatar, so a murder in ancient Rome is a lot more likely than one in modern day Qatar, so ancient Roman murders were less extraordinary than modern day Qatari ones.

Now, two thousand years from now the side arguing that the hill to climb to rationally justify belief in JFK’s assassination is much shorter than the hill to climb to justify belief in Roy’s claim may argue along these lines of intrinsic probabilities. They might argue that the evidence for Roy’s claim must be good enough to raise the probability he was struck seven times by a factor of 476 to reach the same threshold of conviction for JFK’s assassination. Would someone be able to do this 2,000 years from now considering evidence can be lost to history and we currently have no video footage of Roy’s lightning strikes but we do have footage of JFK’s assassination? Would it be rational to withhold belief in Roy’s claim but hold to a belief in the claim that JFK was assassinated? Perhaps based upon probabilistic arguments. But it would be an incorrect non-belief. In short, probabilities tell us nothing about what actually happened in history. Hence, arguments from probability are a smoke screen.

If the hill Roy has to climb is 476 times higher than the hill JFK has to climb, that doesn't mean we don't have evidence for Roy to climb it. We could well have strong enough evidence. And we have to remember that with the assassination of JFK, we possibly have a massive surplus of evidence - we possibly have far more evidence that JFK was assassinated than we need; we could potentially climb JFK's hill several times over with the evidence

It does not go unnoticed that you are now broadening the definition of assassination to include all murders from the general populace to bolster your argument. An assassination is not a special type of murder it is the murder of a special type of person – a prominent political figure (certainly in the case of Julius Caesar it is anyway)

One reason I broadened it, is it is easier to estimate rates for murder than for murder of politicians. Secondly, I'd say there is more to assassination than just the victim being a politician - it has to be committed for a political motive. Say John Smith is a member of Congress who gets shot dead? Does that automatically make it an assassination? Not necessarily. Let's say Jack Doe did it. Jack Doe doesn't know John Smith personally, but he hates the political party that John Smith belongs to, and has posted endless rants on the Internet about how John Smith's party is "evil", etc. Sounds like an assassination. But suppose instead John Smith's wife Jane did it. Say she learnt her husband was having an affair, and was very angry at him, so decided to murder him. Is that an assassination? It's a murder of a politician; but it is not a murder for a political reason. So I think assassination has two elements (1) the nature of the victim as a political or other leader (2) a political motive. Without both of these elements, it's not an assassination. Without (2), it is a murder of a political figure, but not an assassination of them. Without (1), it could be a politically motivated terrorist attack, for example, but not an assassination. (Generally, if someone killed a US President, we'd assume at first it was for a political motive, and hence would be an assassination. Suppose however the President's spouse turned out to be the perpetrator. No longer so likely to be an assassination; probably a case of sadly all too common domestic murder, just coincidentally befalling someone in a very high place.)

A further distinguishing factor is that an assassination must be premeditated to qualify as an assassination. Whereas murder does not necessarily always need to be premeditated to be murder. By focusing on the claim "Julius Caesar was murdered" you ignore these important factors that separate a “murder” from an “assassination.” You’ve fallaciously categorized the assassination of Julius Caesar and JFK in the same category as Bob the drunk who beat Steve the drug dealer to a pulp with a tire iron. Surely you see the categorical fallacy you are committing here.

A lot of the time "murder" does require premeditation to count as murder rather than manslaughter. If a barfight starts out unexpectedly to all parties involved, and someone ends up dead, then that probably is just manslaughter, not murder. But the precise difference between "murder" and "mansluaghter" varies from person to person.

