logos/truth
Your numbers—

All sources

Every source cited on the site, page by page. Each page links its own numbered list; this page gathers them.

The universe had a beginning

  1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 46, a. 2. New Advent. Checked.
  2. Hubble, E. (1929). "A relation between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae." PNAS 15(3): 168-173. Bibliographic.
  3. Planck Collaboration (2020). "Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters." Astronomy & Astrophysics 641: A6. arXiv:1807.06209. Abstract checked; the age (13.8 billion years) is in the body.
  4. Fixsen, D. J. (2009). "The temperature of the cosmic microwave background." ApJ 707: 916-920. arXiv:0911.1955. Abstract checked.
  5. Penzias, A. A., Wilson, R. W. (1965). "A measurement of excess antenna temperature at 4080 Mc/s." ApJ 142: 419-421; Mather, J. C. et al. (1994). "Measurement of the cosmic microwave background spectrum by the COBE FIRAS instrument." ApJ 420: 439. Bibliographic.
  6. Fields, B. D., Olive, K. A., Yeh, T.-H., Young, C. (2020). "Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis after Planck." JCAP 03: 010. arXiv:1912.01132. Full text read for the dossier (eqs. 4, 6, 22-25); abstract checked.
  7. Cooke, R. J., Pettini, M., Steidel, C. C. (2018). "One percent determination of the primordial deuterium abundance." ApJ 855: 102. arXiv:1710.11129. Abstract checked.
  8. Labbé, I. et al. (2023). "A population of red candidate massive galaxies ~600 Myr after the Big Bang." Nature 616: 266. arXiv:2207.12446. Abstract checked.
  9. Boylan-Kolchin, M. (2023). "Stress testing ΛCDM with high-redshift galaxy candidates." Nature Astronomy 7: 731-735. arXiv:2208.01611. Abstract checked.
  10. Chworowsky, K. et al. (2024). "Evidence for a shallow evolution in the volume densities of massive galaxies at z = 4 to 8 from CEERS." AJ. arXiv:2311.14804. Abstract checked.
  11. Egan, C. A., Lineweaver, C. H. (2010). "A larger estimate of the entropy of the universe." ApJ 710: 1825-1834. arXiv:0909.3983. Full text read for the dossier (Tables 1-2).
  12. DESI Collaboration (2026). "DESI DR2 Results IV: Alcock-Paczyński measurements from the Lyman alpha forest and cosmological constraints." arXiv:2607.27410. Abstract checked.
  13. Vilenkin, A. (2015). "The Beginning of the Universe." Inference: International Review of Science 1(4). inference-review.com. Full text checked.
  14. Carroll, S. M., Chen, J. (2004). "Spontaneous inflation and the origin of the arrow of time." arXiv:hep-th/0410270. Abstract checked.
  15. Penrose, R. (2004). The Road to Reality. Jonathan Cape (ch. 27-28); also The Emperor's New Mind (1989). Bibliographic.
  16. Goldstein, S. (2001). "Boltzmann's approach to statistical mechanics." In J. Bricmont et al. (eds.), Chance in Physics. Springer. arXiv:cond-mat/0105242. Full text checked.
  17. Carroll, S. M. (2014). "In what sense is the early universe fine-tuned?" arXiv:1406.3057. Abstract checked.
  18. Hawking, S. W., Penrose, R. (1970). "The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology." Proc. R. Soc. A 314: 529-548. ADS. Bibliographic.
  19. Hawking, S. W. (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam. Bibliographic.
  20. Borde, A., Guth, A. H., Vilenkin, A. (2003). "Inflationary spacetimes are not past-complete." Phys. Rev. Lett. 90: 151301. arXiv:gr-qc/0110012. Abstract checked.
  21. Garcia-Saenz, S., Hua, J., Zhao, Y. (2024). "Geodesic completeness, cosmological bounces and inflation." Phys. Rev. D 110: L061304. arXiv:2405.04062. Abstract checked.
  22. Kinney, W. H., Maity, S., Sriramkumar, L. (2024). "The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem in extended de Sitter spaces." Phys. Rev. D 109: 043519. arXiv:2307.10958. Abstract checked.
  23. Kinney, W. H. (2026). "Geodesic completeness in general cosmological scenarios." Proceedings of the Rencontres de Moriond 2026. arXiv:2604.20809. Abstract checked.
  24. Carroll, S. M. (2014, February 24). "Post-debate reflections" (on his debate with W. L. Craig). preposterousuniverse.com. Full text checked.
  25. Wall, A. C. (2013). "The generalized second law implies a quantum singularity theorem." Class. Quantum Grav. 30: 165003. arXiv:1010.5513. Abstract checked.
  26. Mithani, A., Vilenkin, A. (2012). "Did the universe have a beginning?" arXiv:1204.4658. Abstract checked.
  27. Mithani, A., Vilenkin, A. (2012). "Collapse of simple harmonic universe." JCAP. arXiv:1110.4096. Abstract checked.
  28. Lesnefsky, J. E., Easson, D. A., Davies, P. C. W. (2023). "On the past-completeness of inflationary spacetimes." Phys. Rev. D. arXiv:2207.00955. Abstract checked.
  29. Geshnizjani, G., Ling, E., Quintin, J. (2023). "On the initial singularity and extendibility of flat quasi-de Sitter spacetimes." JHEP 2023: 182. arXiv:2305.01676. Abstract checked.
  30. O'Raifeartaigh, C., Mitton, S. (2018). "Interrogating the legend of Einstein's 'biggest blunder'." Physics in Perspective 20: 318-341. arXiv:1804.06768. Abstract checked.
  31. Kragh, H. (2013). "What's in a name: history and meanings of the term 'Big Bang'." arXiv:1301.0219 (shorter version in Astronomy & Geophysics 54(2): 2.28). Full text checked.
  32. Gurzadyan, V. G., Penrose, R. (2010). "Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity." arXiv:1011.3706. Abstract checked.
  33. Wehus, I. K., Eriksen, H. K. (2011). "A search for concentric circles in the 7-year WMAP temperature sky maps." ApJ 733: L29. arXiv:1012.1268. Abstract checked.
  34. Jow, D. L., Scott, D. (2020). "Re-evaluating evidence for Hawking points in the CMB." JCAP 2020(03): 021. arXiv:1909.09672. Abstract checked.
  35. Guth, A. H. (2007). "Eternal inflation and its implications." J. Phys. A 40: 6811. arXiv:hep-th/0702178. Abstract checked.
  36. Ijjas, A., Steinhardt, P. J. (2019). "A new kind of cyclic universe." Phys. Lett. B 795: 666-672. arXiv:1904.08022. Abstract checked.
  37. Aguirre, A., Gratton, S. (2002). "Steady-state eternal inflation." Phys. Rev. D 65: 083507, arXiv:astro-ph/0111191; (2003) "Inflation without a beginning: a null boundary proposal." Phys. Rev. D 67: 083515, arXiv:gr-qc/0301042. Abstracts checked.
  38. Ellis, G. F. R., Maartens, R. (2004). "The emergent universe: inflationary cosmology with no singularity." Class. Quantum Grav. 21: 223-232. arXiv:gr-qc/0211082. Abstract checked.
  39. Ashtekar, A., Singh, P. (2011). "Loop quantum cosmology: a status report." Class. Quantum Grav. 28: 213001. arXiv:1108.0893. A general review, cited for the bounce idea only.
  40. Easson, D. A., Lesnefsky, J. E. (2024). "Inflationary resolution of the initial singularity." arXiv:2402.13031. Abstract checked.
  41. O'Raifeartaigh, C., McCann, B., Nahm, W., Mitton, S. (2014). "Einstein's steady-state theory: an abandoned model of the cosmos." EPJ H 39: 353-367. arXiv:1402.0132. Abstract checked.
  42. Hoyle, F. (1948). "A new model for the expanding universe." MNRAS 108: 372. Bibliographic.
  43. Steinhardt, P. J., Turok, N. (2002). "A cyclic model of the universe." Science 296: 1436. arXiv:hep-th/0111030. Abstract read for the dossier.
  44. Graham, P. W., Horn, B., Kachru, S., Rajendran, S., Torroba, G. (2011). "A simple harmonic universe." arXiv:1109.0282. Abstract checked.
  45. Mithani, A., Vilenkin, A. (2014). "Instability of an emergent universe." JCAP 05: 006. arXiv:1403.0818. Abstract checked.
  46. Aguirre, A., Kehayias, J. (2013). "Quantum instability of the emergent universe." Phys. Rev. D 88: 103504. arXiv:1306.3232. Abstract checked.
  47. Vilenkin, A. (1982). "Creation of universes from nothing." Phys. Lett. B 117: 25. Bibliographic.
  48. Hartle, J. B. (2003). "The state of the universe." In G. W. Gibbons, E. P. S. Shellard, S. J. Rankin (eds.), The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology. Cambridge University Press. arXiv:gr-qc/0209046. Abstract checked.
  49. Hartle, J. B., Hawking, S. W. (1983). "Wave function of the Universe." Phys. Rev. D 28: 2960. Bibliographic.
  50. Feldbrugge, J., Lehners, J.-L., Turok, N. (2017). "No smooth beginning for spacetime." Phys. Rev. Lett. 119: 171301, arXiv:1705.00192; (2018) "No rescue for the no boundary proposal." Phys. Rev. D 97: 023509, arXiv:1708.05104. Abstracts checked.
  51. Krauss, L. M. (2012). A Universe from Nothing. Free Press. Bibliographic.
  52. Albert, D. (2012, March 23). "On the origin of everything" (review of Krauss). New York Times Book Review. Bibliographic; not opened.
  53. Grünbaum, A. (1991). "Creation as a pseudo-explanation in current physical cosmology." Erkenntnis 35: 233; (1994) "Some comments on William Craig's 'Creation and Big Bang Cosmology'." Philosophia Naturalis 31: 225. Via the SEP entry.
  54. Carroll, S. M. (2018). "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" arXiv:1802.02231. Abstract checked.
  55. Aristotle, Physics VIII.1, tr. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye. MIT Internet Classics Archive. Checked.
  56. Saṃyutta Nikāya 15.1 (Tiṇakaṭṭha Sutta), tr. Bhikkhu Sujato. SuttaCentral. Checked.
  57. Lemaître, G. (1931). "The beginning of the world from the point of view of quantum theory." Nature 127: 706. PDF. Full text checked.
  58. World English Bible (public domain), eBible.org. ebible.org/eng-web: Gen 1:1-2; Ps 90:2; Isa 44:24; John 1:3; Rom 4:17; Heb 11:3; 2 Macc 7:28; Wis 11:17. Checked.
  59. Tanakh (Jewish Publication Society, 1985) and The Contemporary Torah (JPS, 2006), Gen 1:1-2. Sefaria. Checked.
  60. Rashi on Genesis 1:1, tr. M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann (1929-34). Sefaria. Read for the dossier.
  61. Fox, E. (1995). The Five Books of Moses. Schocken. Note on Gen 1:1. Via Sefaria; read for the dossier.
  62. Wenham, G. J. (1987). Genesis 1-15 (Word Biblical Commentary 1). Word. Bibliographic.
  63. May, G. (1994). Creatio ex nihilo: The Doctrine of "Creation out of Nothing" in Early Christian Thought, tr. A. S. Worrall. T&T Clark. Bibliographic.
  64. Copan, P. (1996). "Is creatio ex nihilo a post-biblical invention? An examination of Gerhard May's proposal." Trinity Journal 17: 77-93. PDF. Bibliographic.
  65. Reichenbach, B. "Cosmological Argument." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu. Read for the dossier.
  66. Craig, W. L., Sinclair, J. D. (2009). "The kalam cosmological argument." In W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 101-201. Wiley-Blackwell. Bibliographic.
  67. Miller, C. (2014). "A Bayesian formulation of the kalam cosmological argument." Religious Studies 50: 521. Abstract read for the dossier.
  68. Oppy, G. (2006). Arguing about Gods. Cambridge University Press. Bibliographic.
  69. Morriston, W. (2000). "Must the beginning of the universe have a personal cause?" Faith and Philosophy 17: 149. Bibliographic.
  70. Gott, J. R., Li, L.-X. (1998). "Can the universe create itself?" Phys. Rev. D 58: 023501. arXiv:astro-ph/9712344. Full text checked.
  71. Craig, W. L., Smith, Q. (1993). Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology. Oxford University Press. Bibliographic.

Is the universe fine-tuned for life?

