Then He Poked The Bear: Episode VI

This week we continue working our way through Then He Poked the Bear, a small book written by Van Kleeck Jr. in order to stir the scholastic pot. In this episode, Dr. Van Kleeck, assuming a merely evidential method, deals with the reality that compounding interdependent evidence does not yield greater certainty but instead diminishes the probability of a given belief because along with the compounding of higher-level probabilities we also compound the lower-level uncertainties. This phenomenon will be illustrated by using a simple version of Bayes’ probability calculus as it appears in Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.