By way of example consider Bob and his neighbour Steve. Bob wants to assassinate Barack Obama because of some recent political decision made by the President. Which person will it inherently be much more difficult for Bob to murder, Steve or President Obama? It will be much more difficult to murder the President. Why? Because the President by nature of his position has a higher awareness of potential assassination attempts and also has the means at his disposal to take significant measures to lessen the probability of a successful assassination attempt. These measures might include, but are not limited to, armed body guards, increased security measures, and so on. On the other side of that in order to accomplish a successful assassination it also typically requires some expertise in weapons, inside information on the whereabouts of the target, significant planning, resources, and so on that it would likely not require for Bob to murder his neighbour Steve. This is why it is particularly extraordinary for a political figure, such as Caesar or any other a head of state, to die by assassination. This is one reason we don’t consider an assassination to be just another “regular murder.”

There are a couple of differences to be aware of here though:

1) US Presidential security is amazingly strong. The US President likely has the best security of any person on earth. But it wasn't always like that. Prior to the JFK assassination, US Presidents were less securely protected than they are today. If they had the security then they have now, quite likely JFK would never have been assassinated. The question then is, how strong was Caesar's security? Difficult to answer. But given the lack of modern technology (surveillance, communications, computers, etc.) arguably Caesar was much easier to assassinate than a modern day US President would be

2) You need to distinguish between "outsider" assassinations and "insider" assassinations. JFK's assassination is a classic example of an outsider assassination - Lee Harvey Oswald was a nobody with no official position and no prior connection with the President. Compare that to Indira Gandhi's assassination - she was assassinated by her own bodyguards. It would be like, a Secret Service officer assassinating the US President. If you work for the Secret Service, and belong to the President's personal protection team, it's certainly going to much easier to assassinate him than it would be for some nobody. Or imagine you were a Congress person, Cabinet secretary, the Vice-President, a Justice of the Supreme Court, the President's Chief of Staff or Press Secretary - all these people would find it far easier to assassinate a US President than the average Joe. They are all trusted by the powers that be a lot more than the average Joe is; some of them will have frequent and relatively unguarded access to the President. I'm sure the Secret Service has thought about this possibility - one method they use to try to reduce it is to very thoroughly investigate the backgrounds of those with regular personal access to the President - any evidence that they might have an inclination to harm the President, or have links to those who might, and access is denied. I'm sure they've got other methods too. But still, an insider has a far greater chance than an outsider. I think all decent people would hope that it doesn't happen again (even those who don't agree with the policies of the President of the day), but if despite that it did, I reckon another US Presidential assassination would look far more like Indira Gandhi's than like JFK's.

So what kind of assassination was Caesar's? It was committed by his fellow Senators, his (on paper) political equals. So it was an insider assassination, not an outsider one. It was like a member of Congress trying to assassinate the US President. It was closer to an Indira Gandhi scenario than a JFK one.

One day Bob and Steve get into a heated argument over religion. That argument leads to a fist fight which leads to Bob strangling Steve to death. Murder? Yes. Premeditated? Not really. This is another reason we don’t class an assassination merely as an intentional homicide.

Depends on the law of the jurisdiction it occurs in, but might well count as manslaughter rather than murder. Where I live, this is the legal definition of murder: "Murder shall be taken to have been committed where the act of the accused, or thing by him or her omitted to be done, causing the death charged, was done or omitted with reckless indifference to human life, or with intent to kill or inflict grievous bodily harm upon some person, or done in an attempt to commit, or during or immediately after the commission, by the accused, or some accomplice with him or her, of a crime punishable by imprisonment for life or for 25 years." It's not clear this case meets either the "reckless indifference to human life" prong, the "intent to kill or inflict grevious bodily harm" prong, or during committing/trying to commit "a crime punishable by imprisonment for life or for 25 years" prong.

Now, if you’d like to reduce the comparison class to those who could have been assassinated such as political leaders I’m okay with that. In doing so you are recognizing that leaders of countries do not fall into the same category as the general populace in regards to being murdered. So we might use all leaders of countries in history as the denominator, not the total population since the beginning of history as you have done.