  1. Barnes, L. A. (2012). "The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life." Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 29(4): 529-564. arXiv:1112.4647. Read: sections 4-6 and Appendix B. Also the source for the physicists quoted from it (Burgess and Moore; Bousso 2008; Vilenkin 2010; Penrose on roominess) and for studies marked “via Barnes”.
  2. Barnes, L. A., Elahi, P. J., Salcido, J., Bower, R. G., Lewis, G. F., Theuns, T., Schaller, M., Crain, R. A. & Schaye, J. (2018). "Galaxy formation efficiency and the multiverse explanation of the cosmological constant with EAGLE simulations." MNRAS 477: 3727. arXiv:1801.08781. Read: text and Table 4.
  3. Weinberg, S. (1987). "Anthropic bound on the cosmological constant." Physical Review Letters 59: 2607. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.59.2607. Not read in full; the bound is as reported in reviews.
  4. Adams, F. C. (2019). "The degree of fine-tuning in our universe, and others." Physics Reports 807: 1-111. arXiv:1902.03928. Read: abstract, sections 1-2, part of section 7.
  5. Martin, J. (2012). "Everything you always wanted to know about the cosmological constant problem (but were afraid to ask)." Comptes Rendus Physique 13: 566-665. arXiv:1205.3365. Read: section 3, eqs. 57-59.
  6. Polchinski, J. (2006). "The cosmological constant and the string landscape." arXiv:hep-th/0603249. Read: sections 1.1-1.2.
  7. Agrawal, V., Barr, S. M., Donoghue, J. F. & Seckel, D. (1998). "The anthropic principle and the mass scale of the Standard Model." Physical Review D 57: 5480. arXiv:hep-ph/9707380. Read: abstract.
  8. MacDonald, J. & Mullan, D. J. (2009). "Big bang nucleosynthesis: the strong nuclear force meets the weak anthropic principle." Physical Review D 80: 043507. arXiv:0904.1807. Read: abstract.
  9. Barnes, L. A. (2015). "Binding the diproton in stars: anthropic limits on the strength of gravity." JCAP 2015(12): 050. arXiv:1512.06090. Read: abstract.
  10. Popkin, G. (2017, May 12). "Reports of universe's fine-tuning may be exaggerated." Inside Science (AIP). aip.org. Read. Also our source for Adams & Grohs (2017) on stars with unstable deuterium.
  11. Barnes, L. A. & Lewis, G. F. (2017). "Producing the deuteron in stars: anthropic limits on fundamental constants." JCAP 2017(07): 036. arXiv:1703.07161. Read: abstract.
  12. Epelbaum, E., Krebs, H., Lähde, T. A., Lee, D. & Meißner, U.-G. (2013). "Dependence of the triple-alpha process on the fundamental constants of nature." European Physical Journal A 49: 82. arXiv:1303.4856. Read: abstract.
  13. Harnik, R., Kribs, G. D. & Perez, G. (2006). "A universe without weak interactions." Physical Review D 74: 035006. arXiv:hep-ph/0604027. Not read directly; reported via Barnes (2012).
  14. Grohs, E., Howe, A. R. & Adams, F. C. (2018). "Universes without the weak force: astrophysical processes with stable neutrons." Physical Review D 97: 043003. Not read directly.
  15. Tegmark, M., Aguirre, A., Rees, M. J. & Wilczek, F. (2006). "Dimensionless constants, cosmology and other dark matters." Physical Review D 73: 023505. arXiv:astro-ph/0511774. Read: abstract; the 8 constraints on 7 parameters (their Table 4) via Barnes (2012).
  16. Epelbaum, E., Krebs, H., Lähde, T. A., Lee, D. & Meißner, U.-G. (2013). "Viability of carbon-based life as a function of the light quark mass." Physical Review Letters 110: 112502. arXiv:1212.4181. Read: abstract.
  17. Adams, F. C. (2008). "Stars in other universes: stellar structure with different fundamental constants." JCAP 2008(08): 010. arXiv:0807.3697. Read: abstract.
  18. Penrose, R. (1989). The Emperor's New Mind. Oxford University Press; Penrose, R. (2004). The Road to Reality. Jonathan Cape, pp. 726-732, 762-765. Not read directly; the figure is reported via Barnes (2012) and Goldstein (2001, arXiv:cond-mat/0105242).
  19. Egan, C. A. & Lineweaver, C. H. (2010). "A larger estimate of the entropy of the universe." Astrophysical Journal 710: 1825-1834. arXiv:0909.3983. Not read directly here; the horizon entropy of order 10122.
  20. Earman, J. (2006). "The ‘past hypothesis’: not even false." Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37: 399-430. Not read directly.
  21. Bryson, S. et al. (2021). "The occurrence of rocky habitable-zone planets around solar-like stars from Kepler data." Astronomical Journal 161: 36. arXiv:2010.14812. Read: abstract.
  22. Ward, P. & Brownlee, D. (2000). Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe. Copernicus. Not read directly.
  23. Collins, R. (2009). "The teleological argument: an exploration of the fine-tuning of the universe." In W. L. Craig & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, pp. 202-281. Wiley-Blackwell. Not read directly; content via the Stanford Encyclopedia and Barnes (2012).
  24. Barnes, L. A. (2019). "A reasonable little question: a formulation of the fine-tuning argument." Ergo 6(42). philarchive.org. Not read in full.
  25. Susskind, L. (2003). "The anthropic landscape of string theory." arXiv:hep-th/0302219. Read: abstract.
  26. Martel, H., Shapiro, P. R. & Weinberg, S. (1998). "Likely values of the cosmological constant." Astrophysical Journal 492: 29. arXiv:astro-ph/9701099. Read: abstract.
  27. Carroll, S. M. (2017). "Why Boltzmann brains are bad." arXiv:1702.00850; in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2020). Read: abstract.
  28. Hacking, I. (1987). "The inverse gambler's fallacy: the argument from design. The anthropic principle applied to Wheeler universes." Mind 96(383): 331-340. Not read directly.
  29. White, R. (2000). "Fine-tuning and multiple universes." Noûs 34(2): 260-276. Not read directly.
  30. McGrath, P. J. (1988). "The inverse gambler's fallacy and cosmology: a reply to Hacking." Mind 97: 265-268; Leslie, J. (1988). "No inverse gambler's fallacy in cosmology." Mind 97: 269-272. Not read directly.
  31. Friederich, S. (2017; revised). "Fine-Tuning." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu. Read: sections 1-5. Our source for Epstein (2017), Isaacs, Hawthorne & Russell (2022), Draper (2020), Barrett & Sober (2020) and Howson on old evidence.
  32. Sober, E. (2003). "The design argument." In N. Manson (ed.), God and Design. Routledge. Not read directly; via the Stanford Encyclopedia.
  33. Leslie, J. (1989). Universes. Routledge. Not read directly.
  34. Weisberg, J. (2005). "Firing squads and fine-tuning: Sober on the design argument." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56: 809-821. Not read directly.
  35. McGrew, T., McGrew, L. & Vestrup, E. (2001). "Probabilities and the fine-tuning argument: a sceptical view." Mind 110(440): 1027-1038. Not read directly.
  36. Colyvan, M., Garfield, J. L. & Priest, G. (2005). "Problems with the argument from fine tuning." Synthese 145: 325-338. Not read directly.
  37. Pruss, A. (2005). "Fine-tuning and coarse-tuning, normalizability, and probabilistic reasoning." Philosophia Christi 7(2): 405-423. Not read directly.
  38. Koperski, J. (2005). "Should we care about fine-tuning?" British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56: 303-319. Not read directly; via the Stanford Encyclopedia.
  39. Norton, J. D. (2010). "Cosmic confusions: not supporting versus supporting not." Philosophy of Science 77(4): 501-523. pitt.edu. Read: abstract.
  40. Hossenfelder, S. (2019). "Screams for explanation: finetuning and naturalness in the foundations of physics." Synthese. arXiv:1801.02176. Read: sections 2.2-2.3, 5.1.
  41. Ellis, G. F. R., van Elst, H., Murugan, J. & Uzan, J.-P. (2011). "On the trace-free Einstein equations as a viable alternative to general relativity." Classical and Quantum Gravity 28: 225007. arXiv:1008.1196. Abstract read by an earlier reviewer, not by us.
  42. Kaloper, N. & Padilla, A. (2014). "Sequestering the Standard Model vacuum energy." Physical Review Letters 112: 091304. arXiv:1309.6562. Abstract read by an earlier reviewer, not by us.
  43. Stenger, V. J. (2011). The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us. Prometheus. Not read directly; via Barnes (2012).
  44. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion, ch. 4. Bantam. Not read directly.
  45. Narveson, J. (2003). "God by design?" In N. Manson (ed.), God and Design. Routledge. Not read directly; via the Stanford Encyclopedia.
  46. Monton, B. (2006). "God, fine-tuning, and the problem of old evidence." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57: 405-424; Glymour, C. (1980). Theory and Evidence. Princeton University Press. Not read directly; via the Stanford Encyclopedia.
  47. Dicke, R. H. (1961). "Dirac's cosmology and Mach's principle." Nature 192: 440-441. Not read directly.

The origin of life and information

  1. Koonin, E. V. (2007). "The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life." Biology Direct 2: 15. doi:10.1186/1745-6150-2-15
  2. Spiegel, D. S., & Turner, E. L. (2012). "Bayesian analysis of the astrobiological implications of life's early emergence on Earth." PNAS 109: 395-400. doi:10.1073/pnas.1111694108
  3. Benner, S. A., Kim, H.-J., & Carrigan, M. A. (2012). "Asphalt, water, and the prebiotic synthesis of ribose, ribonucleosides, and RNA." Accounts of Chemical Research 45: 2025-2034. doi:10.1021/ar200332w
  4. Tour, J. M. (2016). "Animadversions of a synthetic chemist." Inference: International Review of Science 2(2). inference-review.com (paraphrased, not quoted)
  5. Miller, S. L. (1953). "A production of amino acids under possible primitive earth conditions." Science 117: 528-529. doi:10.1126/science.117.3046.528
  6. Johnson, A. P., et al. (2008). "The Miller volcanic spark discharge experiment." Science 322: 404. doi:10.1126/science.1161527
  7. Cleaves, H. J., Chalmers, J. H., Lazcano, A., Miller, S. L., & Bada, J. L. (2008). "A reassessment of prebiotic organic synthesis in neutral planetary atmospheres." Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 38: 105-115. doi:10.1007/s11084-007-9120-3
  8. Powner, M. W., Gerland, B., & Sutherland, J. D. (2009). "Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions." Nature 459: 239-242. doi:10.1038/nature08013
  9. Becker, S., et al. (2019). "Unified prebiotically plausible synthesis of pyrimidine and purine RNA ribonucleotides." Science 366: 76-82. doi:10.1126/science.aax2747
  10. Patel, B. H., Percivalle, C., Ritson, D. J., Duffy, C. D., & Sutherland, J. D. (2015). "Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism." Nature Chemistry 7: 301-307. doi:10.1038/nchem.2202
  11. Muchowska, K. B., Varma, S. J., & Moran, J. (2019). "Synthesis and breakdown of universal metabolic precursors promoted by iron." Nature 569: 104-107. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1151-1
  12. Lane, N., & Martin, W. F. (2012). "The origin of membrane bioenergetics." Cell 151: 1406-1416. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2012.11.050
  13. Ozturk, S. F., Liu, Z., Sutherland, J. D., & Sasselov, D. D. (2023). "Origin of biological homochirality by crystallization of an RNA precursor on a magnetic surface." Science Advances 9: eadg8274. doi:10.1126/sciadv.adg8274
  14. Lincoln, T. A., & Joyce, G. F. (2009). "Self-sustained replication of an RNA enzyme." Science 323: 1229-1232. doi:10.1126/science.1167856
  15. Wochner, A., Attwater, J., Coulson, A., & Holliger, P. (2011). "Ribozyme-catalyzed transcription of an active ribozyme." Science 332: 209-212. doi:10.1126/science.1200752
  16. Papastavrou, N., Horning, D. P., & Joyce, G. F. (2024). "RNA-catalyzed evolution of catalytic RNA." PNAS 121: e2321592121. doi:10.1073/pnas.2321592121
  17. Attwater, J., et al. (2025). "Trinucleotide substrates under pH-freeze-thaw cycles enable open-ended exponential RNA replication by a polymerase ribozyme." Nature Chemistry 17: 1129-1137. doi:10.1038/s41557-025-01830-y
  18. Gianni, E., Kwok, S. L. Y., Wan, C. J. K., Goeij, K., Clifton, B. E., Colizzi, E. S., Attwater, J., & Holliger, P. (2026). "A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand." Science 391: 1022-1028. doi:10.1126/science.adt2760; open text PMC7618777
  19. Adamala, K., & Szostak, J. W. (2013). "Nonenzymatic template-directed RNA synthesis inside model protocells." Science 342: 1098-1100. doi:10.1126/science.1241888
  20. Koonin, E. V., & Novozhilov, A. S. (2009). "Origin and evolution of the genetic code: the universal enigma." IUBMB Life 61: 99-111. doi:10.1002/iub.146
  21. Hutchison, C. A., et al. (2016). "Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome." Science 351: aad6253. doi:10.1126/science.aad6253
  22. Breuer, M., et al. (2019). "Essential metabolism for a minimal cell." eLife 8: e36842. doi:10.7554/eLife.36842
  23. Pelletier, J. F., et al. (2021). "Genetic requirements for cell division in a genomically minimal cell." Cell 184: 2430-2440. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.008
  24. Moody, E. R. R., et al. (2024). "The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system." Nature Ecology & Evolution 8: 1654-1666. doi:10.1038/s41559-024-02461-1
  25. Weiss, M. C., et al. (2016). "The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor." Nature Microbiology 1: 16116. doi:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.116
  26. Freeland, S. J., & Hurst, L. D. (1998). "The genetic code is one in a million." Journal of Molecular Evolution 47: 238-248. doi:10.1007/PL00006381
  27. Javaux, E. J. (2019). "Challenges in evidencing the earliest traces of life." Nature 572: 451-460. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1436-4
  28. Boehnke, P., & Harrison, T. M. (2016). "Illusory Late Heavy Bombardments." PNAS 113: 10802-10806. doi:10.1073/pnas.1611535113
  29. Abramov, O., & Mojzsis, S. J. (2009). "Microbial habitability of the Hadean Earth during the late heavy bombardment." Nature 459: 419-422. doi:10.1038/nature08015
  30. Allwood, A. C., et al. (2006). "Stromatolite reef from the Early Archaean era of Australia." Nature 441: 714-718. doi:10.1038/nature04764
  31. Dodd, M. S., et al. (2017). "Evidence for early life in Earth's oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates." Nature 543: 60-64. doi:10.1038/nature21377
  32. Bell, E. A., Boehnke, P., Harrison, T. M., & Mao, W. L. (2015). "Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon." PNAS 112: 14518-14521. doi:10.1073/pnas.1517557112
  33. Axe, D. D. (2004). "Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds." Journal of Molecular Biology 341: 1295-1315. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2004.06.058
  34. Tian, P., & Best, R. B. (2017). "How many protein sequences fold to a given structure? A coevolutionary analysis." Biophysical Journal 113: 1719-1730. doi:10.1016/j.bpj.2017.08.039
  35. Keefe, A. D., & Szostak, J. W. (2001). "Functional proteins from a random-sequence library." Nature 410: 715-718. doi:10.1038/35070613
  36. Neme, R., Amador, C., Yildirim, B., McConnell, E., & Tautz, D. (2017). "Random sequences are an abundant source of bioactive RNAs or peptides." Nature Ecology & Evolution 1: 0217. doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0127
  37. Tokuriki, N., & Tawfik, D. S. (2009). "Stability effects of mutations and protein evolvability." Current Opinion in Structural Biology 19: 596-604. doi:10.1016/j.sbi.2009.08.003
  38. Lee, M. S. Y., Soubrier, J., & Edgecombe, G. D. (2013). "Rates of phenotypic and genomic evolution during the Cambrian explosion." Current Biology 23: 1889-1895. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.055
  39. Bobrovskiy, I., et al. (2018). "Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of the earliest animals." Science 361: 1246-1249. doi:10.1126/science.aat7228
  40. Wood, R., et al. (2019). "Integrated records of environmental change and evolution challenge the Cambrian Explosion." Nature Ecology & Evolution 3: 528-538. doi:10.1038/s41559-019-0821-6
  41. dos Reis, M., et al. (2015). "Uncertainty in the timing of origin of animals and the limits of precision in molecular timescales." Current Biology 25: 2939-2950. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.066
  42. Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species, 1st ed., ch. 6 and ch. 9. Project Gutenberg #1228
  43. Meyer, S. C. (2009). Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. HarperOne. (The argument as summarized; we do not quote it.)
  44. Hazen, R. M., Griffin, P. L., Carothers, J. M., & Szostak, J. W. (2007). "Functional information and the emergence of biocomplexity." PNAS 104 (Suppl. 1): 8574-8581. doi:10.1073/pnas.0701744104
  45. Carothers, J. M., Oestreich, S. C., Davis, J. H., & Szostak, J. W. (2004). "Informational complexity and functional activity of RNA structures." Journal of the American Chemical Society 126: 5130-5137. doi:10.1021/ja031504a
  46. Sober, E. (2007). "What is wrong with intelligent design?" Quarterly Review of Biology 82: 3-8. doi:10.1086/511656
  47. Reviews of Signature in the Cell (Fletcher in the TLS, 2009-10; Falk and Ayala at BioLogos), as summarized at Wikipedia: Signature in the Cell (secondary)
  48. Lineweaver, C. H., & Davis, T. M. (2002). "Does the rapid appearance of life on Earth suggest that life is common in the universe?" Astrobiology 2: 293-304.
  49. Nurk, S., et al. (2022). "The complete sequence of a human genome." Science 376: 44-53. doi:10.1126/science.abj6987
  50. Rands, C. M., Meader, S., Ponting, C. P., & Lunter, G. (2014). "8.2% of the human genome is constrained: variation in rates of turnover across functional element classes in the human lineage." PLoS Genetics 10: e1004525. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004525

