Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[paulpablo]

"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.

Go ahead--explain away all the points I made above. Make sure you don't leave any of them out--not explaining even one will knock your house of cards down in an instant. 

Until you do, I have a unaddressed body of evidence that BILLIONS (in case you were not clear on the size of the jury) of people have considered and determined that it meets the standard of proof they chose for themselves--whether that be "beyond reasonable doubt", "clear and convincing evidence", "preponderance of the evidence", "substantial evidence", or "some evidence".

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I didn't demand or mention extraordinary evidence.

I said all claims require equal amounts of evidence.

What makes an extraordinary claim is that it has less evidence backing it up than a standard claim does to begin with.

A standard claim, such as I saw Alf today, I walked down the road, it rained.  

There's already evidence Alf exists (assuming there is), if you know me you'll know I have legs and can walk down a road, we know on this planet it can rain.

I might be lying about all these things but there's at least evidence of the possibility of these events.

If I say Zeus the god traveled faster than light through the halls of Valhalah, then the claim begins in a position of having less evidence backing it up.

Due to the fact we need evidence of Zeus, that anything can travel faster than light, and that valhalah exists.

Okay, so your position is extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence--just ordinary evidence of the components of the claim? Do you think that the NT fails to provide some level of ordinary evidence (even if you think that it does not meet your personal level of proof you require)? 

In case you are saying that the supernatural has to be proven before considering the evidence of the NT claims, then that's just question begging.

I think the NT provides some level of ordinary evidence.  I'll talk about the sections talking about the life of Jesus just because I don't know about all of the NT and just for the sake of conversation to keep it easier.

Someone wrote a book about it, there may have been some witnesses.  That's about it.

There are many MANY things that can be considered to cast doubt on the claims of the new testament.

The fact that it does contain a type of religious leader who is able to perform supernatural actions in the form of miracles.

This isn't begging the question or circular reasoning.  I'm not saying supernatural things can't happen because they're supernatural.

I'm saying we have no evidence (beyond what I previously mentioned) of them (supernatural events in the NT) happening, we do have evidence of people being deceived into believing supernatural actions/events do happen.

There's the situation of the evidence and witness testimony being so old, combined with the supernatural actions.

If the claim was for example "Mary walked across the stepping stones on this river 2000 years ago" then it can be taken with a shrug.  You could think, ok maybe she did, who cares?  Her footprints are long gone, anyone who saw her is long dead, the children of whoever saw her are long dead and so are the grandchildren of her children.

If the claim is that "Jesus came back from the dead, had a chat with people, turned water into wine and walked on water over 2000 years ago."

We're in the same situation, plus supernatural events. The witnesses are long dead, the wine has been drank, no photos no film, nothing but what people said and wrote down.

So we have no evidence of people being able to use actual real magic and miracles to walk on water, come back from the dead, turn water into wine.

 Can people be tricked into believing this has happened?  Yes, we have evidence people can deceive other people into believing magic things happened, or just lying about it to begin with

 Do cult followers believe their leaders can do these type of things now? 

 Do cult leaders perform real magic supernatural miracles now, or is it true that there are people who are capable of deceiving other people into believing miracles and magic have been performed?

How reasonable is it that a cult leader 2000 years ago could have had witnesses claiming he did miracles when he actually didn't do them.

How reasonable is it to think that the cult leader 2000 years ago performed real magic miracles on the basis of whatever evidence we have.

I'm giving benefit of the doubt though, I'll be willing to go along with a hypothetical situation in which we know these witnesses were real people and this book was written by followers of Jesus, I know a lot of people doubt he even existed or that his followers did.