Certainly in today's world, a politician is less likely to be murdered than the average person. Part of this is due to greater security for politicians, but there could be other factors at play too. (For example, politicians are usually wealthier and more educated than average - are people of above-average wealth and education less likely to be murdered than the population at large? I'd suspect that's probably true. In our society, many causes of murder are more likely to effect those from poor backgrounds than those from privileged ones.)

But at the same time, the historical murder rate for politicians was likely much higher than today. We have better security than they did; and we have a political culture that emphasises peacefully playing by the rules, instead of attaining political power through brute force. Roman politicians were far more likely to settle political power struggles through killing each other than contemporary politicians are.

On the other hand is it correct to class Jesus’ resurrection in with the general populace? Would it be correct to class Roy Sullivan with the general populace? No, Roy would need to be in a special class because the probabilities that apply to general populace fro lightning strikes to do not apply to Roy for the reasons I gave earlier. So the question then becomes do we have any good reason(s) to class Jesus as different from the general populace? Yes, I think we do. Jesus claimed to have a position as the Son of God that if it were true would give him some special ability to raise people from the dead. Further supporting this is that it was reported Jesus resurrected other people which implies he may have held that position and/or may have had some special ability for returning people from the dead. Therefore Jesus should be classed not with the general populace but rather in a different class with those that have made similar claims and performed similar acts.

If you reduce the size of the class sufficiently, it becomes impossible to estimate probabilities. If we have a 100,000 people, and X was true for 250 of them, then it's reasonably likely that the probability of X is actually 0.025% (although there is a chance it is not due to bias or sampling error, if that 100,000 is not the whole population for whom X could ever be true.) Whereas, if we have a class of 1 person, and X was true for 1 person out that class, it doesn't justify us to estimate the probability as 100%, any more than if it was false for person out of that class would justify us to estimate the probability as 0%. The probability could be anything; the sample size is too small to be useful.

As to Roy Sullivan: we pretend the lifetime probability of a lightening strike is the same for all people, and that works most of the time, but it isn't quite true. Amount of time spent outdoors, geography, and behaviour, all play a role. But with research we could surely quantify some of these factors. Logically, more time spent outdoors = more chance of lightening strike, and if we surveyed lightening strike victims, I'm sure we'd find on average they spent more time outdoors than the average person. So then we could estimate the probability of being struck by lightening per an hour spent outdoors - applied to Roy Sullivan, the odds of what happened to him will then seem far less spectacular than they did originally. But how to apply the same logic to Jesus? "Probability of rising from the dead per an hour spent making messianic claims"? We can't. The greater unlikeliness in Roy's case is not the event which happened to him, just the number of times it did. For Jesus, the real issue is not "nobody could possibly rise from the dead that many times! I could understand once, but five times is just too many!". The issue is the likelihood of the claim he rose from the dead even once. So Roy Sullivan's and Jesus' cases aren't really comparable.

I’m disagreeing with your numbers here. First off, intentional homicide could include such things as suicide, infanticide, euthanasia and a form of murder where there is intent to kill but not necessarily the premeditation necessarily required for an assassination. So this has the potential to fallaciously inflate your numbers.

Sure, the source I used (Wikipedia) said that the numbers were a compilation of different national sources that used different definitions. These numbers are the best I can find; Iif you've got better numbers, present them.

Secondly, you calculate the odds of dying by murder in any one year is 50 in 100,000 but offer no sound reason for the high number 50. You just arbitrarily pull that number out of the air because, well, it makes sense to you. But it doesn’t to me. This goes to highlight how easily one can work the numbers in one’s favor. The world rate of intentional homicides in 2010 was 6.9 in 100,000 yielding a 1 in 14,492 or a 0.007% chance of being murdered across the globe. Personally I find those quite low odds. In light of this I’m inclined to see them as low enough for a murder to be considered extraordinary. To put this in perspective there is a higher probability that an American will be struck by lightning in their life time. I don’t know any rational person that would say it is not extraordinary to be struck by lightning in one’s life time. Why wouldn’t it be considered extraordinary to be have been murdered in 2010 then?

