Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[pocaracas]

Late to the party.... again!



(my bold)
I haven't read everything... so... feel free to crucify me if this has already been mentioned...

If this applies to other works of fiction, then maybe... maybe.... maybe... it's not a good measure of reality.
There is zero evidence for a-force-ism, so the Jedi are real.
There is zero evidence for a-faer-ism, so faeries exist.
There is zero evidence for a-warp-speed-ism, so Star Trek is an accurate portrayal of the future.
There is zero evidence for a-pokemon-ism, so there are definitely Japanese kids engaging in small pocket monster slavery for the purpose of battling other similar monsters.
There is zero evidence for a-zylon-ism, so the Earth most surely was the 13th colony.

That is nowhere near what that sentence says, implies, or means. I will try again.

1. Supernatural events are extraordinary claims because of difficulty obtaining evidence.
2. Ordinary claims are ones in which good evidence is possible to obtain.
3. There is no evidence for atheism 
4. There is some evidence for God (natural theology, revealed theology, the person of Jesus/events of his life, personal experience, properly basic belief in the supernatural in ~90% or the world's population).
5. If evidence for the existence of God can be obtained and cannot be obtained for his non-existence, then on the question of God's existence, at worst, the atheism is making the extraordinary claim, and at best the distinction of 'extraordinary' becomes meaningless.

Bullet points are so much easier to follow! Thank you!

1. Alright... let's go ahead with that one.
2. Seems reasonable....
3. BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! atheism is not the claim. The claim is theism. Atheism, as a concept, exists because theism has become so powerful it got to be nearly ubiquitous. Look at my reply.... how many made up claims can exist out there, if we assume each and everyone of the a_[claim]_isms has no evidence? (hint: as many as human imagination can conjure up... or more!)
4. All the evidence for God that you present is, at best, circumstantial... at worst, made up.... there's some wiggle room in between for honest mistakes, wrongful attribution, susceptibility, suggestibility, charisma, etc., etc., etc...
5. Oh, sorry... this whole thing broke off at 3., so no... your conclusion is unsupported.

Thank you for playing.
Try again!


But I'll grant you it was a nice try. Such wordy presentations can, and in fact do, convince many people.
And therein lies the problem - a large share of the population can be easily convinced by bad arguments.
I don't know how, but the population needs to acquire critical thinking skills. We can't leave this in the hands of the few who seem to do it effortlessly... these usually lack the required charisma to spread the message convincingly.