Mind, reason and near-death experiences

  1. Greyson B, Long J, Holden JM, et al. (2025). "The veridical Near-Death Experience Scale: construction and a first validation with human and artificial raters." Frontiers in Psychology 16. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1661390
  2. Chalmers DJ (1995). "Facing up to the problem of consciousness." Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3): 200-219. consc.net
  3. Chalmers DJ (2002). "Does conceivability entail possibility?" In Gendler T, Hawthorne J (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford UP. consc.net; (2010). "The two-dimensional argument against materialism." In The Character of Consciousness. Oxford UP. consc.net
  4. Bourget D, Chalmers DJ (2023). "Philosophers on philosophy: the 2020 PhilPapers Survey." Philosophers' Imprint. Results: survey2020.philpeople.org (figures rounded; checked against secondary reports, the results page being behind a bot check).
  5. Cogitate Consortium, Ferrante O, et al. (2025). "Adversarial testing of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theories of consciousness." Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08888-1
  6. "A 25-year-old bet about consciousness has finally been settled." Scientific American, 2023; and NPR, 12 July 2023 (secondary reports of the Koch-Chalmers bet, conceded 23 June 2023).
  7. Fleming SM, et al. (2023). "The integrated information theory of consciousness as pseudoscience." PsyArXiv. doi:10.31234/osf.io/zsr78
  8. Blanke O, Ortigue S, Landis T, Seeck M (2002). "Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions." Nature 419: 269-270. doi:10.1038/419269a
  9. Cutter B, Crummett D (2025). "Psychophysical harmony." Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 11: 33-71; quotations from the authors' summary, New Work in Philosophy.
  10. Lewis CS (1947; ch. 3 revised 1960). Miracles: A Preliminary Study; Anscombe GEM (1948). "A reply to Mr C. S. Lewis's argument that 'naturalism' is self-refuting." Socratic Digest; Reppert V (2003). C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. IVP.
  11. Plantinga A (1993). Warrant and Proper Function, ch. 12. Oxford UP; (2011). Where the Conflict Really Lies. Oxford UP; (2003). "Probability and defeaters." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84: 291-298.
  12. Fitelson B, Sober E (1998). "Plantinga's probability arguments against evolutionary naturalism." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79: 115-129; Beilby J (ed.) (2002). Naturalism Defeated? Cornell UP.
  13. Nagel T (2012). Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford UP. Reviews: Weisberg M, Leiter B, The Nation, 2012; Dupré J, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2012; Sober E, Boston Review, 2012.
  14. van Lommel P, van Wees R, Meyers V, Elfferich I (2001). "Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands." Lancet 358: 2039-2045 (Table 2 and the dentures account checked in the full text). doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07100-8
  15. Greyson B (2003). "Incidence and correlates of near-death experiences in a cardiac care unit." General Hospital Psychiatry 25: 269-276. doi:10.1016/S0163-8343(03)00042-2
  16. Parnia S, Spearpoint K, de Vos G, et al. (2014). "AWARE: AWAreness during REsuscitation, a prospective study." Resuscitation 85: 1799-1805. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2014.09.004
  17. Parnia S, Keshavarz Shirazi T, Patel J, et al. (2023). "AWAreness during REsuscitation II: a multi-center study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest." Resuscitation 191: 109903. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903
  18. Klemenc-Ketis Z, Kersnik J, Grmec S (2010). "The effect of carbon dioxide on near-death experiences in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors." Critical Care 14: R56. doi:10.1186/cc8952
  19. Kondziella D, Dreier JP, Olsen MH (2019). "Prevalence of near-death experiences in people with and without REM sleep intrusion." PeerJ 7: e7585. doi:10.7717/peerj.7585
  20. Greyson B (1983). "The near-death experience scale: construction, reliability, and validity." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171: 369-375.
  21. Sartori P, Badham P, Fenwick P (2006). "A prospectively studied near-death experience with corroborated out-of-body perceptions and unexplained healing." Journal of Near-Death Studies 25(2): 69-84 (read in full). UNT Digital Library; Sartori P (2008). The Near-Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients: A Five-Year Clinical Study. Edwin Mellen.
  22. Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research). "AWARE NDE Studies." psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk (a sympathetic secondary account).
  23. Greyson B, Holden JM, Mounsey JP (2006). "Failure to elicit near-death experiences in induced cardiac arrest." Journal of Near-Death Studies 25: 85-98.
  24. Smit RH (2008). "Corroboration of the dentures anecdote involving veridical perception in a near-death experience." Journal of Near-Death Studies 27(1): 47-61. UNT Digital Library
  25. Woerlee GM (2010). "Response to 'Corroboration of the dentures anecdote...'." Journal of Near-Death Studies 28(4): 181-191. UNT Digital Library
  26. Cook EW, Greyson B, Stevenson I (1998). "Do any near-death experiences provide evidence for the survival of human personality after death?" Journal of Scientific Exploration 12: 377-406.
  27. Sebel PS, Bowdle TA, Ghoneim MM, et al. (2004). "The incidence of awareness during anesthesia: a multicenter United States study." Anesthesia & Analgesia 99: 833-839. doi:10.1213/01.ANE.0000130261.90896.6C
  28. Sabom M (1998). Light and Death. Zondervan.
  29. Woerlee GM (2005). "An anaesthesiologist examines the Pam Reynolds story." The Skeptic (UK), parts 1-2. skeptic.org.uk; (2011). "Could Pam Reynolds hear?" and "Rejoinder to responses." Journal of Near-Death Studies 30(1).
  30. Augustine K (2007). "Does paranormal perception occur in near-death experiences?" Journal of Near-Death Studies 25(4), with commentaries and reply in 26(1).
  31. Ring K, Cooper S (1997). "Near-death and out-of-body experiences in the blind: a study of apparent eyeless vision." Journal of Near-Death Studies 16(2): 101-147 (read in full). UNT Digital Library; expanded as Mindsight (1999).
  32. Clark K (1984). "Clinical interventions with near-death experiencers." In Greyson B, Flynn CP (eds.), The Near-Death Experience: Problems, Prospects, Perspectives. Charles C. Thomas.
  33. Ebbern H, Mulligan S, Beyerstein BL (1996). "Maria's near-death experience: waiting for the other shoe to drop." Skeptical Inquirer 20(4): 27-33.
  34. Sharp KC (2007). "The other shoe drops: commentary on 'Does paranormal perception occur in near-death experiences?'." Journal of Near-Death Studies 25(4): 245-250. UNT Digital Library
  35. Holden JM (2009). "Veridical perception in near-death experiences." In Holden JM, Greyson B, James D (eds.), The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation. Praeger, pp. 185-211 (not read directly; summarized via the 2025 paper co-authored by Holden).
  36. Sabom M (2009). "What is a near death experience?" Christian Research Journal. equip.org; Sabom M (1982). Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. Harper & Row.
  37. Augustine K (2003, rev. 2008). "Hallucinatory near-death experiences." Internet Infidels. infidels.org
  38. Borjigin J, Lee U, Liu T, et al. (2013). "Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain." PNAS 110: 14432-14437. doi:10.1073/pnas.1308285110
  39. Xu G, Mihaylova T, Li D, et al. (2023). "Surge of neurophysiological coupling and connectivity of gamma oscillations in the dying human brain." PNAS 120: e2216268120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2216268120
  40. Shaw NA (2024). "The gamma-band activity model of the near-death experience: a critique and a reinterpretation." F1000Research. doi:10.12688/f1000research.151422.2
  41. Olaussen A, Shepherd M, Nehme Z, et al. (2015). "Return of consciousness during ongoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation: a systematic review." Resuscitation 86: 44-48. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2014.10.017
  42. Martial C, Cassol H, Charland-Verville V, et al. (2019). "Neurochemical models of near-death experiences: a large-scale study based on the semantic similarity of written reports." Consciousness and Cognition 69: 52-69. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2019.01.011
  43. Michael P, Luke D, Robinson O (2025). "An encounter with death: a comparative thematic and content analysis of naturalistic DMT experiences and the near-death experience." Frontiers in Psychology. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1532937
  44. Nelson KR, Mattingly M, Lee SA, Schmitt FA (2006). "Does the arousal system contribute to near death experience?" Neurology 66: 1003-1009. doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000204296.15607.37; criticized for its controls in Greyson B, Long JP, letter, Neurology 2006.
  45. Belanti J, Perera M, Jagadheesan K (2008). "Phenomenology of near-death experiences: a cross-cultural perspective." Transcultural Psychiatry 45: 121-133. doi:10.1177/1363461507088001
  46. Pasricha S, Stevenson I (1986). "Near-death experiences in India: a preliminary report." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 174: 165-170.
  47. Kellehear A, Stevenson I, Pasricha S, Cook E (1994). "The absence of tunnel sensations in near-death experiences from India." Journal of Near-Death Studies 13(2); replying to Blackmore S (1993), "Near-death experiences in India: they have tunnels too." Journal of Near-Death Studies 11: 205-217.
  48. Kellehear A (1996). Experiences Near Death: Beyond Medicine and Religion. Oxford UP.
  49. Bush NE, Greyson B (2014). "Distressing near-death experiences: the basics." Missouri Medicine 111: 486-491; Cassol H, et al. (2019). "A systematic analysis of distressing near-death experience accounts." Memory.
  50. Fritz P, et al. (2025). "Near-death experience during emergency ketamine use: a case report." Brain and Behavior. doi:10.1002/brb3.70939
  51. Mashour GA, Frank L, Batthyány A, et al. (2019). "Paradoxical lucidity: a potential paradigm shift for the neurobiology and treatment of severe dementias." Alzheimer's & Dementia 15: 1107-1114. doi:10.1016/j.jalz.2019.04.002
  52. Nahm M, Greyson B (2009). "Terminal lucidity in patients with chronic schizophrenia and dementia." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 197: 942-944; Nahm M, Greyson B, Kelly EW, Haraldsson E (2012). "Terminal lucidity: a review and a case collection." Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 55: 138-142; Batthyány A, Greyson B (2021). "Spontaneous remission of dementia before death." Psychology of Consciousness 8: 1-8.
  53. Roehrs P, Fenwick P, Greyson B, et al. (2024). "Terminal lucidity in a pediatric oncology clinic." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. doi:10.1097/NMD.0000000000001711
  54. Kelly EF, Kelly EW, Crabtree A, et al. (2007). Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Rowman & Littlefield; James W (1898). Human Immortality.
  55. Tegmark M (2000). "The importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes." Physical Review E 61: 4194-4206. arXiv:quant-ph/9907009
  56. Atmanspacher H. "Quantum approaches to consciousness." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (revised 2024). plato.stanford.edu
  57. The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (19 April 2024). sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration
  58. Schurger A, Sitt JD, Dehaene S (2012). "An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement." PNAS 109(42): E2904-E2913. doi:10.1073/pnas.1210467109
  59. Maoz U, Yaffe G, Koch C, Mudrik L (2019). "Neural precursors of decisions that matter: an ERP study of deliberate and arbitrary choice." eLife 8: e39787. doi:10.7554/eLife.39787
  60. Zheng J, Meister M (2025). "The unbearable slowness of being: why do we live at 10 bits/s?" Neuron 113(2): 192-204. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2024.11.008