As I said, I don't want to get hung up on the word "extraordinary" - it's vague, in the case of things like murder vs. lighting, there is a media influence (constantly watching crime TV shows can make you feel like murder is more likely than it really is; individuals struck by lightning, even if more common than murders, get far less media attention than murders do, so feel less common.) But, my question is, if the current global homicide rate is 6.9, do you honestly think that is historically average or historically low? Are there good reasons to suppose murder is less common today than in the past? One thing to note, is that even today poorer societies tend to have higher murder rates than richer ones. Extrapolating backwards, when the rich societies of today were poorer, murder would have been more common. That matches up with some historical estimates of murder for today's rich countries - in the past, when they were poorer, and there was less technology too (with modern forensic science, mass media, computer databases, surveillance cameras, etc., getting away with murder is likely a lot harder than it used to be, and people are less likely to murder if they know it is more likely they'll get caught.) Since rates of violence have been falling over centuries, they were almost certainly a lot higher 2000 years ago than today.

Some countries such as Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, and Iceland have had years with a rate of 0 in 100,000 giving a 0% chance of dying by murder in those countries thus making any murder intrinsically improbable.

But surely the probability there is greater than zero. The smaller something becomes relative to the sample, the harder it is to accurately determine the probability based on that sample. We can say those countries have a lower probability of murder than others, but it arguably is not zero.

But hey, apparently some people claim dying by murder isn’t extraordinary. Go figure.

My point was always, that "extraordinary" is a relative term. Dying from murder is always going to be extraordinary, but what is it's relative extraordinariness compared to someone rising from the dead in the way it is claimed Jesus did?

Maybe I'll address the rest later, I don't have time to respond to any more of your points at the moment.

[shunyadragon]

I am not sure if you are saying 'We know assassinations happen because there is a video of one.' That would not make much sense.
Millions of people know about resurrections because there is a written record of them.

Magellan

The rareness of an event does not alone make it an extraordinary event, as would be there claims of being miraculous events.

For example - The largest emerald ever found in the world weighs about 5 pounds. Find an emerald over 3 pounds would be an extremely rare extraordinary event, but a natural one that may be expected to occur.

[Teallaura]

...
Sorry, Teal, but I'm extremely disappointed that you would support (let alone Amen) Juice's post. I fully concur that 'extraordinary' tends to be extremely relative. That said, any occurrence which took place ONCE in the history of the world (regardless of the ages/death you choose to arbitrarily assign), is still less likely than an occurrence which took place multiple times. Let us not forget that assassination isn't actually questioned, either, despite Juice's attempt to make that seem suspect. Even considering assassination relatively extraordinary (which I will willingly grant for the sake of argument) doesn't imply that there aren't further levels of extraordinary. Because, I think you will readily agree, assassination is a bit more common than resurrection.

The order of magnitude isn't much at issue for me. His post highlights successfully the problem with utilizing ECREE as a means of evaluating evidence - namely, it doesn't work. If the thing is valid it should be useful with something of a lower order of magnitude - but it isn't. The silly thing invalidates where it clearly should not which knocks out any rational case for using it on something actually in question (at least for the non-believer).

If it can't work on the common or the uncommon or the relatively rare or the extremely rare why the heck would you trust it to give good guidance on the highly improbable? His post raises a valid issue - one that keeps getting lost in all the trees - ECREE doesn't deal well with established cases which at a bare minimum brings its validity into question. I'm really surprised you missed my point entirely.

You mention assassination being more common (arguable, actually, but that is wholly beside the point) - that's actually the stronger point against ECREE - it can't deal with the case. Show how you can use ECREE w/o invalidating and you make your case. The order of magnitude and the commonality of assassination don't help your case at all. If the thing is valid it should work with any case involving some degree of improbability (which you granted as true for the assassination of Caesar). In that case, show how it works such that you can evaluate the necessary evidence to establish the assassination of Caesar - do that and the case is made. Fail that and it's just more hot air in favor of an inane theory that has no validity in evidentiary procedure. But arguing order of magnitude is just dodging the issue - show how the silly thing works.

