◉ The Missing Probability: Resurrection Apologetics, Unstated Priors, and the Failure of Comparative Explanation

Resurrection apologetics often argues that a bodily resurrection best explains an empty-tomb tradition, post-mortem appearance reports, and the emergence of early Christian conviction. The problem is not that these considerations have no evidential force. It is that a likelihood comparison is frequently presented as though it were already a posterior-probability conclusion. This paper audits that inference. In odds form, Bayes' theorem shows that posterior odds equal prior odds multiplied by a likelihood ratio. A resurrection hypothesis can therefore fit the evidence much better than a non-resurrection alternative and still remain improbable when it begins with sufficiently low prior odds. A familiar base-rate example and three resurrection-sensitive numerical cases illustrate the dependence without pretending to estimate the historical event. The paper then repairs a second defect: defeating wrong-tomb, deception, vision, or legend hypotheses one at a time does not establish victory over their weighted union. Overlapping rivals must be represented as mutually exclusive histories or mixture components, with residual space for unidentified causes. The relevant contrast is resurrection versus non-resurrection, not Christianity versus naturalism; a theist may accept an ordinary history of the evidence. The result is conditional but decisive for the rhetoric under review. Exact decimal inputs are not required: defensible ranges, orderings, and sensitivity thresholds can expose what must be true for the conclusion to hold. A developed Christian God-concept may also raise the prior by adding claims about theism, incarnation, and divine purpose. That produces a coherent conditional case, but its public force then depends on independent support for those background claims. Until the prior, evidence model, and comparator are stated or bounded, 'most probable' is not an earned historical conclusion. The argument remains one of theological interpretation or explanatory fit.