Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

[RoadRunner79]

---

 Do you think that observation is enough to demonstrate something as possible? Are there things, which must be seen personally to be believed, or can substantiated observation by others be enough? 

---

Nope. Observation is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for rationally justified belief. Obviously if you can't observe a phenomena in one way or another you have no way to detect it, but what we also need to recognize is that our observational capabilities are notoriously unreliable on their own; there are plenty of things we can observe that either are not true, in that the true scale of the phenomena is beyond our ability to comprehend personally (think of the flat Earth, revealed to be round when we gain the capacity to increase the scale of our observations) or turn out to have a cause that's different from the one we'd previously come to. Observation helps, but does not on its own demonstrate as much as you'd think. It's step one, really.

It seems that you are arguing against the level of knowledge, not observation.   How did we determine that the earth was not flat?  Did it include further observation?

---

I find the demand that unbelievable claims require unbelievable evidence to be outlandish.  So you are going to have to support this with reason and apparently better evidence that an anecdote, about it raining outside (which it's not raining outside, I think I'm going for a cycle ride).

---

I always find it odd that people make this argument. It's like... do you just think there's no answer to it? Because there is: you can test the efficacy of believing extraordinary claims on mundane evidence as an epistemological method, and see whether those beliefs turn out to be rationally justified or true in the end. From there, you'd have a good relief map of whether believing extraordinary claims on mundane evidence leads to true beliefs or false beliefs, on average. In fact, we already have a sample group for that: it's called all of human history. Our past is rife with people believing extraordinary claims based on mundane phenomena, and uniformly those phenomena have turned out to be, indeed, mundane. Thunder comes from the gods! ... Only no it doesn't, the explanation is mundane. That belief is wrong. Natural disasters are signs that the gods are angry! ... Only no, there's natural explanations for that too, that belief is wrong. Witches! ... Oh wait, not real. Miracles! ... Oh, hold on...

Every single time an extraordinary belief has been proposed on the back of ordinary evidence, that belief has turned out to be wrong, and an ordinary cause has been found. Every. Single. Time. Holding extraordinary beliefs based on mundane evidence has a zero percent success rate, and this is evidence, the best evidence, that holding extraordinary beliefs like that inevitably leads to holding untrue beliefs. That proposed system is ineffective, and that's a trend, no anecdotes required.

I like how that in the first part of this reply, you are arguing against observation being sufficient.  Then in the second part here, you appeal to observation, to support an outlandish claim and as the answer. Also, we could make similar claims, that every time science has been shown to be incorrect, that it has a 100% tract record of being shown as unreliable.  (This is not an argument against science, but the reasoning behind your statement)

Again, I find that your argument and use of the word ordinary to be highly subjective.  It is based on understanding, and as understanding increases, what was extraordinary becomes ordinary.  Therefore the skeptic has the right to demand extraordinary evidence for whatever they choose.

[Rhondazvous]

I don’t have to personally observe everything. I don’t have to put aluminum foil in a microwave to see for myself what will happen (unless I was planning on buying a new microwave anyway). But I understand that microwaves are electromagnetic waves and from that I can deduce what will happen. This is substantiated by people who have actually tried to nuke a fork or foil.

Difference is, theists have not provided what can be called “substantial evidence.” The Bible is so full of errors and contradictions that it serves more as evidence against belief.

[Rhondazvous]

I covered that... if you read the OP.

Excuse me.  You did not "cover" it.  You made excuses for your own absurd beliefs.  You know just because you write something back does not mean that rational people are under any obligation to accept it as "gospel."  Repeating the same shit over and over does not make it true.

The nature of the claim determines the nature of the needed evidence.

There is none that your godboy came back from the dead....in case you were wondering.

Maybe what he meant is that he covered his ass. But even that cover is two inches thinner than wet tissue paper.

[robvalue]

I'd like to add that not believing an account isn't the same as announcing the account is wrong.

I have no need to say any given crazy sounding account didn't actually happen, just that I have no good reason to think that it did happen.