[Teallaura]

William Lane Craig endorses it. See his formula in this debate:

Pr (R/B&E) = Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/B&R) / Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/B&R) + Pr (not-R/B) × Pr (E/B& not-R)

. When we discuss the intrinsic probability of the resurrection, that is terms Pr(R/B) and Pr(not-R/B) in Craig's equation; the strength of evidence is measured by Pr(E/B&R) and Pr(E/B¬-R). He's not the only Christian philosopher to accept this idea either. It is a generally accepted consequence of Bayesian probability.

...

Um, I'll read the whole thing again but I do not think Craig is in fact agreeing with ECREE - he's creating his own model specific to the Resurrection.

I'll review it and get back to you. I'm highly skeptical of your points but I'm also tired and I can't give it a fair reading tonight. Off the bat, I don't think Craig supports your case and it goes downhill from there but let me look at it again when I'm not beat and can evaluate it better.

And when I quit giggling at the phrase 'mathematical rigor'...

[ZackMartin]

You mention assassination being more common (arguable, actually, but that is wholly beside the point) - that's actually the stronger point against ECREE - it can't deal with the case. Show how you can use ECREE w/o invalidating and you make your case. The order of magnitude and the commonality of assassination don't help your case at all. If the thing is valid it should work with any case involving some degree of improbability (which you granted as true for the assassination of Caesar). In that case, show how it works such that you can evaluate the necessary evidence to establish the assassination of Caesar - do that and the case is made. Fail that and it's just more hot air in favor of an inane theory that has no validity in evidentiary procedure. But arguing order of magnitude is just dodging the issue - show how the silly thing works.

Teallaura: Are you and Juice denying Bayes' theorem? Because as far as I can tell, that seems to be what you and Juice are doing, maybe without realising it.

In it's simplest form, Bayes theorem reads: P(H|E) = P(E|H)P(H)/P(E).

H = hypothesis (Jesus was resurrected, Caesar was assassinated)

E = evidence (e.g. Gospels etc; accounts in historical texts of Caesar's assassination, etc.)

P(H) = prior probability, initial degree of belief in H before considering E, intrinsic probability of H

P(E) = likelihood; i.e. a measure of how reliable this evidence is, how likely it is to be correct

P(E|H) = probability of evidence given this hypothesis - if hypothesis was true, how likely we would have this evidence

P(H|E) = probability of hypothesis given this evidence - e.g. probability Jesus was resurrected given the Gospels as evidence

If you accept Bayes theorem, you can't really deny that P(H) and P(E) both play a role in calculating P(H|E). The question is just how well "ECREE" explains the relative role both have.

What I've given above is just a very basic formulation of Bayes rule. There are more complex versions of the rule - see Wikipedia's article on "Bayesian inference". Indeed, to properly analyse either Jesus resurrection or

William Lane Craig accepts Bayes' theorem. His equation is just a particular variant of it. Indeed, his variant is almost the same as one of the equations given in the Wikipedia article on Bayesian inference (there are some minor differences in presentation, but I don't think they make a major difference). It's not "his own model specific to the Resurrection". It's simply applying a classic and accepted theory - Bayes theorem - in an obvious way - to the Resurrection. Nothing very original here.

Let me quote his words:

In other words, in calculating the probability of Jesus' resurrection, the only factor he considers is the intrinsic probability of the resurrection alone [Pr(R/B)]. He just ignores all of the other factors. And that's just mathematically fallacious. The probability of the resurrection could still be very high even though the Pr(R/B) alone is terribly low. Specifically, Dr. Ehrman just ignores the crucial factors of the probability of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection [Pr(not-R/B) × Pr(E/B& not-R)]. If these are sufficiently low, they outbalance any intrinsic improbability of the resurrection hypothesis.

