Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[Mister Agenda]

Assuming that one is not biased to automatically rule out supernatural causes, is there anything wrong with tentatively accepting them until a reasonable natural cause is posited? Or is something only considered explained if attributed to some visible efficient cause?

Something for which the cause is unknown should stay under the 'unexplained' label until the cause is known, though we can discuss which scenarios are more likely to be the cause. 'I don't know' is not a gap that must be filled with 'some explanation' until the real one comes along.

However, if your opinion is that some scenario is more likely and you want to tentatively accept it, that's your business. Whether it's reasonable for you to do so depends on why you're doing it.

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Yet that would be all wiped away in a second if the paralyzed guy got up and walked. Instead of applying the probability to the event, you are applying it to the reliability of the witness. So you really are not talking about the event anymore, you are describing an a priori assumption that witnesses cannot be reliable in the case of extraordinary events without any actual facts that would mitigate these issues on a case by case basis.

Yep, if you could establish that that actually happened, we wouldn't have to wonder about the psychology behind the story. But you can't, so all we have is a story, which is the claim, not the evidence.

Incidentally, the 'heal the paralyzed person' is a trick still beloved by faith healers today.