Genesis 1, tested against science and every ancient creation story

  1. World English Bible (public domain): Genesis 1-2 and 7:11; Psalms 74:13-14 and 148:4; Job 37:18. ebible.org/eng-web
  2. Our calculation: truth/research/calc/05-sequence_scoring.py (Python) and its output 05-sequence_scoring.out.txt; the snapshot test, the cosmic-waters reading and the birds and creeping-things codings are in 05-lt_checks.py and 05-lt_checks.out.txt, which load the same data. Every event date, every text's coding and every reading is a line in the script, so any cell can be changed and re-run. The permutation histogram on this page uses the script's own tau_test function and random seed (it reproduces p = 0.0109 exactly).
  3. Planck Collaboration (2020). "Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters." Astronomy & Astrophysics 641: A6 (age 13.787 ± 0.020 Gyr). arXiv:1807.06209
  4. Ross, H. (9 October 2020). "What are the scientific dates for the starts and ends of the six creation days?" Reasons to Believe. reasons.org
  5. Bromm, V. & Yoshida, N. (2011). "The First Galaxies." Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 49: 373 (first stars about 100-250 Myr after the Big Bang).
  6. Connelly, J. N. et al. (2012). "The absolute chronology and thermal processing of solids in the solar protoplanetary disk." Science 338: 651 (4,567.3 Ma).
  7. Wilde, S. A. et al. (2001). Nature 409: 175; Mojzsis, S. J. et al. (2001). Nature 409: 178 (Hadean zircons: liquid water by about 4.4-4.3 Ga).
  8. Chowdhury, P. et al. (2021). "Magmatic thickening of crust in non-plate tectonic settings initiated the subaerial rise of Earth's first continents 3.3 to 3.2 billion years ago." PNAS 118(46): e2105746118.
  9. Bindeman, I. N. et al. (2018). "Rapid emergence of subaerial landmasses and onset of a modern hydrologic cycle 2.5 billion years ago." Nature 557: 545.
  10. Morris, J. L. et al. (2018). "The timescale of early land plant evolution." PNAS 115: E2274.
  11. Herendeen, P. S. et al. (2017). "Palaeobotanical redux: revisiting the age of the angiosperms." Nature Plants 3: 17015 (earliest accepted angiosperm pollen about 130 Ma).
  12. International Commission on Stratigraphy. International Chronostratigraphic Chart v2023/09 (base of the Cambrian 538.8 Ma).
  13. Schachat, S. R. et al. (2023). "Illusion of flight? Absence, evidence and the age of winged insects." Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 138(2): 143-168, on fossil (about 328-324 Ma) versus molecular dates. Smithsonian repository
  14. Niedźwiedzki, G. et al. (2010). "Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland." Nature 463: 43.
  15. Hublin, J.-J. et al. (2017). "New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens." Nature 546: 289 (about 315 ka).
  16. King, L. W. (1902). The Seven Tablets of Creation. London: Luzac (Enuma Elish, Tablets I, IV-VI). sacred-texts.com/ane/stc
  17. Lambert, W. G. (2013). Babylonian Creation Myths. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns (Tablet V: the earth from Tiamat's other half).
  18. Budge, E. A. W. (1912). Legends of the Gods, "The Legend of the God Neb-er-tcher, and the History of Creation" (Bremner-Rhind papyrus). sacred-texts.com
  19. Allen, J. P. (1988). Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts. Yale; Pinch, G. (2002). Egyptian Mythology (Hermopolis).
  20. Hesiod, Theogony 116-138, 371-374, tr. H. G. Evelyn-White (Loeb, 1914). Project Gutenberg #348
  21. Aristophanes, Birds 693ff., in The Complete Greek Drama (1938). classics.mit.edu
  22. West, M. L. (1983). The Orphic Poems. Oxford: Clarendon (the Rhapsodic theogony).
  23. Rig Veda 10.129 and 10.90, tr. R. T. H. Griffith (1896). 10.129, 10.90
  24. Bundahishn, tr. E. W. West, Sacred Books of the East 5 (1897), ch. 1-2, 12. avesta.org
  25. Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 5-9, tr. A. G. Brodeur (1916). sacred-texts.com
  26. Leeming, D. (2005). "Chinese mythology." The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, as quoted at mit.edu; Birrell, A. (1993). Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Johns Hopkins.
  27. Christenson, A. J. (2007). Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya, electronic edition. mesoweb.com
  28. Grey, G. (1855). Polynesian Mythology, "The Children of Heaven and Earth." sacred-texts.com
  29. Plato, Timaeus, tr. B. Jowett. classics.mit.edu
  30. Lucretius, De rerum natura 5, tr. W. E. Leonard (1916). classics.mit.edu
  31. Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. & Schofield, M. (1983). The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. Cambridge (Anaximander: DK 12A10, A27, A30).
  32. Lambert, W. G. & Millard, A. R. (1969). Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Oxford: Clarendon.
  33. The Memphite Theology (Shabaka Stone), tr. M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature I (1973), 51-57. attalus.org
  34. Hasel, G. F. (1972). "The Significance of the Cosmology in Genesis I in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Parallels." Andrews University Seminary Studies 10: 1-20 (quoting G. von Rad, Genesis, p. 53). biblicalelearning.org
  35. Tsumura, D. T. (2005). Creation and Destruction: A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
  36. Seely, P. H. (1991, 1992). "The Firmament and the Water Above." Westminster Theological Journal 53: 227-240 and 54: 31-46.
  37. Poythress, V. S. (2015). "Rain Water versus a Heavenly Sea in Genesis 1:6-8." Westminster Theological Journal 77.
  38. Collins, C. J. (2006). Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary. P&R; (2018). Reading Genesis Well. Zondervan.
  39. Kline, M. G. (1996). "Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony." Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 48: 2-15. asa3.org
  40. Walton, J. H. (2009). The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. IVP Academic.
  41. Young, D. A. (1987). "Scripture in the Hands of Geologists." Westminster Theological Journal 49.
  42. Lamoureux, D. O. (2008). Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. Wipf & Stock.
  43. Origen, De principiis IV.16, tr. F. Crombie, Ante-Nicene Fathers 4 (1885). newadvent.org
  44. Strong's Hebrew 6153 'ereb, "evening" (from 6150), and 6154 'ereb, "mixture, woof" (from 6148), with Brown-Driver-Briggs. biblehub.com/hebrew/6153, 6154
  45. Lyons, T. W., Reinhard, C. T. & Planavsky, N. J. (2014). "The rise of oxygen in Earth's early ocean and atmosphere." Nature 506: 307-315.

Science in Scripture: a whole-text audit

  1. S. I. McMillen, None of These Diseases (Revell, 1963; rev. with D. E. Stern, 1984); R. Comfort, Scientific Facts in the Bible (Bridge-Logos, 2001); R. T. Boyd, Boyd's Handbook of Practical Apologetics (1997). The claims as quoted by their users; not checked against every edition.
  2. Our scoring script and its output: truth/research/calc/06-audit.py and 06-audit.out.txt (all 60 items with their S, A and R scores, the exclusions and the likelihood model).
  3. World English Bible (public domain), verse texts via bible-api.com (translation=web).
  4. Brown-Driver-Briggs, chug (Strong's H2329): "vault; — only of vault of the heavens", at Job 22:14, Prov 8:27, Isa 40:22. biblehub.com/hebrew/2329.htm (checked).
  5. Babylonian Map of the World, British Museum BM 92687 (first millennium BC). Summary: Wikipedia.
  6. Brown-Driver-Briggs, dur (Strong's H1754): "circle, ball", the sense "ball" at Isa 22:18. biblehub.com/hebrew/1754.htm (checked).
  7. Aristotle, On the Heavens II.14, tr. J. L. Stocks: "in eclipses the outline is always curved". MIT Classics (checked).
  8. D. L. Couprie, "Anaximander", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. iep.utm.edu/anaximander (checked).
  9. "Invasion of the Bible Snatchers: Ray Comfort's 'Scientific Facts in the Bible' – Paths of the Seas", Amateur Exegete (2 Jul 2020), with page citations to the primary texts. amateurexegete.com (checked).
  10. D. F. M. Corbin, A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury (1888), pp. 22-23, 158; K. C. Stiles, introduction to R. L. Maury, A Brief Sketch of the Work of Matthew Fontaine Maury during the War 1861-1865 (1915), p. 3. Both checked in the archive.org scans (Corbin pp. 22-23, 158-160; Stiles p. 3).
  11. R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (1985), pp. 15-16, on the line as poetry for sea creatures. Via source 9.
  12. BCSH Haemostasis and Thrombosis Task Force, "The investigation and management of neonatal haemostasis and thrombosis", Br J Haematol 2002;119:295-309; Table I reproduces M. Andrew et al., Blood 1987;70:165-172 (term infants), Table III Andrew et al., Blood 1988;72:1651-1657 (preterm). PDF.
  13. Our interpolation and comparison: truth/research/calc/06-prothrombin.py and 06-prothrombin.out.txt.
  14. Talk.Origins Index to Creationist Claims, CH135.1, citing B. Zipursky, Br J Haematol 1999;104:430-437. talkorigins.org (checked).
  15. E. A. Carson & N. Toodayan, "Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818-1865): herald of hygienic medicine", Medical Journal of Australia 209(11): 480-482, 2018 (11.4% in 1846 to 1.3% in 1848; 1.27% is 45 deaths in 3,556 births, Semmelweis's own 1848 figures). mja.com.au.
  16. "Controlling epidemics in the Ancient Near East", CSMC Hamburg, Mesopotamian Bulletins, 29 Feb 2020, quoting J.-M. Durand, Documents épistolaires du palais de Mari III (LAPO 18), nos. 1163-1165. csmc.uni-hamburg.de (checked).
  17. Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Leprosy", Jewish Virtual Library; "Biblical leprosy: a dermatologist's perspective", Hektoen International (2023), hekint.org.
  18. "Chewing the Cud", Ministry (Aug 1968), citing a 1955 Science note on caecotrophy. ministrymagazine.org.
  19. J. Arditti & A. K. A. Ghani, "Numerical and physical properties of orchid seeds and their biological implications", New Phytologist 145 (2000): 367-421 (0.31-24 µg); black mustard seed (about 1-4 mg): PROSEA, Brassica nigra, prosea.prota4u.org.
  20. H. Ross with J. Rea, "Big Bang—The Bible Taught It First!", Reasons to Believe, 1 July 2000 (seven participles; four completed forms, counting Isaiah 48:13). reasons.org (checked).
  21. Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: the Westminster Leningrad Codex (4.20) with morphology tags. github.com/openscriptures/morphhb (checked).
  22. Our verb-form and Genesis 1:1 checks: truth/research/calc/06-natah.py and 06-natah.out.txt (every verse with natah and "the heavens"; Isaiah 48:13; the participle controls; Genesis 1:1 counts).
  23. John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, tr. J. King, on Gen 1:6 and 1:16. CCEL (checked).
  24. Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615). Internet Modern History Sourcebook (checked).
  25. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram I.19.39 (paraphrased, not quoted).
  26. G. F. Hasel, "The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology", Evangelical Quarterly 46 (1974): 81-102.
  27. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925), ch. 1. Project Gutenberg #68611 (checked).
  28. M. B. Foster, "The Christian doctrine of creation and the rise of modern natural science", Mind 43 (1934); R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (1972); P. Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge UP, 1998) and The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (2007); J. Hannam, God's Philosophers (2009); R. Stark, For the Glory of God (Princeton UP, 2003).
  29. N. Efron, "Myth 9: That Christianity Gave Birth to Modern Science", in R. L. Numbers (ed.), Galileo Goes to Jail (Harvard UP, 2009); D. C. Lindberg, review of Hooykaas (1975) and The Beginnings of Western Science (2nd ed., 2007); C. Freeman, review of Hannam, New Humanist; P. Harrison, "Voluntarism and early modern science", History of Science 40 (2002): 63-89, with J. Henry's reply, History of Science 47 (2009): 79-113.