It should be clear from this that Craig endorses the view that the intrinsic probability of the resurrection is relevant to the overall probability that it happened. His disagreement with Ehrman, is he takes Ehrman as saying this is the only relevant factor, when clearly it is not. I agree with Craig's point here - although I'm not sure whether or not Craig has correctly interpreted Ehrman's views, but that doesn't really matter for the purposes of our present discussion.

So it seems to me here, that others who are arguing that the intrinsic probability of the Resurrection is irrelevant to the final probability of the Resurrection, and that likewise the intrinsic probability of Caesar's assassination is irrelevant to the final probability of Caesar's assassination, are disagreeing with Craig, and several other Christian philosophers too, most notably Richard Swinburne, all of whom accept Bayes' theorem. (And if you want to disagree with Craig or Swinburne, go ahead and do so; but I suspect maybe some people don't realise that is what they are actually doing.)

[Juice]

Teallaura: Are you and Juice denying Bayes' theorem? Because as far as I can tell, that seems to be what you and Juice are doing, maybe without realising it.

I don’t think anyone is denying the formula, Zack. In principle “ECREE” kinda makes sense on the surface but on further inspection it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny as a viable methodology. Bayes’ theorem brings some scientific methodology to the table which is fantastic. I can’t speak for Teallaura, but I suspect from her posts that she sees the same difficulty that I do (and so does Craig by the way). Which is with the practical application of the Bayes’ theorem (or “ECREE” as well for that matter).

But let’s look at the theorem for a moment.

In it's simplest form, Bayes theorem reads: P(H|E) = P(E|H)P(H)/P(E).

H = hypothesis (Jesus was resurrected, Caesar was assassinated)

So far so food.

E = evidence (e.g. Gospels etc; accounts in historical texts of Caesar's assassination, etc.)

Okay.

P(H) = prior probability, initial degree of belief in H before considering E, intrinsic probability of H

This is where things start to break down as we’ve seen over the last few posts. First, we must argue in a circle and assume all the assassination claims and resurrection claims that we plug into the formula really did happen. So in a sense we’ve put the cart before the horse here. Let’s set this aside for the moment.

Secondly, we are going to disagree on the data selection parameters. You incorrectly wanted the assassination of Caesar to be grouped as a general murder thus giving the assassination a much higher intrinsic probability than deserved. No one will argue resurrection claims are as common as a murder claims in the general populace. So the deck gets stacked in your favour by committing a blatant categorical fallacy.

However, if we kept the assassination of Caesar in its correct contextual group of assassinations of heads of state there are maybe a thousand in history (and I think that is being generous)? Weighed against all deaths in human history the assassination of Caesar has a very low intrinsic probability then, not much different than Jesus’ resurrection if we weigh resurrection claims against total deaths in human history.

Now, you could argue that heads of state are a special category so we need to find the intrinsic probability of the assassination of a head of state using the data of only heads of state in history. This will likely increase its intrinsic probability from what it would be if we weighed assassinations of heads of state against total human deaths in history. But then we should also rightly categorize Jesus in a special category as well should we not?

So we get bogged down here because you feel the category would be too small for Jesus even though the category of Roman Emperors itself is too small (probably around 95 of them) and the category of heads of state, though likely bigger than Roman Emperors, is likely still too small as well to estimate probabilities with any real certainty. As you stated in your last post to me:

If you reduce the size of the class sufficiently, it becomes impossible to estimate probabilities. If we have a 100,000 people, and X was true for 250 of them, then it's reasonably likely that the probability of X is actually 0.025% (although there is a chance it is not due to bias or sampling error, if that 100,000 is not the whole population for whom X could ever be true.) Whereas, if we have a class of 1 person, and X was true for 1 person out that class, it doesn't justify us to estimate the probability as 100%, any more than if it was false for person out of that class would justify us to estimate the probability as 0%. The probability could be anything; the sample size is too small to be useful.

