(November 8, 2015 at 12:38 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: 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.