The Old Testament as history, and how its text was kept

  1. "Scholar's Chair Interview: Dr. Lawrence J. Mykytiuk." Bible Archaeology Report, 2 October 2020. biblearchaeologyreport.com [read]
  2. This site's scoring script, truth/research/calc/07-synchronisms.py: every row and score is in the table on this page, and its output is reproduced verbatim under "The analysis".
  3. Bible Gateway Blog, interview with Lawrence Mykytiuk, 5 March 2014. biblegateway.com [read]
  4. Mykytiuk, L. J. (2004). Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. SBL Academia Biblica 12. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. [cited]
  5. Mykytiuk, L. J. "53 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically." Bible History Daily, Biblical Archaeology Society (from BAR 40:2, 2014, and BAR 43:3, 2017; updated 22 March 2026). biblicalarchaeology.org [read]
  6. Pritchard, J. B., ed. (1969). Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. Princeton University Press (Kurkh monolith pp. 278-279; Tiglath-pileser III pp. 283-284; Sennacherib pp. 287-288). [cited]
  7. Thiele, E. R. (1983). The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. [cited]
  8. Biran, A. & Naveh, J. (1993). "An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan." Israel Exploration Journal 43: 81-98; and (1995) "The Tel Dan Inscription: A New Fragment." IEJ 45: 1-18. [cited]
  9. Sennacherib's account of his campaign of 701 BC (the prism), in O. J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources I (1907), Fordham University Internet Ancient History Sourcebook. sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu [read]
  10. Ussishkin, D. (1982). The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib. Tel Aviv University. [cited]
  11. ABC 5, the "Jerusalem Chronicle" (BM 21946), translation after A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975), at Livius. livius.org [read]
  12. Weidner, E. F. (1939). "Jojachin, König von Juda, in babylonischen Keilschrifttexten." Mélanges syriens offerts à M. René Dussaud II: 923-935. [cited]
  13. Hasel, M. G. (1994). "Israel in the Merneptah Stela." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 296: 45-61. [cited]
  14. Lemaire, A. (1994). "'House of David' Restored in Moabite Inscription." Biblical Archaeology Review 20:3. [cited]
  15. Frumkin, A., Shimron, A. & Rosenbaum, J. (2003). "Radiometric Dating of the Siloam Tunnel, Jerusalem." Nature 425: 169-171. [cited]
  16. Mazar, E. Reports on the Hezekiah bulla (2015) and on the "Isaiah" bulla, Biblical Archaeology Review 44:2 (2018); with C. Rollston's and H. Misgav's responses as reported by Smithsonian and National Geographic, February 2018. [cited]
  17. Torczyner, H. (1938). Lachish I: The Lachish Letters. Oxford University Press. [cited]
  18. Barkay, G., Vaughn, A. G., Lundberg, M. J. & Zuckerman, B. (2004). "The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation." BASOR 334: 41-71; and Na'aman, N. (2011), Israel Exploration Journal 61. [cited]
  19. Finkel, I., ed. (2013). The Cyrus Cylinder. London: I. B. Tauris. [cited]
  20. Garfinkel, Y., Streit, K., Ganor, S. & Hasel, M. G. (2012). "State Formation in Judah: Biblical Tradition, Modern Historical Theories, and Radiometric Dates at Khirbet Qeiyafa." Radiocarbon 54. [cited]
  21. Finkelstein, I. & Piasetzky, E. (2010). "Khirbet Qeiyafa: Absolute Chronology." Tel Aviv 37; Finkelstein, I. & Fantalkin, A. (2012). "Khirbet Qeiyafa: An Unsensational Archaeological and Historical Interpretation." Tel Aviv 39. [cited]
  22. Miller, J. M. (1966). "The Elisha Cycle and the Accounts of the Omride Wars." Journal of Biblical Literature 85. [cited]
  23. Kitchen, K. A. (2003). On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; with reviews by R. Hess (Denver Journal, 2004), R. Plant (Themelios) and N. P. Lemche. [cited]
  24. Hoffmeier, J. K. (1997). Israel in Egypt; (2005). Ancient Israel in Sinai. Oxford University Press. [cited]
  25. Finkelstein, I. & Silberman, N. A. (2001). The Bible Unearthed. New York: Free Press. [cited]
  26. Dever, W. G. (2003). Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. [cited]
  27. Faust, A. (2015). "The Emergence of Israel and Theories of Ethnogenesis." In Levy, Schneider & Propp, eds., Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective. Springer. [cited]
  28. Kenyon, K. M. (1957). Digging Up Jericho. London: Benn. [cited]
  29. Wood, B. G. (1990). "Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?" Biblical Archaeology Review 16:2. [cited]
  30. Bruins, H. J. & van der Plicht, J. (1995). "Tell es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon Results of Short-lived Cereal and Multiyear Charcoal Samples from the End of the Middle Bronze Age." Radiocarbon 37; and (1996) "The Exodus Enigma." Nature 382: 213-214. [cited]
  31. Callaway, J. A. (1968). "New Evidence on the Conquest of 'Ai." Journal of Biblical Literature 87. [cited]
  32. Finkelstein, I. (1996). "The Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View." Levant 28: 177-187. [cited]
  33. Mazar, A. (2005). "The Debate over the Chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant." In Levy & Higham, eds., The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating. London: Equinox. [cited]
  34. Regev, J., Gadot, Y., Uziel, J. et al. (2024). "Radiocarbon chronology of Iron Age Jerusalem reveals calibration offsets and architectural developments." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121(19): e2321024121. doi:10.1073/pnas.2321024121 [read: abstract]; on the debate over what it means for David's Jerusalem, "C14 evidence for a larger Davidic Jerusalem?", PaleoJudaica, 30 April 2024, paleojudaica.blogspot.com [read]
  35. Sapir-Hen, L. & Ben-Yosef, E. (2013). "The Introduction of Domestic Camels to the Southern Levant." Tel Aviv 40. [cited]
  36. Finkelstein, I. (1988). The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. [cited]
  37. Ben-Yosef, E. (2019). "The Architectural Bias in Current Biblical Archaeology." Vetus Testamentum 69. [cited]
  38. Tov, E. (2012). Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress. [cited]
  39. Abegg, M., Flint, P. & Ulrich, E. (1999). The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. [cited]
  40. Ferguson, A. (2021). "Appreciating the Diverse Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls." Text & Canon Institute, 7 November 2021 (citing Tov in Dávid & Lange, eds., Qumran and the Bible, Peeters 2010, 49-50). textandcanon.org [read]
  41. Bonani, G. et al. (1992). "Radiocarbon Dating of Fourteen Dead Sea Scrolls." Radiocarbon 34; Jull, A. J. T. et al. (1995). "Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert." Radiocarbon 37. [cited]
  42. Kutscher, E. Y. (1974). The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa). Leiden: Brill. [cited]
  43. Benner, J. A. "The Great Isaiah Scroll and the Masoretic Text." Ancient Hebrew Research Center. ancient-hebrew.org [read]
  44. Gonçalves, F. J. (1992). "Isaiah Scroll, The." Anchor Bible Dictionary 3. New York: Doubleday. [cited]
  45. Herodotus, Histories Book 2, tr. G. Rawlinson. Wikisource. en.wikisource.org [read]
  46. Shaw, I., ed. (2000). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press (regnal dates used in the comparison). [cited]
  47. Glueck, N. (1959). Rivers in the Desert. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy. [cited]
  48. Archer, G. L. A Survey of Old Testament Introduction. Chicago: Moody (cited for the "95%" claim). [cited]
  49. Geisler, N. & Nix, W. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago: Moody (cited for the "17 letters" claim). [cited]
  50. World English Bible (public domain), ebible.org/eng-web: all Bible quotations on this page. [read]

Prophecies about nations, empires and Israel

  1. Payne, J. Barton, Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy (Harper & Row, 1973). The 1,817 predictions and 8,352 verses as reported by Christian Courier; the 737 subjects from the publisher's description; 27% is 8,352 of the Bible's roughly 31,100 verses. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  2. Hayes, J. H. (1968). "The Usage of Oracles against Foreign Nations in Ancient Israel." JBL 87: 81-92. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  3. Our whole-universe and blind checks: truth/research/calc/08-whole-universe-blind.py and its output, with the blind inputs and codes (08-blind-AB-input.tsv, 08-blind-AB-coding.tsv, 08-blind-C-universe.tsv, 08-blind-C-coding.tsv) and the group map fixed before coding (08-blind-C-map.tsv). The method follows the blind, pre-registered messianic-prophecy test (omega.logos.so, ceiling route c10: omega/research/ceiling/c10-salvation/RECORD.md). Promise wording checked against the World English Bible.
  4. Our scoring script and its output: truth/research/calc/08-historical-prophecy-lr.py (all 94 rows, the base-rate lists, the model and every run) and 08-historical-prophecy-lr.out.txt.
  5. World English Bible (public domain), ebible.org/eng-web. All Bible quotations on this page. Read by us.
  6. Josephus, Against Apion 1.154-160 (Whiston), lexundria.com. Read by us.
  7. Josephus, Antiquities 10.180-182 and 10.227-229 (Whiston), lexundria.com. Read by us.
  8. Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 2.15-24 (the siege of Tyre, 332 BC). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  9. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 2.26-27 (Nineveh, from Ctesias) and 19.61 (Antigonus at Tyre). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  10. Till, F. (1999). "The Tyre Prophecy Again." The Skeptical Review, March-April, reposted at isitgodsword.blogspot.com. Read by us.
  11. Stoner, P. W., Science Speaks, ch. 2 "Prophetic Accuracy", sciencespeaks.dstoner.net; and D. W. Stoner's note on the probability numerators, sciencespeaks.dstoner.net. Read by us.
  12. The Babylonian Chronicles (ABC 3, fall of Nineveh; ABC 5, Nebuchadnezzar; ABC 7, the Nabonidus Chronicle), the Cyrus Cylinder and Sennacherib's prism. Grayson, A. K., Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975); translations at livius.org. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  13. Strabo, Geography 16.1.5 (Loeb), penelope.uchicago.edu. Read by us.
  14. Cassius Dio, Roman History 68.30 (Loeb), penelope.uchicago.edu. Read by us.
  15. BM 33041 (Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year, against Egypt), discussed at jhalsey.com. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  16. Kahn, D. (2018), on Nebuchadnezzar's failed campaigns against Egypt (title not verified). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  17. Herodotus, Histories 1.191; 2.177; 3.159. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  18. Josephus, Antiquities 13.62-73 (Onias and Leontopolis; Whiston), lexundria.com, Read by us. Antiquities 13.257 (Hyrcanus and Idumea): Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  19. Dalley, S. and Goguel, A. (1997). "The Sela' Sculpture: A Neo-Babylonian Rock Relief in Southern Jordan." ADAJ 41. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  20. Polybius 31.9; 1 Maccabees 6; 2 Maccabees 9 (the death of Antiochus IV). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  21. Coşkun, A. (2019). "The Chronology of the Desecration of the Temple and the Prophecies of Daniel 7-12 Reconsidered." Historia 68: 436-462, hdl.handle.net/10012/18089. Abstract read by us.
  22. Popović, M., et al. (2025). "Dating ancient manuscripts using radiocarbon and AI-based writing style analysis." PLOS ONE 20(6): e0323185, journals.plos.org; and the University of Groningen press release, "Dead Sea Scrolls older than previously thought" (June 2025). Read by us.
  23. Associates for Biblical Research, "Dead Sea Scroll 4Q114 and the Date of Daniel", biblearchaeology.org. Read by us. (Apologetic; overstates the paper.)
  24. Kitchen, K. A. (1965). "The Aramaic of Daniel." In Wiseman et al., Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel (Tyndale). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  25. Collins, J. J., Daniel (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1993). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  26. Grayson, A. K., Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts (1975): the Dynastic Prophecy. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  27. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, prologue (preserving Porphyry's argument). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  28. Josephus, Antiquities 11.1-18 (Cyrus and Isaiah; Whiston), lexundria.com. Read by us.
  29. Leuchter, M. (2004). "Jeremiah's 70-Year Prophecy and the ATBASH Codes." Biblica 85: 503-522, bsw.org. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  30. Lewis, D. M., The Origins of Christian Zionism (Cambridge, 2010). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  31. Kloppenborg, J. S. (2005). "Evocatio Deorum and the Date of Mark." JBL 124: 419-450. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  32. Crossley, J. G., The Date of Mark's Gospel (T&T Clark, 2004). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  33. Sanders, E. P., Jesus and Judaism (Fortress, 1985), ch. 1. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  34. Josephus, Jewish War 6.300-305 (Whiston), lexundria.com. Read by us.
  35. Schweitzer, A., The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906; English 1910); Allison, D. C., Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Fortress, 1998); Ehrman, B. D., Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (OUP, 1999). Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.
  36. Cross, F. M., Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Harvard, 1973), ch. 10. Cited from the scholarly literature; not read by us.

