standard of evidence

[Rational AKD]

The logical rules that we live by in all other areas of our lives is that the person making a claim "X" exists has the burden of proof and this burden is based on how consistent the claim is with our everyday experience of the universe.

there's more to establishing truth of a claim than just explanatory power, though it is a factor. you may be the first rational response. but just a correction, burden of proof doesn't just apply to claim of "X" exists, but also "X" does not exist. to be more accurate, it would be proposition X is true. this includes not just positive existence claims, but also negative existence claims. a negating position such as "God doesn't exist" is not a default position. the default position is one of ignorance such as "God may or may not exist but I don't know."

I often like to use the three reports of my lunchtime companions to show how this process works in real life. Let's say I told you that today I had lunch with...

the problem with your examples is the same mistake made by many. believability is not the same as rational. different people accept different beliefs with different standards of evidence, but that doesn't make any of them rational and is an equivocation to say otherwise. the person may challenge a claim more based on his believability, but that doesn't make his challenges rational either. for your first example, yes I can agree it is easier to prove than your third example. but the standards of evidence don't change. you can have a host of witnesses attest to you having dinner with your wife and it would establish it as a more rational position than you lying. likewise, a host of witnesses would be enough to establish having dinner with your dead father is more rational than grand conspiracy or mass hallucination. you may not believe it, but that's not the point.

OK, so we've established how outlandish the claims of religion are.

actually, no you haven't. you've only established the difference between accepting something common and accepting something extreme. none of that has anything to do with burden of proof. accepting extraordinary claims may be harder for us, but that doesn't mean it's less possible. probable, maybe. but appeal to probability is a logical fallacy as well. you can't use probability to say something didn't happen, or say it requires more evidence to determine if it happened.

by themselves and without hard evidence backing them

did I ever suggest that? I said from the start, would arguments with empirically backed premises be sufficient? this would be a logically valid argument with premises with enough empirical evidence to be almost uncontroversial.

They might be useful in proving scenario A but would fall short of meeting the burden of proof for B, never mind C.

that's not at all what I was talking about. this would be how I would structure an argument. if A is true then B. A is true, therefore B. and I would show empirical evidence for A. the only way to debunk such an argument is to show A is false or my logic is invalid. if you can't refute it, then it is most rational to believe it even though it may be hard (assuming you looked into it yourself before determining the conclusion is true).

Consequently, it fails before we even examine the flawed reasoning because the burden isn't going to be met even if no flaws are discovered.

so a sound argument doesn't meet burden of proof even though a sound argument has a necessarily true conclusion?

Consider the original Star Wars movie.

that indeed would meet burden of proof, though I wouldn't say it is a minimum requirement. consider this, if that were necessary to prove Jedi's existed then there would be no way to prove it when they all die. so after they all die, it would be impossible to prove Jedi's existed. at that point and time then, the proposition "Jedi's don't exist" is un-falsifiable. how can you say a proposition is rational if it's un-falsifiable? the more rational approach is saying direct observed evidence is adequate, but multiple reliable attestations throughout history is also accurate.