"Extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence.&q

[The Tanager]

If anyone is interested, I'd like to look at this, both on what those who use it mean and if it is a reasonable thing to ask of others. Does it mean that things like alien abductions, miracles, etc. need a different kind of evidence offered for them? Or that they just need more of the same kind of evidences? Both? Something else?

I don't want this to become about a specific argument, but examples may need to be looked at to help in clarifying one's thoughts. What do you all think?

[The Tanager]

Regular evidence. Regular evidence is the answer. There just needs to be a lot of it. The extraordinary thing about it is that there's a lot. Or it has to be compelling in some other way.

It fits together. It supports other observations. It allows predictions. It is falsifiable, but when the tests are done, they support it instead of falsifying it. It makes sense of the world.

I definitely agree with that. I was confused because that was basically Divine Insight's point and I had agreed with that sentiment already, so I thought you were saying something else than that.

Now consider your idea about extraordinary evidence. Suppose a theist says she has an invisible friend who walks on water, turns water into wine, jumps over tall buildings in a single bound, stops the sun, can do anything, can't defeat iron chariots, can't be seen but can be seen, is totally just but arbitrarily tortures people forever, is love but tortures people forever, and so on.

And now suppose that a skeptic says something like, "That's an extraordinary claim, so you need extraordinary evidence to support it. It can't be scientific evidence, based on logic and observation, it has to be some new kind of evidence that nobody's ever seen before. And, in the absence of such evidence, I'm not going to believe your claim."

That just makes the skeptic into an idiot. That's not what any advocate of "extraordinary evidence" means by that term.

I'm not saying Marco is using it in that way, but it's a bit unclear to me how Marco is using it. Marco's answer appears to me to be "I don't know what evidence would convince me of X, but I'll know it when I see it. I don't see it right now, so I'm justified in my skepticism." This seems to me subjective and too vague a tool to justify any position.

If Marco just means that the evidence he is aware of for X is insufficient for him to believe X is true, then I've no problem with that. Marco just needs more compelling evidence.

I've definitely talked to other non-theists who have used it in ways different than you and DI have talked about it here. They use it like a magic slogan, but never answer what they actually mean by it. I've talked to some who have used it to say that a miracle would need miraculous evidence for it, like God spelling the truth out in rocks or something like that. I'm not saying most skeptics do this and I'm very appreciative of the ones that don't.

[marco]

I'm not saying Marco is using it in that way, but it's a bit unclear to me how Marco is using it. Marco's answer appears to me to be "I don't know what evidence would convince me of X, but I'll know it when I see it. I don't see it right now, so I'm justified in my skepticism." This seems to me subjective and too vague a tool to justify any position.

Well, expressing ignorance is hardly a tool. Dealing in generalities causes confusion so to be specific, take the claim that a dead and decomposing body was raised to life. Testimony from several qualified doctors, after medical examination of the corpse and the revivified body would suffice. But this would require extraordinary evidence from a time when medical practice wasn't sufficiently developed. We do not have it.

If Marco just means that the evidence he is aware of for X is insufficient for him to believe X is true, then I've no problem with that. Marco just needs more compelling evidence.

This is certainlly true. I suppose I am using extraordinary for more compelling. The usual testimony of witnesses, I think, is insufficient. Where we might happily accept an account whose occurrence is perfectly possible we would not accept this same evidence in the case of events whose possibility is in question.


I cannot see any great problem with making this statement or in understanding it. The more remarkable thing is that people simply accept that a fetid corpse was restored to life.

[kcplusdc@yahoo.com]

As far as I know events are happening with no evidence to us all the time. An event is an event if it has no evidence or a ton as long as it happens. Setting this standard so high here defies logic.

[The Tanager]

As far as I know events are happening with no evidence to us all the time. An event is an event if it has no evidence or a ton as long as it happens. Setting this standard so high here defies logic.

But the standard concerns whether one is justified in believing that an event did or did not occur, isn't it?

[Walterbl]

Evidence needs to be weighed by comparing alternatives. Sometimes atheist say like "the claim that some God waved a magic stick and created everything is very extraordinary, I can't believe it unless you give me extraordinary evidence" but I think something like "ok, but the claim that there was nothing and the nothing just exploded and everything just made itself is even more extraordinary". SO you have to consider what proposition best explain all of your data/evidence.

[OnceConvinced]

but I think something like "ok, but the claim that there was nothing and the nothing just exploded and everything just made itself is even more extraordinary". SO you have to consider what proposition best explain all of your data/evidence.

A strawman. Nobody claims that. That's a deliberate misinterpretation made by creationists who want to poo poo science.

As far as I can see there is no one claiming that the big bang came from nothing. The big bang occurred based on elements that were already there and were probably always there. What makes the claim more extraordinary is trying to make a claim that there was some super powered being that caused the big bang to happen in the first place, rather than it happening via natural causes.

As soon as you add the supernatural to a claim, you are taking something and making it way more extra-ordinary. As soon as you envoke a god to explain something you are left with even more extra-ordinary things to explain, like how did that god get there in the first place? And further more what resources did he use? because you need building resources first before you can do any building.

I for one think that if there really is a god out there then he is quite capable of providing convincing evidence to anyone as to any extra-ordinary claim. What kind of god is he if he can't do that? Not a very convincing one, clearly.

[Bust Nak]

As far as I can see there is no one claiming that the big bang came from nothing.

Well, there is Lawrence Krauss with his "A Universe From Nothing" book. The meaning of "nothing" is somewhat debatable.