Messianic prophecy: a whole-text test against cherry-picking

  1. The blind, pre-registered run (omega.logos.so, ceiling route c10): omega/research/ceiling/c10-salvation/PROTOCOL.md (written before any new data), RECORD.md (the review's rulings, the numbers on this page and the agreed wording), the feature list omega/research/calc/ceiling-c10-UB-features-edited.csv, the coding ceiling-c10-UB-coding.csv, and the model and checks ceiling-c10-prophecy-blind.py, ceiling-c10-S2-checks.py with their outputs. Every script was re-run and reproduced its output exactly.
  2. Analysis files for this page: truth/research/calc/09-blind-c10.py (recounts every count quoted from the blind run's data, and the roll-up arithmetic); the first run's 09-universe.csv (33 features × 15 candidates, with the basis of every base rate), 09-prophecy_test.py and 09-daniel9.py, and their outputs. Numbers without another citation come from these runs.
  3. J. J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 2010). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  4. Psalms of Solomon 17-18, tr. K. Atkinson, in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford, 2007). Phrases checked against secondary summaries.
  5. 4Q521 (“Messianic Apocalypse”), tr. G. Strathearn (2011); L. Novakovic, “4Q521: The Works of the Messiah or the Signs of Messianic Times?” (Eerdmans, 2007). Cited from secondary sources.
  6. 11QMelchizedek (11Q13), in G. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin, 2004). Cited via a secondary summary.
  7. Josephus, Jewish War 6.5.4 (6.312-313), tr. W. Whiston. penelope.uchicago.edu. Quotation checked.
  8. A. J. T. Jull et al., “Radiocarbon Dating of Scrolls and Linen Fragments from the Judean Desert”, Radiocarbon 37 (1995); E. Ulrich, P. Flint, M. Abegg, Qumran Cave 1.II: The Isaiah Scrolls (DJD 32, Oxford, 2010). Cited via a secondary summary.
  9. J. J. Collins, “The Background of the ‘Son of God’ Text”, Bulletin for Biblical Research 7 (1997). Cited from the abstract.
  10. R. Eisenman and M. Wise; G. Vermes, exchange on 4Q285, Biblical Archaeology Review 18:6 (1992) and 19:1 (1993). Cited from secondary sources.
  11. Tacitus, Annals 15.44 and Histories 5.13; Suetonius, Vespasian 4.5. Standard references.
  12. Targum Jonathan on Isaiah 52:13-53:12, tr. C. W. H. Pauli, The Chaldee Paraphrase on the Prophet Isaiah (London, 1871), Sefaria; Targum Onkelos, Genesis 49:10, Sefaria. Quotation checked.
  13. P. W. Stoner, Science Speaks, ch. 3, “The Christ of Prophecy”. sciencespeaks.dstoner.net. Read; arithmetic recomputed.
  14. Josephus, Antiquities 20.97-102 (Theudas; the sons of Judas), 20.169-172 (the Egyptian), tr. W. Whiston. penelope.uchicago.edu. Read.
  15. Josephus, Antiquities 17.271-285, 18.4-10, 18.63-64, 18.116-119; Jewish War 2.261-263, 2.433-448, 4.503-584, 7.153-155. Standard references.
  16. Jerusalem Talmud, Taanit 4:5, tr. H. Guggenheimer. Sefaria. Quotation checked.
  17. G. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton, 1973). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  18. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98b-99a, William Davidson ed. (Steinsaltz). Sefaria. Quotations checked.
  19. World English Bible (public domain), including the Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Maccabees. ebible.org/eng-web; deuterocanonical quotations checked via bible-api.com.
  20. R. A. Horsley and J. S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs (1985). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  21. J. J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia, Fortress, 1993). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  22. H. W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Zondervan, 1977). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  23. Pew Research Center, “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020” (9 June 2025). pewresearch.org. Read.
  24. P. W. Flint, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Abingdon, 2013), 66-67, on Isaiah 53:11. Cited from the scholarly literature.
  25. Origen, Against Celsus 1.55, tr. F. Crombie, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 4. New Advent. Quotation checked.
  26. Isaiah 52:13-53:12 scored whole: omega.logos.so, salvation cluster record, omega/research/dev/salvation/RECORD.md §7.3 and Ruling 2, with omega/research/calc/salvation-n61-framework-vector.py (section 5 of its output). Daniel's collective reading of the servant there follows H. L. Ginsberg (1953) and M. Hengel with D. P. Bailey (2004), via M. Z. Brettler and A.-J. Levine (2019); cited from secondary sources.
  27. T. Singer, “Who is God’s Suffering Servant? The Rabbinic Interpretation of Isaiah 53”, Outreach Judaism (30 April 2014). outreachjudaism.org. Read.
  28. Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52a, William Davidson ed. (Steinsaltz). Sefaria. Quotation checked.
  29. B. Janowski and P. Stuhlmacher (eds), The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (Eerdmans, 2004).
  30. B. A. Strawn, “Psalm 22:17b: More Guessing”, Journal of Biblical Literature 119 (2000). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  31. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 11:4, tr. E. Touger. Sefaria. Quotation checked.
  32. J. D. Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  33. H. J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot (1965). Cited from the scholarly literature.
  34. A. Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Appendix IX. juchre.org. Quotation checked.

Typology: patterns tested against controls

  1. Goodacre, M. "Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative." In van Oyen & Shepherd (eds.), The Trial and Death of Jesus (Peeters, 2006), 33–47. DukeSpace. Crossan, J. D. Who Killed Jesus? (1995). Cited from the scholarly literature; not re-checked by us.
  2. Josephus, Antiquities 20.97–99 (Theudas), tr. Whiston. lexundria.com. Read. Ant. 20.169–172 (the Egyptian) not re-checked.
  3. Levenson, J. D. The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (Yale, 1993). Not re-checked by us.
  4. "Lincoln–Kennedy coincidences urban legend." Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org. Read.
  5. "Our 'Spooky Presidential Coincidences Contest' Winners." Skeptical Inquirer 17 (Winter 1993): 212–213. PDF. Read.
  6. Rankin, J. E. "Moses and Joshua," sermon, Winthrop Church, Charlestown, 19 April 1865. Remembering Lincoln catalogue (catalogue entry read). On Moses in the Lincoln memorial sermons: Lincoln Lore (not re-checked).
  7. Deedat, A. What the Bible Says about Muhammad (1976). Not re-checked by us. Deuteronomy 18:15, 18 quoted from the World English Bible, ebible.org.
  8. Jerusalem Talmud, Ta'anit 4:5 (68d), tr. H. Guggenheimer, Sefaria. Quotation checked. Schäfer, P. The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered (2003). Not re-checked by us.
  9. Plato, Republic 361e–362a, tr. Paul Shorey. Perseus. Read (the closing clause).
  10. 1QpHab (the Habakkuk Commentary) 7:1–5. Cited by reference; not re-checked by us.
  11. "Rank–Raglan hero archetype." Wikipedia, summarizing Raglan, The Hero (1936), Dundes (1977/1990), Sienkewicz and Utley (1965). en.wikipedia.org. Summary read. Carrier, R. On the Historicity of Jesus (2014), not re-checked.
  12. King James Version (public domain), machine-readable text: thiagobodruk/bible, en_kjv.json. Read by our script.
  13. Our scripts, 10-typology-controls.py (base rates, lexical scan with controls, random-figure null, chance model; seeded, but the random null still varies slightly between runs) and 10-typology-lr.py (likelihood ratio and Monte Carlo). All numbers on this page are from their saved output.
  14. Tacitus, Annals 15.44. Cited by reference.
  15. Josephus, Jewish War 2.223–227, tr. Whiston. lexundria.com. Read. Antiquities 17.213–218 (Archelaus) not re-checked.
  16. Ilan, T. Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity I (2002), via Bauckham, R. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006), ch. 4. Not re-checked by us.
  17. Fitzmyer, J. A. "The Sacrifice of Isaac in Qumran Literature." Biblica 83 (2002): 211–229. bsw.org. Abstract and final page read. VanderKam, J. C. "The Aqedah, Jubilees, and PseudoJubilees" (1997), not re-checked. Genesis 22 and 2 Chronicles 3 quoted from the World English Bible, ebible.org.
  18. Humphreys, C. J. & Waddington, W. G. "Dating the Crucifixion." Nature 306 (1983): 743–746. Brown, R. E. The Death of the Messiah (1994). Not re-checked by us.
  19. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, Soncino translation with notes. halakhah.com. Read.
  20. Schäfer, P. Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, 2007). Not re-checked by us.
  21. Sandmel, S. "Parallelomania." Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 1–13. Not re-checked by us.
  22. 4Q175 (4QTestimonia), content summary with Vermes' translation linked: virtualreligion.net (summary read). 11Q13 (11QMelchizedek): Wikipedia and translations by García Martínez–Tigchelaar and VanderKam; 1QS 9:11; 4Q174; 4Q252; Psalms of Solomon 17; Wisdom 16:6–7; m. Menaḥot 10:3; b. Sukkah 52a (cited by reference; not re-checked). Mitchell, D. C. "The Fourth Deliverer: A Josephite Messiah in 4QTestimonia." Biblica 86 (2005): 545–553 (not re-checked).
  23. Hays, R. B. Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989) and Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (2016); Allison, D. C. The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (1993). Not re-checked by us. New Testament verses quoted from the World English Bible.

Are the Gospels reliable history?

  1. Bible quotations: the World English Bible (public domain), ebible.org/eng-web. Its footnote to Matthew 6:13 reads "NU omits" the closing doxology (NU: the Nestle-Aland/UBS critical text). Checked: read.
  2. Leggett, K. & G. Paulson (2023). "How many Greek New Testament manuscripts are there, really? The latest numbers." INTF blog, Münster. ntvmr.uni-muenster.de. The page did not load for us; figures as tabulated by Gurry (next source).
  3. Gurry, P. J. (2023). "How many Greek NT manuscripts are there?" (25 Oct) and "Explaining a Discrepancy in the Number of Greek NT Manuscripts" (2 Nov). Evangelical Textual Criticism blog. 25 Oct post; INTF label. Checked: read in full.
  4. Ehrman, B. D. (2017). "What we now know about the manuscripts of the New Testament." The Bart Ehrman Blog, 14 Feb. ehrmanblog.org. Checked: read in full.
  5. Jones, C. (2012). "The Bibliographical Test Updated." Christian Research Journal 35(3). equip.org. Compiles the classical counts from M. L. West (2001), T. W. Allen (1931), Brumbaugh & Wells (1968), V. Brown (1979), L. D. Reynolds (1983) and D. Potter (1999). Checked: read in full. (The classical editions themselves: not yet checked by us.)
  6. On Homeric papyri in the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (about 2,000). Pylon (Heidelberg), 2025. journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  7. Nongbri, B. (2005). "The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel." Harvard Theological Review 98: 23-48. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  8. Nongbri, B. (2020). "Palaeography, Precision and Publicity: Further Thoughts on P.Ryl. III.457 (P52)." New Testament Studies 66(4): 471-499. cambridge.org. Checked: abstract only.
  9. Orsini, P. & W. Clarysse (2012). "Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography." Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 88: 443-474. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  10. Colomo, D. & D. Obbink (eds.) (2018). P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5345 (P137). The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 83. Oxford portal. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  11. Nongbri, B. (2014). "The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri: Some Observations on the Date and Provenance of P.Bodmer II (P66)." Museum Helveticum 71: 1-35. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  12. Nongbri, B. (2016). "Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV-XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament." Journal of Biblical Literature 135: 405-437. Checked: abstract only (via the Macquarie University repository record).
  13. Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperSanFrancisco. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  14. Gurry, P. J. (2016). "The Number of Variants in the Greek New Testament: A Proposed Estimate." New Testament Studies 62: 97-121. repository.cam.ac.uk. Checked: abstract only. The 500,000 figure as reported by D. B. Wallace, danielbwallace.com.
  15. Lanier, G. R. (2018). "Quantifying New Testament Textual Variants: Key Witnesses in Acts and the Catholic Letters." New Testament Studies 64. cambridge.org. Checked: abstract only.
  16. Wallace, D. B., interviewed by J. Taylor, part 4. The Gospel Coalition. thegospelcoalition.org. Checked: read in full.
  17. Ehrman, B. D. (2009). Jesus, Interrupted; (2011). Forged: Writing in the Name of God. HarperOne. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  18. Sherwin-White, A. N. (1963). Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  19. Crossley, J. (2004). The Date of Mark's Gospel. T&T Clark. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  20. Robinson, J. A. T. (1976). Redating the New Testament. SCM. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  21. Seccombe, D. (2020). On the date of Acts. Tyndale Bulletin. tyndalebulletin.org. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  22. Pervo, R. I. (2006). Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists. Polebridge. westarinstitute.org. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  23. Bauckham, R. (2006; 2nd ed. 2017). Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Eerdmans. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  24. Hengel, M. (1985). Studies in the Gospel of Mark. SCM. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  25. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15 (quoting Papias on Mark). Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  26. Ilan, T. (2002). Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I: Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE; Part III: The Western Diaspora (2008). Mohr Siebeck. Machine-readable data: eRabbinica (GitHub). Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  27. Bauckham's percentages as reported in: "Are the Gospels based on eyewitness testimony? The test of personal names." Christian Apologetics Alliance, 2012. christianapologeticsalliance.com. Checked: read. It gives the Simon/Joseph, top-nine and Mary/Salome figures; the "attested only once" pair (7.9% and 3.9%) is not in it and still needs checking against Bauckham's book.
  28. van de Weghe, L. & J. Wilson (2024). "Why Name Popularity is a Good Test of Historicity: A Goodness-of-fit Test Analysis on Names in the Gospels and Acts." arXiv:2403.14883. arxiv.org/abs/2403.14883. Checked: read in full.
  29. Williams, P. J. (2018). Can We Trust the Gospels? Crossway. Reviews: The Gospel Coalition; Theopolis. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  30. Gregor, K. & B. S. Blais (2023). "Is Name Popularity a Good Test of Historicity? A Statistical Evaluation of Richard Bauckham's Onomastic Argument." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 21(3): 171-202. digitalcommons.bryant.edu. Checked: abstract only.
  31. Gregor, K. & B. S. Blais (2024). "Re-Examining Richard Bauckham's Argument from Name Popularity in Light of Apocryphal and Talmudic Evidence." Journal for the Study of the New Testament 47(2): 271-296. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  32. Wilson, J. & L. van de Weghe (2025). "Re-Examining the Statistical Methodology and Onomastic Claims of Gregor and Blais' Argument from Name Popularity." arXiv:2508.21150. arxiv.org/abs/2508.21150. Checked: abstract only.
  33. van de Weghe, L. (2023). "Name Recall in the Synoptic Gospels." New Testament Studies 69(1): 95-109. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  34. Reich, R. & E. Shukron, the Siloam pool (excavated 2004). Reports: Biblical Archaeology Society; NBC News, 2005. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  35. von Wahlde, U. C. (2006). "The Pool(s) of Bethesda and the Healing in John 5." In J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), Jesus and Archaeology. Eerdmans. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  36. Burton, E. D. (1898). "The Politarchs." American Journal of Theology 2; G. H. R. Horsley in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity; Fant, C. E. & M. G. Reddish (2008). Lost Treasures of the Bible. Eerdmans. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  37. The Gallio inscription, Delphi (Claudius' letter), Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum³ 801. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  38. Frova, A. (1961), publication of the Pilate inscription from Caesarea. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  39. Tacitus, Annals 15.44. Loeb Classical Library, vol. V (1937), via LacusCurtius. penelope.uchicago.edu. Checked: read in full.
  40. Greenhut, Z. and R. Reich (1992), reports on the Caiaphas family tomb and ossuary, Jerusalem. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  41. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (4.219; 18.1-2; 18.3.3; 20.9.1 = 20.200; 20.97-98), tr. W. Whiston. Project Gutenberg #2848. gutenberg.org. Checked: 18.3.3 and 20.9.1 read; the other passages as cited by the scholarly literature.
  42. Smith, J. (of Jordanhill) (1848). The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  43. Hemer, C. J. (1989). The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, ed. C. H. Gempf. Mohr Siebeck. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  44. Corbo, V. & S. Loffreda, Capernaum excavation reports. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  45. Dark, K. R. (2020). Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and its Hinterland and The Sisters of Nazareth Convent. Routledge. University of Reading press release (2015): reading.ac.uk. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  46. Zias, J. & E. Sekeles (1985). "The Crucified Man from Giv'at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal." Israel Exploration Journal 35: 22-27. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  47. Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96, tr. W. Melmoth. Project Gutenberg #2811. gutenberg.org. Checked: read in full.
  48. Carrier, R. (2014). "The Prospect of a Christian Interpolation in Tacitus, Annals 15.44." Vigiliae Christianae 68. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  49. Suetonius, Claudius 25.4 and Nero 16.2; Lucian, The Passing of Peregrinus 11-13; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  50. Van Voorst, R. E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament. Eerdmans. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  51. Merz, A. & T. Tieleman (2008). "The Letter of Mara bar Sarapion." In Empsychoi Logoi. Brill, 107-133. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  52. Meier, J. P. (1991). A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1. Doubleday. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  53. Whealey, A. (2003). Josephus on Jesus. Peter Lang; (2008). "The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic." New Testament Studies 54. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  54. Olson, K. A. (1999). "Eusebius and the Testimonium Flavianum." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  55. Schmidt, T. C. (2025). Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford University Press (open access). Reviews: Roger Pearse; History for Atheists. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  56. Blunt, J. J. (1847). Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings both of the Old and New Testament, an Argument of their Veracity. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  57. McGrew, L. (2017). Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts. DeWard. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  58. Blais, B. (2022). "Why undesigned coincidences are not compelling to me." Blog, 11 Jul. bblais.github.io. Checked: read in full.
  59. McGrew, L. (2019). The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices. DeWard. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  60. Licona, M. R. (2017). Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography. Oxford University Press. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  61. Burridge, R. A. (1992; 2nd ed. 2004; 3rd ed. 2018). What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography. Cambridge University Press; Eerdmans; Baylor. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  62. Ehrman, B. D. (2016). Jesus Before the Gospels. HarperOne. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.
  63. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22, tr. R. Crawley. Project Gutenberg #7142. gutenberg.org. Checked: passage read.
  64. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 78; Origen, Against Celsus 1.51; Jerome, Letter 58. Not yet checked by us; reported in secondary sources.

