De las religiones (inglés)

ENGLISH CLASS

E S S AY

GUILLERMO SOTO

A common argument for the truth of the Christian religion is that its origins were too improbable for it to be false. This argument has appeared in manyforms over the years, but most of the usual ideas are combined into a single popular effort by James Holding. The following essay critiques that effort, by comparing Holding's arguments and claimsthere with the actual facts of ancient history, and identifying fallacies in his reasoning. Holding offers seventeen factors "where Christianity 'did the wrong thing' in order to be a successfulreligion" and concludes from this that "the only way Christianity" could "succeed" under those seventeen hostile conditions is "because it was a truly revealed faith," in particular "because it had theirrefutable witness of the resurrection." Besides those seventeen factors, Holding offers one additional critical assumption about "luck," making eighteen points altogether. Each of those points will beaddressed in a separate chapter, in order, with his eighteenth underlying assumption counted last, followed by an evolving chapter responding to critics of the present work.

One thing that is missingfrom Holding's paper is any sort of formal logical or statistical argument. Despite his rather hyperbolic language, even Holding must admit that the odds of Christianity becoming successful withoutbeing true could not be zero even on all of his own assumptions. Human behaviour is not that predictable, nor are there any demonstrated historical "laws" that make any conclusion about historicalcause-and-effect beyond all probability of error. Rather, Holding can only mean that the probability of Christianity becoming successful, on all of his own assumptions and premises, is so low that we haveno rational ground to believe it did--except by some divine aid. In Holding's version of the argument, this fact can only become reasonably probable if we accept as true the premise that the...