I don't know whose standards it is you're trying to haggle here, Roadrunner. Historians standards? Scientists? Ours? I really don't know where you're going with any of this. We're not stopping you believing whatever you want, but nor are we suddenly going to believe a particular bunch of crazy stuff over any other.

Any individual self-proclaimed sceptic may well have stupid standards of evidence. They may well use silly arguments to justify disbelief in things that are rational to believe in. They're not accountable to us. The only time standards are formally agreed is when work is done such as science or history.

[Esquilax]

It seems that you are arguing against the level of knowledge, not observation.   How did we determine that the earth was not flat?  Did it include further observation?

I'm arguing against observation in the sense of just taking one's observations as truthful reflections of reality. Observation is limited, and not recognizing that is the cause of a whole lot of fallacious reasoning.

I like how that in the first part of this reply, you are arguing against observation being sufficient.  Then in the second part here, you appeal to observation, to support an outlandish claim and as the answer.

The point is that observation alone was insufficient in all those cases. In the example of thunder and lightning, determining the real cause required additional knowledge of electricity and physics, derived from experimentation and not pure observation. The observation of the phenomena alone was not enough to determine the cause, and that ignorance was what had the cause pegged as supernatural for so long. That's kinda what I'm getting at: observation is a necessary component to determining causation, but it isn't a sufficient component on its own.

Also, we could make similar claims, that every time science has been shown to be incorrect, that it has a 100% tract record of being shown as unreliable.  (This is not an argument against science, but the reasoning behind your statement)

The two statements aren't remotely comparable, because while science may be wrong sometimes, it's right a lot more, and whenever it is wrong, it's wrong on the way to being right. Mistakes are always corrected.

This is not at all similar to a concept that has never been right, in any capacity, for reasons that should be obvious: a positive number is higher than zero, and hence presents a higher degree of reliability.

Again, I find that your argument and use of the word ordinary to be highly subjective.  It is based on understanding, and as understanding increases, what was extraordinary becomes ordinary.  Therefore the skeptic has the right to demand extraordinary evidence for whatever they choose.

I agree, our understanding does determine the bounds of what is extraordinary and what isn't. What else could? And why do you think this is the downfall of the argument? It's the defining characteristic of it. You need to separate the truth of a claim from whether it's rational to accept it as true, because those are two different questions. There were times in history where it was irrational to believe in claims that are absolutely true, due to a lack of evidence supporting those true claims. The claims were always true, but one could not be justified in holding them until such time as there was sufficient justification to do so. Likewise, I'm sure there are true claims right now that it is irrational to believe on the same basis, but that's not my problem; I know I'm not omniscient, and the only way I can become closer to being right is to follow the evidence, because that is the only reliable indicator for truth that we have.

When it comes to extraordinary claims, the fact that one needs extraordinary evidence is simply a result of how unheard of the claim actually is; it has more work to do because there are more individual elements of the claim that need to be vetted before that claim can be rationally accepted. Epistemology is a series of necessary conditions that need to be fulfilled, one by one: a thing must be possible before it's probable, it must be probable before it's parsimonious, and it must be demonstrated before it's rationally justified. For ordinary claims some of those conditions are already fulfilled: we can determine whether an ordinary claim is possible and, to some extent, probable with very little effort. But for an extraordinary claim, now we've got to first determine that it's possible, then probable, then demonstrate it. You can't just go about skipping steps because if you haven't determined that a thing is possible then you haven't yet determined the cause for the claim, and hence it would be impossible to demonstrate that the claim is true. Theists often want to skip steps, or introduce new criteria like consistency, rather than just going through motions that should be trivial, if they're truly in possession of a rationally justified belief.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," is simply a recognition that some claims will need to start at step one, whereas others have those steps pre-fulfilled.

[Minimalist]

Excuse me.  You did not "cover" it.  You made excuses for your own absurd beliefs.  You know just because you write something back does not mean that rational people are under any obligation to accept it as "gospel."  Repeating the same shit over and over does not make it true.

The nature of the claim determines the nature of the needed evidence.