Did Jesus rise from the dead?

  1. Tacitus, Annals 15.44 (c. AD 116). Loeb Classical Library, vol. V (1937), via LacusCurtius, penelope.uchicago.edu. Checked.
  2. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.63-64 (the Testimonium; core probably authentic, partly interpolated), 20.200 (the death of James), 4.219; Jewish War 4.317. Tr. W. Whiston, Project Gutenberg #2848. 20.200 and 4.219 checked in Whiston; the others are standard references, not re-checked by us.
  3. World English Bible (2020 stable text, public domain), eBible.org eng-web_vpl.zip: 1 Cor 9:1; 15:3-8, 11, 14, 20, 42, 44; 16:22; Gal 1:13-19, 23; 2:9; Mark 3:21; 6:14-16; 15:43; 16:8; Matt 27:52-53; 28:13-17; Luke 24:16, 31, 34; John 7:5; Acts 1:14; 10:40-41; Phil 2:9-11; Deut 21:23. ebible.org
  4. Lüdemann, G. (1994). The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology. Fortress. (Dating as cited by several secondary sources; not checked against the book.)
  5. Ehrman, B. D. (2014). How Jesus Became God. HarperOne. (Via secondary summaries.)
  6. Allison, D. C., Jr. (2021). The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History. T&T Clark. Quotations and page numbers as given in K. R. Harriman's review, krharriman.substack.com (checked against the review, not the book).
  7. Crossan, J. D. (1994). Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. HarperSanFrancisco; and Who Killed Jesus? (1995). (Via secondary summaries.)
  8. Evans, C. A. (2005). "Jewish Burial Traditions and the Resurrection of Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3(2): 233-248; and "Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right," in M. F. Bird et al., How God Became Jesus (Zondervan, 2014). (Via secondary summaries.)
  9. Magness, J. (2005). "Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James." Journal of Biblical Literature 124(1): 121-154. (Via secondary reports.)
  10. Craig, W. L. "Dale Allison on Jesus' Empty Tomb, His Post-Mortem Appearances, and the Origin of the Disciples' Belief in His Resurrection" (review of Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, T&T Clark, 2005). reasonablefaith.org
  11. Kirby, P. (2002). "The Case Against the Empty Tomb." Journal of Higher Criticism 9(2): 175-202; reprinted in R. M. Price & J. J. Lowder (eds.), The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (Prometheus, 2005).
  12. Lowder, J. J. (2005). "Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story." In Price & Lowder (eds.), The Empty Tomb. (As summarised and answered in McGrew & McGrew 2009.)
  13. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 108 (c. AD 160). Standard reference; not re-checked by us.
  14. Our calculation: truth/research/calc/12-resurrection_bayes.py (200,000 Monte Carlo draws, seed 12; the correlated-judgement tables and the cap in its sections 7-8) and its output, in the site's source repository. Every input is a sourced number or a labelled judgment range you can change. The figures for the cap against each rival (hiddenness, the silence of other candidate acts and the evidence from suffering included) come from our separate research record on divine action, omega/research/ceiling/c3-agency/RECORD.md, and its scripts, in the same repository.
  15. Rees, W. D. (1971). "The Hallucinations of Widowhood." BMJ 4: 37-41. doi:10.1136/bmj.4.5778.37
  16. Olson, P. R., Suddeth, J. A., Peterson, P. J. & Egelhoff, C. (1985). "Hallucinations of Widowhood." Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 33: 543-547. doi:10.1111/j.1532-5415.1985.tb04619.x
  17. Castelnovo, A., Cavallotti, S., Gambini, O. & D'Agostino, A. (2015). "Post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences: A critical overview of population and clinical studies." Journal of Affective Disorders 186: 266-274. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2015.07.032
  18. Hurtado, L. W. (2003). Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Eerdmans. (Via reviews.)
  19. Bauckham, R. (2008). Jesus and the God of Israel. Eerdmans.
  20. McDowell, S. (2015). The Fate of the Apostles. Ashgate (Routledge 2016); grades as summarised in McDowell, "Did the Apostles Really Die as Martyrs for Their Faith?", Christian Research Journal. equip.org
  21. Habermas, G. R. (2005). "Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What Are Critical Scholars Saying?" Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3(2): 135-153. Author's online version
  22. Strauss, D. F. (1864). Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk (the critique of the swoon theory). (Via secondary summaries.)
  23. Cavin, R. G. (1995). "Is There Sufficient Historical Evidence to Establish the Resurrection of Jesus?" Faith and Philosophy 12(3): 361-379.
  24. Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W. & Schachter, S. (1956). When Prophecy Fails. University of Minnesota Press.
  25. Klausner, J. (1925). Jesus of Nazareth. (As discussed in McGrew & McGrew 2009.)
  26. Lake, K. (1907). The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. (As discussed in McGrew & McGrew 2009.)
  27. Wright, N. T. (2003). The Resurrection of the Son of God. Fortress. (Via secondary summaries.)
  28. McGrew, T. & McGrew, L. (2009). "The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth." In W. L. Craig & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 593-662. Wiley-Blackwell. Quoted from the authors' draft (pp. 30-42), PDF mirror.
  29. Swinburne, R. (2003). The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Oxford University Press. (Figures as reported by Otte.)
  30. Otte, R. (2003). Review of Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2003.09.04. ndpr.nd.edu
  31. Martin, M. (2005). "Swinburne on the Resurrection." In Price & Lowder (eds.), The Empty Tomb, 453-468. (As cited in McGrew & McGrew 2009, draft p. 40 n. 31.)
  32. Kaneda, T. & Haub, C. (2022). "How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?" Population Reference Bureau. prb.org
  33. Hume, D. (1748). An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, section 10, "Of Miracles", paragraphs 10.4 and 10.13. davidhume.org
  34. Carrier, R. (2012). Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Prometheus.
  35. The Book of Mormon witnesses: FAIR, "Eight witnesses" (fairlatterdaysaints.org); Vogel, D. (ed.), Early Mormon Documents, vol. 5 (Signature, 2003). (Via secondary summaries; the primary documents were not checked by us.)
  36. Haraldsson, E. (1987). Miracles Are My Visiting Cards; (2013) Modern Miracles (White Crow); "Sai Baba," Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research). psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk (Via secondary summaries.)
  37. Edwards, W. D., Gabel, W. J. & Hosmer, F. E. (1986). "On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ." JAMA 255: 1455-1463. PMID 3512867 (abstract).
  38. Maslen, M. W. & Mitchell, P. D. (2006). "Medical theories on the cause of death in crucifixion." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99: 185-188.
  39. Damon, P. E., et al. (1989). "Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin." Nature 337: 611-615. Reprint at shroud.com
  40. Casabianca, T., Marinelli, E., Pernagallo, G. & Torrisi, B. (2019). "Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data." Archaeometry 61(5): 1223-1231. doi:10.1111/arcm.12467 (Checked: abstract.)
  41. Rogers, R. N. (2005). "Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of Turin." Thermochimica Acta 425: 189-194. (Via secondary summaries.)
  42. Freer-Waters, R. A. & Jull, A. J. T. (2010). "Investigating a Dated Piece of the Shroud of Turin." Radiocarbon 52(4): 1521-1527. doi:10.1017/S0033822200056277 (Checked: abstract.)
  43. De Caro, L., et al. (2022). "X-ray Dating of a Turin Shroud's Linen Sample." Heritage 5(2): 860-870. doi:10.3390/heritage5020047 (Checked: abstract; the replication point via secondary summaries.)
  44. Di Lazzaro, P., Murra, D., Santoni, A. & Baldacchini, G. (2010). "Sub-micrometer coloration depth of linens by vacuum ultraviolet radiation." Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Scientific Approach to the Acheiropoietos Images, ENEA Frascati, 4-6 May 2010. PDF (Checked. The 200 nm figure is theirs, citing Fanti et al., J. Imaging Sci. Technol. 54 (2010) 040201.)
  45. Schwortz, B. (2011). "The Shroud in the News for Christmas 2011: An Editorial Response." shroud.com (Checked: “They did NOT say this was how the Shroud’s image was formed.”)