So we should have sample groups of at least 100,000 apparently to estimate probabilities. There certainly weren’t 100,000 Roman Emperors, we know that. But were there at least 100,000 heads of state or leaders of countries in human history? I don’t know, how would we even figure that out with any accuracy? See how precarious this becomes in practice?

P(E) = likelihood; i.e. a measure of how reliable this evidence is, how likely it is to be correct

But how on earth do we actually do this in an objective practical way? How do we assign numerical values to evidence to find out how reliable it is? Craig, in his debate with Ehrman, doesn’t go this far. In principle it all sounds great, but the practical execution of it is quite fuzzy.

P(E|H) = probability of evidence given this hypothesis - if hypothesis was true, how likely we would have this evidence

P(H|E) = probability of hypothesis given this evidence - e.g. probability Jesus was resurrected given the Gospels as evidence

If you accept Bayes theorem, you can't really deny that P(H) and P(E) both play a role in calculating P(H|E). The question is just how well "ECREE" explains the relative role both have.

As far as I can see “ECREE” doesn’t actually explain anything. Rather it bogs us down as far as I can see.

It should be clear from this that Craig endorses the view that the intrinsic probability of the resurrection is relevant to the overall probability that it happened. His disagreement with Ehrman, is he takes Ehrman as saying this is the only relevant factor, when clearly it is not. I agree with Craig's point here - although I'm not sure whether or not Craig has correctly interpreted Ehrman's views, but that doesn't really matter for the purposes of our present discussion.

Patently false. In the Q&A Craig responds to a question over the probability calculus he presented in the debate. Craig said:

I myself don't use the probability calculus in arguing for resurrection of Jesus. The reason I brought it up is because of the response to the Humean sort of argument that Dr. Ehrman was offering, which I think is completely misconceived because he tries to say that the resurrection is improbable simply because of the improbability of the resurrection on the background information alone. In fact, I think that that probability is inscrutable, given that we're dealing with a free agent. I don't see how we can assess or assign specific numbers for those. So the way in which I argue for the resurrection is not by using the probability calculus. It's by using what's called "inference to the best explanation," which is the way historians normally work. That is to say, you assess competing historical hypotheses in terms of criteria like: explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, degree of ad hoc-ness, concordance with accepted beliefs, and so on and so forth.

So although Craig uses probability calculus in the debate with Ehrman, he does not “endorse” the use of it in arguing for the resurrection.

So it seems to me here, that others who are arguing that the intrinsic probability of the Resurrection is irrelevant to the final probability of the Resurrection, and that likewise the intrinsic probability of Caesar's assassination is irrelevant to the final probability of Caesar's assassination, are disagreeing with Craig, and several other Christian philosophers too, most notably Richard Swinburne, all of whom accept Bayes' theorem. (And if you want to disagree with Craig or Swinburne, go ahead and do so; but I suspect maybe some people don't realise that is what they are actually doing.)

I think you are misunderstanding the context in which Craig uses the theorem and how it relates to our debate here. In his debate with Ehrman Craig says:

Basically, Pr (not-R/B) × Pr (E/B& not-R) represent the intrinsic probability and explanatory power of all the naturalistic alternatives to Jesus' resurrection. So the probability of Jesus' resurrection relative to our background information and the specific evidence is equal to this complicated ratio… Specifically, Dr. Ehrman just ignores the crucial factors of the probability of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection [Pr(not-R/B) × Pr(E/B& not-R)]. If these are sufficiently low, they outbalance any intrinsic improbability of the resurrection hypothesis… In order to explain that the resurrection is improbable, [Ehrman] needs not only to tear down all the evidence for the resurrection, but he needs to erect a positive case of his own in favor of some naturalistic alternatives.