There is none that your godboy came back from the dead....in case you were wondering.

Maybe what he meant is that he covered his ass. But even that cover is two inches thinner than wet tissue paper.

I have no doubt that he convinced himself.  That proves nothing.  He wants to believe in his horseshit which instantly disqualifies him from the ranks of the rational.

[bennyboy]

I find the demand that unbelievable claims require unbelievable evidence to be outlandish. 

I see the problem here. You don't know what some of the words mean. Nobody has EVER said that an unbelievable claim requries unbelievable evidence. The line is that EXTRAORDINARY claims require EXTRAORDINARY evidence-- and extraordinary means "more than ordinary," not "unbelievable."

If I say it's raining, this is a highly ordinary claim. Almost everyone has so much real-life experience with rain that they are likely just to take my word for it; the ORDINARY evidence in this case is just my word. If, on the other hand, I claim it's literally raining frogs, people are unlikely to just take my word for it, as they have no experience with frogs falling from the sky; I now have to provide at least pictures, and these days probably a compelling video, and I will even have to take great pains to demonstrate that my pictures or video are not faked. Relatively speaking, these constitute EXTRAORDINARY evidence. That beings said, I at least know of frogs, of gravity, etc. I can kind of believe that frogs might, in very strange weather conditions, occasionally be lifted up into the sky, and therefore have the capacity to fall from it.

Now, let's take the claim, "God, the immaterial creator of everything, impregnated a virgin, who gave birth to God, who was also the Son of God, and who died, but rose from the dead D&D style and saved all of humanity." Fuck me-- I have no experience of ANY of those things. If I'm going to believe a word of it, I need credible evidence that there's a god, or that virgins get pregnant, or that people can come back from the dead after several days. I'm also going to need an explanation for how humanity is saved, when it very clearly fucking isn't saved in any way that means anything to me.

See? Rain-- one standard of evidence required. D&D bullshit claimed to be real-- a radically different standard of evidence required, and for good reason.

[bennyboy]

Again, I find that your argument and use of the word ordinary to be highly subjective.  It is based on understanding, and as understanding increases, what was extraordinary becomes ordinary.  Therefore the skeptic has the right to demand extraordinary evidence for whatever they choose.

People can demand any kind of evidence they want. If I claim it's raining, you can demand video evidence, and you can take it to a lab for analysis to prove my video's not been doctored. But you wouldn't, because that would be a pointless waste of time.

If, on the other hand, I claim that I'm a prophet of God and that you therefore must obey my commandments, you'd be stupid to accept my words at face value. If, in support of my claim that you should put your money in a little basket I'm passing around, I used as my evidence a book written three thousand years ago by uneducated desert people with no access to modern science, you'd be stupid to do so.

There are, to be fair, lots of people in the world who are that stupid.

[IATIA]

@You know who.  Want some cheese with that whine?  All this fussing about "extraordinary evidence" for the "extraordinary claim" and I have not even requested "extraordinary evidence" for the "extraordinary claim".  All I have asked for is ANY evidence at all.  But see how all the theists even crawl away from that request, like roaches fleeing from from RAID.  There is no "extraordinary evidence", there is no evidence at all.  Their only so called 'evidence' is simply nothing more than "He said that she said that they said ...". Come on now, that is all you have?  Nothing else? Arguing the validity of non-existent evidence is right up there with believing in a non-existent deity. Pffft ... silly me, of course, invisible deities require invisible evidence.  Now, what was I thinking ...   

[robvalue]

Any evidence would indeed be a good start.

I assume this is headed for, "Jesus came back to life" or something. Even if it was established that this happened, it doesn't prove anything else. It doesn't tell us how or why he came back to life, nor whether he is human or something else. His own explanations aren't automatically true any more than a magician gets to say he really did teleport a playing card during a very convincing magic trick (even if the magician told you beforehand that's how he would do it).

Come to think of it, I don't know why people don't worship magicians. They do a lot more impressive stuff than most of the lame "miracles" in the bible. And you can actually see it, rather than just reading about it later.