Introductory Chapter: Timeliness of Advantages of Bayesian Networks

Abstract

As a child, I was raised as a Lutheran, with an earnest interest and concern for scripture. I became notorious for asking my Sunday school teachers imponderable and impolitic questions. Upon encountering Genesis 3:11–13 around age 6, I noticed that God confronts Adam in the Garden of Eden and asks, “Have you eaten from the tree?” Adam prevaricates: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree.” God inquires of Eve about this. She answers, “The serpent tricked me.” My youngster mind recognized this pattern of dialog as very much akin to my own defensive dissembling with my parents when I had been the cause of some accident or had done something wrong. I very much wanted to know why Adam’s and Eve’s reasoning was insufficient.