Richard Swinburne
Contemporary philosopher and the most prominent modern proponent of bayesian-apologetics.
Key Work
In The Resurrection of God Incarnate, Swinburne applies Bayes’ Theorem to historical data and natural theology, concluding there is a 97% probability that Jesus was God incarnate and rose from the dead. 1
Methodology
Swinburne assigns a high prior probability to the idea that if God exists, He would want to become incarnate, suffer, and provide atonement. This prior, critics argue, models divine psychology — an inherently unquantifiable variable. 1
Critiques
- alvin-plantinga critiqued Swinburne’s approach via the principle of dwindling-probabilities
- Secular philosophers dismiss the work as mathematical theater — subjective theology dressed in statistics
- Theistic philosophers who favor reformed-epistemology view it as misguided and reductive