Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[Harry Nevis]

Hi Steve. My understanding of what you are saying is, if you have highly concrete evidence something extraordinary as already occurred, you should need less evidence for proving its mechanism because you already know it is possible. Please correct me if my understanding of your argument is incorrect.

In response, a few questions I think you should consider:
1) Do we have highly concrete evidence of miracles occurring?
2) When choosing between many different explanations for an event, how do we distinguish between them to find the most valid one? For example, let's assume something seemingly miraculous did occur. How do we know which deity was responsible for it? How do we know that any of the ancient gods people have believed in throughout time are responsible for it at all as opposed to an unknown god? How do we a god did it at all? The whole purpose of evidence is to distinguish between competing theories. When it comes to explaining natural events, science has blown religion out of the water as humanity has learned more about the world when it comes to presenting compelling theories about natural mechanisms. This is why science offers a favourable explanation to religion.


You say 'zero evidence for atheism'. Atheism is just the lack of a belief. This is akin to, when investigating a murder, saying that their is zero evidence that a random bystander had nothing to do with the crime. It is a true statement, but how would one attempt to gather evidence for a non-happening? Zero evidence is the natural state for claiming that something didn't happen. [3]

Kind of. While there might be such a thing as an extraordinary event, there is no such thing as a class of extraordinary evidence. There is no philosophical basis in which to demand more than regular evidence and assessment and so this whole enterprise is nothing more than special pleading/moving the goal post/hyperskepticism (thanks RR!). 

I can answer 1 and 2a together by explaining it is a cumulative body of evidence that, when considered as a whole, has been compelling to a significant amount of people.
- Documentary (both actual and inferred)
- The churches, the growth, the persecution, and the occasional mention in surviving secular works.
- The characters, their actions, character, stated goals, meaning of their words, and eventual circumstances
- Jesus' own claims (explicit, implicit, connections to the OT--some of which the disciples may have never known).
- The actual message: how it seems to fit the human condition, resonate with people, and how it does not contradict the OT--which would have required a very sophisticated mind to have navigated that.
- Paul and his writings on application--done before the Gospels were independently written. To have them work so well together is incredible.
- This one can't be stressed enough: the likelihood of alternate theories to explain the facts. I think it is obvious people believed from day one when Jesus was still walking around. I have never heard a alternate theory which could account for most or all of the concrete and circumstantial evidence we have.


2b. Of course science explains natural events better than religion--because that is the very definition of science and not the purpose of religion. Science can help us discover what events have natural causes and which may have supernatural causes. What it cannot do is answer anything about the supernatural. 

3. So my point here is that that your position on the existence of the supernatural is not backed by even ordinary evidence. We can then weigh against the evidence I listed above (and much more) AND the properly basic belief of most of the population of the world (now and in the past) that the supernatural exists. The conclusion is that a demand for extraordinary evidence is unfounded (and a result of special pleading/moving the goal post/hyperskepticism).

"have been compelling to a significant amount of people".  It all comes down to this, doesn't it?  Oh, and "evidence that someone believed it to be true" is the same as "it's true", as long as you agree with it.  You have no evidence that only points to your god, but a pile of evidence that has so many other explanations other than the one you chose makes your choice no more valid.