The case against, weighed

  1. Draper, P. (1989). "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists." Noûs 23(3): 331-350. Quoted via J. J. Lowder, "Draper on Pain and Pleasure: Part One," Secular Frontier, 2014, infidels.org.
  2. Mackie, J. L. (1955). "Evil and Omnipotence." Mind 64(254): 200-212. PDF.
  3. Rowe, W. L. (1979). "The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism." American Philosophical Quarterly 16(4): 335-341. (Paraphrased; the journal text was not checked.)
  4. Tooley, M. "The Problem of Evil." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, §§3, 6.3. plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil.
  5. Plantinga, A. (1974). God, Freedom, and Evil. New York: Harper & Row.
  6. Mackie, J. L. (1982). The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon, p. 154. As quoted in "God and purported logical arguments from evil and suffering," New Blackfriars (2024), Cambridge Core.
  7. Wykstra, S. (1984). "The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of 'Appearance'." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16: 73-93.
  8. Bergmann, M. (2001). "Skeptical Theism and Rowe's New Evidential Argument from Evil." Noûs 35(2): 278-296.
  9. Hick, J. (1966). Evil and the God of Love. London: Macmillan.
  10. Adams, M. M. (1999). Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  11. Stump, E. (2010). Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. Oxford: OUP.
  12. World English Bible (public domain), via bible-api.com. All Bible quotations on this page.
  13. Southgate, C. (2008). The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.
  14. Murray, M. (2008). Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering. Oxford: OUP.
  15. Planck Collaboration (2020). "Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters." Astronomy & Astrophysics 641: A6 (age 13.787 ± 0.020 Gyr).
  16. International Commission on Stratigraphy. International Chronostratigraphic Chart v2023/09 (base of the Cambrian 538.8 Ma).
  17. Hublin, J.-J. et al. (2017). "New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens." Nature 546: 289-292.
  18. Dembski, W. (2009). The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World. Nashville: B&H.
  19. Roser, M. "Mortality in the past: every second child died." Our World in Data. ourworldindata.org.
  20. Morriston, W. (2009). "Did God Command Genocide? A Challenge for the Biblical Inerrantist." Philosophia Christi 11(1): 7-26.
  21. Avalos, H. (2011). Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship. Sheffield Phoenix.
  22. Wolterstorff, N. (2011). "Reading Joshua." In M. Bergmann, M. Murray and M. Rea (eds.), Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham. Oxford: OUP.
  23. Copan, P. and Flannagan, M. (2014). Did God Really Command Genocide? Grand Rapids: Baker.
  24. Parnia, S. et al. (2023). "AWARE II." Resuscitation. Summary: PSI Encyclopedia, "AWARE NDE Studies," psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk. Counts are checked on the near-death page.
  25. Schellenberg, J. L. (1993). Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Ithaca: Cornell UP; (2015) The Hiddenness Argument. Oxford: OUP. Quoted, with the replies surveyed, in Howard-Snyder, D. and Green, A. "Hiddenness of God," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness.
  26. Moser, P. (2008). The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology. Cambridge: CUP.
  27. Bourget, D. and Chalmers, D. J. (2023). "Philosophers on Philosophy: The 2020 PhilPapers Survey." Philosophers' Imprint 23. Results for "God: theism or atheism?": accept or lean toward atheism 66.95%, theism 18.93%, other 14.63% (N = 1,653). survey2020.philpeople.org.
  28. Schweitzer, A. (1910). The Quest of the Historical Jesus, tr. W. Montgomery, ch. 19. Project Gutenberg #45422.
  29. Allison, D. C. (1985). The End of the Ages Has Come. Philadelphia: Fortress; (1998) Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet. Minneapolis: Fortress.
  30. Ehrman, B. D. (1999). Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Oxford: OUP.
  31. Wright, N. T. (1996). Jesus and the Victory of God. London: SPCK; Minneapolis: Fortress.
  32. Wenham, D. (1988). "The End Is Near. In What Sense?" Themelios 13(3). thegospelcoalition.org.
  33. Hume, D. (1748). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. X, §§95-96. Project Gutenberg #9662.
  34. Tacitus, Histories 4.81, tr. C. H. Moore (Loeb, 1931). LacusCurtius. Also Suetonius, Vespasian 7.
  35. Harper, S. C. (2010). "Evaluating the Book of Mormon Witnesses." Religious Educator 11(2). rsc.byu.edu.
  36. Haraldsson, E. (1987; rev. 2013). Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba. White Crow. See also PSI Encyclopedia, "Sai Baba," psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk.
  37. Catholic World Report / CNA (16 April 2025). "Lourdes announces 72nd miracle." catholicworldreport.com.
  38. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana (c. AD 220).
  39. Vogel, D. (2002). "The Validity of the Witnesses' Testimonies." In D. Vogel and B. Metcalfe (eds.), American Apocrypha. Salt Lake City: Signature Books.
  40. Pew Research Center (9 June 2025). "How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020." pewresearch.org.
  41. Craig, W. L. (1989). "'No Other Name': A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ." Faith and Philosophy 6(2): 172-188.
  42. Draper, P. (2005). "God, Science, and Naturalism." In W. Wainwright (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: OUP.
  43. Benson, H. et al. (2006). "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients." American Heart Journal 151(4): 934-942. PubMed 16569567.
  44. Roberts, L., Ahmed, I. and Davison, A. (2009). "Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health." Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews CD000368. cochrane.org.
  45. Li, S., Stampfer, M., Williams, D. and VanderWeele, T. (2016). "Association of Religious Service Attendance With Mortality Among Women." JAMA Internal Medicine 176(6): 777-785.
  46. Barrett, J. L. (2000). "Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4(1): 29-34.
  47. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion Explained. New York: Basic Books.
  48. Atran, S. (2002). In Gods We Trust. Oxford: OUP.
  49. Kelemen, D. (2004). "Are Children 'Intuitive Theists'?" Psychological Science 15(5): 295-301.
  50. Wilkins, J. and Griffiths, P. (2013). "Evolutionary Debunking Arguments in Three Domains." In G. Dawes and J. Maclaurin (eds.), A New Science of Religion. Routledge.
  51. Launonen, L. (2021). "Debunking Arguments Gain Little from Cognitive Science of Religion." Zygon 56. zygonjournal.org.
  52. Jong, J. and Visala, A. (2014). "Evolutionary Debunking Arguments against Theism, Reconsidered." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76: 243-258.
  53. Murray, M. (2009). "Scientific Explanations of Religion and the Justification of Religious Belief." In J. Schloss and M. Murray (eds.), The Believing Primate. Oxford: OUP.

The evidence for other traditions, weighed by the same rules

  1. The research program behind this site (omega.logos.so), graded records: the verdict, omega/research/ARCHITECTURE.md §1 ("a generic theism ... does not discriminate among Judaism, Christianity and Islam or against deism"); the test against rival theologies, omega/research/dev/ground/RECORD.md §7.2; the "God is love" argument, omega/research/dev/trinity/RECORD.md, Ruling 1.
  2. The Qur’an, Sahih International translation, via the quran.com API, api.quran.com. Verses quoted: 2:23, 4:157-158, 5:47, 15:9, 17:88, 23:14, 30:2-4, 51:47, 54:1, 55:19-20, 61:14, 86:6-7 (checked against the API text). The phrase "so it was made to appear to them" (4:157) is A. Yusuf Ali’s translation, from the same API.
  3. University of Birmingham. "Birmingham Qur’an manuscript dated among the oldest in the world." Press release, 22 July 2015. birmingham.ac.uk.
  4. Sinai, N. (2014). "When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure?" Parts I-II. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77 (2014). Author’s version (PDF).
  5. van Putten, M. (2019). "‘The Grace of God’ as evidence for a written Uthmanic archetype: the importance of shared orthographic idiosyncrasies." BSOAS 82(2): 271-288. Leiden repository (abstract read).
  6. Crone, P. "What do we actually know about Mohammed?" openDemocracy, 10 June 2008. opendemocracy.net.
  7. Sadeghi, B. & Goudarzi, M. (2012). "Ṣan’ā 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān." Der Islam 87: 1-129; Sadeghi, B. & Bergmann, U. (2010). "The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qur’ān of the Prophet." Arabica 57: 343-436. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  8. On the ṣarfa doctrine and al-Naẓẓām: WikiShia, "Theory of Sarfa", en.wikishia.net. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  9. Silverstein, A. J. (2020). "Q 30:2-5 in Near Eastern Context." Der Islam 97(1): 11-42. doi:10.1515/islam-2020-0002.
  10. Moore, K. L. (1986). "A scientist’s interpretation of references to embryology in the Qur’an." Journal of the Islamic Medical Association 18: 15-16; Musallam, B. Sex and Society in Islam. Cambridge, 1983 (on the Galenic background). (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  11. Tzortzis, H. (2013), essay on the "scientific miracles" narrative; discussed in Bigliardi, S. (2024), Zygon. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  12. Donner, F. M. The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton, 1981; Muhammad and the Believers. Harvard, 2010. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  13. Bailey, B. (NASA Lunar Science Institute), 2010, as quoted in Wikipedia, "Splitting of the Moon", en.wikipedia.org. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  14. Shoemaker, S. J. The Death of a Prophet. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012; Creating the Qur’an. University of California Press, 2022. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  15. Reynolds, G. S. (2009). "The Muslim Jesus: Dead or Alive?" BSOAS 72(2): 237-258 (abstract read).
  16. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.24.4, Ante-Nicene Fathers translation. New Advent.
  17. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr, on Q 4:157, as summarised in secondary reports. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  18. Lawson, T. The Crucifixion and the Qur’an. Oneworld, 2009 (via a review in the SOAS repository). (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  19. Nickel, G. Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qur’an. Brill, 2011. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  20. van Bladel, K. (2008). "The Alexander Legend in the Qur’ān 18:83-102." In G. S. Reynolds (ed.), The Qur’ān in Its Historical Context. Routledge. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  21. Gottlieb, D. "The Kuzari Principle: Introduction." dovidgottlieb.com; "Q & A on the Kuzari Principle." dovidgottlieb.com. The argument goes back to Judah Halevi, Kuzari 1.25.
  22. World English Bible (public domain): 2 Kings 22:8-13; Isaiah 2:4; Jeremiah 31:31; Hebrews 9:27. Via bible-api.com; also at ebible.org/web.
  23. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 11:4 (paraphrased). (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  24. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a (William Davidson/Koren-Steinsaltz translation, sefaria.org); Sukkah 52a (not checked by us; cited as reported).
  25. The messianic-prophecy test run blind and pre-registered (omega.logos.so ceiling route c10): omega/research/ceiling/c10-salvation/RECORD.md §0, Rulings 1-4 and 7, §10-11; the 82 features in omega/research/calc/ceiling-c10-UB-features.csv. See also the messianic-prophecy page. No independent human replication has been done.
  26. Society for Psychical Research, Psi Encyclopedia, "Jim B Tucker" (the 2,500 cases; the 799-case strength-of-case analysis). psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk. Onset at about 35 months and stopping by six or seven: Tucker, J. B. (2008). "Children’s reports of past-life memories: a review." Explore 4(4): 244-248 (not checked by us; cited as reported).
  27. Society for Psychical Research, Psi Encyclopedia, "Reincarnation Cases with Records Made Before Verifications" (reporting Keil & Tucker 2005 and Schouten & Stevenson 1998, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 186: 504-506). psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk.
  28. Sagan, C. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Random House, 1996 (archive.org full text).
  29. Society for Psychical Research, Psi Encyclopedia, "Criticisms of Reincarnation Case Studies" (summarising Edwards 1996; Angel 2002, 2015; Ransom 1966; Augustine 2015; Sudduth 2016, 2021, including his charge about the Leininger timeline; Lester 2005). psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk.
  30. Kozhevnikov, M. et al. (2013). "Neurocognitive and somatic components of temperature increases during g-tummo meditation: legend and reality." PLoS ONE 8(3): e58244. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058244.
  31. Haraldsson, E. Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba. 1987; rev. ed. 2013. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  32. On the Bangalore University committee of 1976: Wikipedia, "Hosur Narasimhaiah", en.wikipedia.org (read; its sources not checked by us); Outlook India reporting (not checked by us).
  33. Bahá’u’lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts (Bahá’í World Centre), tablet to Napoleon III. Project Gutenberg #17309.
  34. Universal House of Justice, letter of 29 July 1974, and letter of 19 April 2001 with a Research Department memorandum on the unity of nations and the Lesser Peace (bahai.org; Bahaipedia); McLean, J. (2000), paper on prophecy, bahai-library.com. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  35. Harper, S. C. (2010). "Evaluating the Book of Mormon Witnesses." Religious Educator 11(2); Vogel, D. (ed.) Early Mormon Documents, 2002. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  36. Aston, W. P. (2012). "A History of NaHoM." BYU Studies Quarterly 51(2). (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  37. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham." Gospel Topics Essays. churchofjesuschrist.org.
  38. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Book of Mormon and DNA Studies." Gospel Topics Essays. churchofjesuschrist.org.
  39. Coe, M. D. (1973). "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8(2): 40-48 (paraphrased). (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  40. Stace, W. T. Mysticism and Philosophy. 1960; Hood, R. W. (1975). "The construction and preliminary validation of a measure of reported mystical experience." JSSR 14; Katz, S. (ed.) Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. 1978. (Not checked by us; cited as reported.)
  41. Lao Tzu, The Tao Teh King, ch. 1, tr. James Legge (1891). Project Gutenberg #216.
  42. Wikipedia, "Zohar" (on Moses de León and the date of composition), en.wikipedia.org (read; the scholarship it summarises, from Gershom Scholem on, not checked by us).
  43. Analysis files for this page: truth/research/calc/15-rival-lr.py and its output 15-rival-lr.out.txt (run with 20,000 Monte Carlo draws); the unified model’s inputs, truth/research/calc/14-inputs.json. Numbers without another citation come from these.

The verdict

  1. The model: model.py and its inputs model-inputs.json. Each line's range and reasoning is on its own page, with its sources.
  2. Figures the model does not print (Christianity with the prophecy lines read as flat; the resurrection's effect on the odds of a Mind; each line's share of Christianity's edge over its rivals): truth/research/calc/14-lt-checks.py and its saved output, which call the model's own functions. The comparison with the model's earlier run is in truth/research/14-integration.md, §4.
  3. The method and its literature (Good, Jeffreys, Kish, Swinburne, Draper, the McGrews, Sober, Collins, Hume, Earman): see the Method page's sources.

Method

  1. Good, I. J. (1950). Probability and the Weighing of Evidence. London: Griffin. (Not checked directly.)
  2. Jeffreys, H. (1961). Theory of Probability, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Not checked directly.)
  3. Kish, L. (1965). Survey Sampling. New York: Wiley. (Not checked directly.)
  4. Ord, T., Hillerbrand, R. & Sandberg, A. (2010). "Probing the improbable: methodological challenges for risks with low probabilities and high stakes." Journal of Risk Research 13(2): 191–205. (Not checked directly.)
  5. Swinburne, R. (2004). The Existence of God, 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP; Draper, P. (1989). "Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists." Noûs 23(3): 331–350; Oppy, G. (2006). Arguing about Gods. Cambridge UP. (Not checked directly.)
  6. Hume, D. (1748). An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, §10, Part 1; quoted from McGrew, T. & Larmer, R. "Miracles." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (rev. 7 May 2024). plato.stanford.edu/entries/miracles
  7. Unwin, S. D. (2003). The Probability of God. New York: Crown Forum; Shermer, M. (2004). "God's Number Is Up." Scientific American, July. michaelshermer.com
  8. "Sally Clark." Wikipedia, accessed 12 Nov 2026, quoting the Royal Statistical Society's statements of October 2001 and January 2002. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark
  9. McGrew, T. & McGrew, L. (2009). "The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth." In W. L. Craig & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 593–662. Wiley-Blackwell; Blais, B. (2023). "Probability and the Independence of Testimony." 23 Feb. bblais.github.io
  10. Alexander, S. (2024). "Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate." Astral Codex Ten, 28 Mar. astralcodexten.com
  11. The research program behind this site (omega.logos.so), graded records: the verdict and its classes, omega/research/ARCHITECTURE.md §1 and §4; how fine-tuning bears on naturalism's forms, omega/research/dev/finetuning/RECORD.md and omega/research/boxes/BOXES_VERDICT.md.
  12. The agency limit ("C3-cap", a proved conditional): omega/research/ceiling/c3-agency/RECORD.md §3, with its historical figures in §4 and the wording for this site in §9-10.
  13. The model's own figures for the resurrection's effect on the odds of a Mind: truth/research/calc/14-lt-checks.py and its saved output (section B); see truth/research/14-integration.md §2.11.

Your numbers

Put in your own numbers

Changes here follow you across the site: the header, every page's verdict box and the running total.