In other words, the context Craig uses the theorem is to weigh the probability of the resurrection hypothesis against competing naturalistic hypotheses to show the resurrection hypothesis is stronger than its competitors. He does not use the theorem to weigh hypotheses between the resurrection and other historical events such as the assassination of Caesar. So although he uses it, he doesn’t use it in the context we are debating in this thread. Now, we could use it as well I suppose to determine the probability of each respective hypothesis against other competing hypotheses. But that in the end would only tell us for example whether the assassination hypothesis was stronger than other competing hypothesis such as Caesar died by natural causes and the assassination developed later as a myth. Or on the other hand whether the resurrection hypothesis is stronger than the hypothesis that the disciples stole the body for example. But if we are ging to do that, how does it relate to the question of which hill is shorter to climb to rationally justify belief?

Incidentally Ehrman’s response to Craig's use of the theorem to show the probability of the supernatural is absolutely priceless. Ehrman says in response:

I do have to tell you that if you think I'm going to change my mind because you have mathematical proof for the existence of God, I'm sorry, but it ain't gonna happen!

Not even mathematical proof will convince Ehrman! Sometimes I wonder why we even bother…

I’ll wait to reply to your last post until you finish with my last one to you. Unless, you are done with it for now?

[Roy]

Patently false, Roy.
June of 2000
February 2012

The first example is interesting, but is hardly a resurrection. The second is from the Daily Mail.

Now for an amusing juxtaposition:

How many Prime Ministers have been assassinated in the UK in the last 100 years, Roy? That’s right Roy, zero. In fact, there has only ever been one assassinated Prime Minister, Roy, and that was Spencer Perceval 200 years ago.
...
Tsk-tsk, Roy, you cherry picked your data.

I cherry-picked my data? I simply listed Roman Emperors until I started getting bored, then picked a handy stopping point. I didn't look at statistics from a different part of the world twenty centuries later.

Of course Roy royally begs the question by assuming these Emperors really were assassinated.

Of course Juice begged exactly the same question when he assumed Julius Caesar was assassinated, but then consistency doesn't seem to be his strong point.

What Roy doesn’t tell us is if we look at all Roman Emperors and how they died it looks a little different. Taken from this list of Roman Emperors, here is a rough break down of causes of death:

Natural causes: 36
Assassination: 17
Murdered:11
Unclear: 9
In battle: 9
Executed: 8
Suicide: 5

So using Juice's own source, Juice's own parameters and Juice's own massaged figures*, assassination was still the second commonest cause of death for Roman Emperors, and not remotely extraordinary. Game Over.

Roy

*I count 15 definite assassinations in his source, 5 possible/probable assassinations, and a handful of 'murdered in a coup/conspiracy'

[Roy]

Let me put it this way: "extraordinary" is a vague term. When we say something is "extraordinary", we are saying it is a very low intrinsic probability; but still, there is vagueness in how low the probability has to be to count as "extraordinary", and different people will give different answers here. And even among extraordinary things, some of them can be more extraordinary than others. To get lost in the semantics of exactly what counts as "extraordinary" is to miss the real point - the lower the intrinsic probability of an event, the stronger the evidence required to rationally accept that it occurred.

Quite so. The difficulty I see is that Juice's standard for extraordinariness includes events that are as common as, say, having a birthday in February.

Roy

[Roy]

1. I don’t think you or anyone else actually practices “ECREE” in real life. Let’s say it’s reported Bob rolled five consecutive sixes playing Monopoly and Steve who bought only one 6/49 lottery ticket won. Let’s consider these two claims in light of what you wrote earlier regarding the comparison between the murderer Joe and Jesus returning from the dead. The intrinsic probability that Bob rolled five consecutive sixes is 1 in 7776.

No, it isn't. Playing monopoly involves (i) rolling considerably more than five times, and (ii) two dice rolled simultaneously.

Roy