Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[The Grand Nudger]

B-b-b-but, he has this book, see?

[Foxaèr]

B-b-b-but, he has this book, see?

I know, right. I have this comic book here that proves Wolverine is real.

[SteveII]

Bold mine. This is what your whole post boils down to. 

The events during and following the life of Jesus are some of the most attested to series of events in ALL of ancient history. We know exactly what the first century Christians believed and much of what they did. Even Bart Ehrman thinks the NT is 99% of what it was originally. I don't care if you don't find it compelling. But this constant nonsense (not just you) of "no evidence" is just silly and show a lack of understanding the evidence, or bad reasoning skills, or misunderstanding definitions, or a bias you bring to the subject. 

In case anyone is hazy on the difference, here is an excellent discussion on it at http://pediaa.com/difference-between-evi...and-proof/

I just re read what I wrote and that part was a mistake.  I didn't mean no evidence, I actually meant no compelling evidence.

I did actually put at the beginning of that post that there is some evidence, just not compelling.

I said there is ordinary evidence in the form of a book written about the events.  For the sake of simplicity I'll agree that the evidence shows people believed Jesus did miracles.

This isn't no evidence, it's just a lack of compelling evidence due to the fact that people making claims thousands of years ago is a weak foundation to place a belief on.

What casts doubt on the evidence is that we have evidence of people 

a) Being deceptive and lying about supernatural events.
b) Being deceived by other people into thinking a supernatural event happened.

We have cult leaders alive now who have followers who would say their leaders can perform miracles.  We have evidence that these types of people have existed through history.

It isn't just a lack of compelling evidence, it's evidence that a much more simple conclusion can be drawn and is possible.

In any area where reason and evidence are important the evidence put forth in the style of the NT couldn't stand.

It's ancient witness testimony of supernatural events.

This doesn't mean the miracles and supernatural events in the NT are definitely impossible it just means that practically speaking it's much more sound and logical to conclude that the supernatural events didn't happen.

It's certainly very reasonable to say that there's always more evidence backing up a non supernatural version of events rather than a supernatural.

The definition of supernatural is of something that isn't practically possible within the laws of nature and we try and reasonably conclude what is and isn't possible via evidence.

Therefore it's pretty much something that has already been concluded due to be practically impossible to happen based on the lack of evidence that it can happen and/or evidence we do have that it couldn't happen.

But your entire premise of all the NT players being fooled has absolutely no evidence except people were fooled before and since. In the absence of any real evidence of deceit it seems that is just an assumption entirely based on the supernatural content of the accounts. If that is so, you are question begging: the events are not evidence of the supernatural because the supernatural does not exist.

[Foxaèr]

But your entire premise of all the NT players being fooled has absolutely no evidence except people were fooled before and since. In the absence of any real evidence of deceit it seems that is just an assumption entirely based on the supernatural content of the accounts. If that is so, you are question begging: the events are not evidence of the supernatural because the supernatural does not exist.

My proof that you were duped into believing in Christianity is that you believe in it.

[JackRussell]

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.

Bold mine. This is what your whole post boils down to. 

The events during and following the life of Jesus are some of the most attested to series of events in ALL of ancient history. We know exactly what the first century Christians believed and much of what they did. Even Bart Ehrman thinks the NT is 99% of what it was originally. I don't care if you don't find it compelling. But this constant nonsense (not just you) of "no evidence" is just silly and show a lack of understanding the evidence, or bad reasoning skills, or misunderstanding definitions, or a bias you bring to the subject. 

In case anyone is hazy on the difference, here is an excellent discussion on it at http://pediaa.com/difference-between-evi...and-proof/

Your link is not an excellent discussion.

Proof is for maths and alcohol.

Evidence is proportionately weighed in light of the claim being made.

Water is normally wet. Easy.

Dead man rises and is also God. Hmmmm.

There are ancient texts from many cultures that say weird things that one can not now rationally believe.

There are even conspiracy theories in contemporary cultures that one doesn't rationally believe.

You have evidence, in the form of your OT and NT documents. I accept that.

Your evidence is not good enough to convince a skeptical mind IMHO.

Your God knows that, and, if real, would also know what would convince me.

It is plausible to me that he either doesn't exist, or doesn't care.

I haven't set up a formal logical dichotomy, I may agree, but.......

[Mister Agenda]

I think it is a fancy way of promoting selective hyperskepticism and/or pseudoskepticsim.  As you pointed out, what is an extraordinary claim; or for that matter, what is extraordinary evidence?

Yeah, I was just telekinetically hovering over my roof this morning and a thousand people saw me, right after I put my pants on.

Really, who can tell whether it was the hovering or dressing that's the extraordinary claim? It would take selective hyperskepticism and/or pseudoskepticism to be able to pretend to tell the difference.

[JackRussell]

I would like to see hyper skepticism applied to god claims then.

There is only skepticism, evidence and evaluation, scientific method then peer review.

Contingent conclusions then further analysis and review.

Supernaturalism has never succeeded yet. The reasonable current inference is that it is un-evidenced and natural explanations are.

[Mister Agenda]

No that is the argument from incredulity.  I was talking about the reasoning of  because it's old which was in response to "considering the age of the book of mythology".

 Now if you are not trying to make a case against the thing thing in question, but just commenting on your subjective mental state that is fine.  And I agree, we shouldn't just accept everything without reason.... however if you are doing so for irrational and fallacious reasons, that doesn't make it bullshit.

An argument from incredulity occurs when someone asserts that something didn't happen because they cannot personally understand how it could happen.

'A miracle didn't happen because I don't believe in God and I don't see how it could have happened without an omnipotent being to pull it off' is an example of an argument from incredulity.

'I don't believe it because the evidence for it is hearsay, and ancient hearsay with no provenance to boot' is not an example of an argument from incredulity.

[Minimalist]

I'm still laughing at Steve asking "What is the evidence for atheism?" seriously.  And always relying, blatantly, on the popularity of his religion as though it's an accurate measure of its veracity in every conversation, as if it's a rhetorical magic bullet.

The one thing we know is that there are plenty of fucking fools who believe anything they are told.  How else did the WLB get elected?

[Mister Agenda]

My sentiments to a T.  Rather than argue for the superiority of your epistemic position, the essence of faith would be to admit its frailty and persist nonetheless.  If you have so little faith anyhow, why is it important to convince us?  Convince yourself.

I think that you have a different understanding of faith than I do.  And I don't consider my faith weak, but strong because of the evidence.

It seems like the faith needed to believe something would be inversely proportional to the evidence available to support it. But what's the evidence, again? I seem to missed your attempt to present it.

---

The whole point of the scientific method is to remove subjective judgment from the evaluation of a hypothesis. The irony is that when it comes to anything remotely hinting at the supernatural, in trots the highly subjective criteria of 'extraordinary'. These pseudo-skeptics are a bunch of hypocrites. It's all science, science, science, until its something they don't like and it suits their incredulity its science+. "Oh, yes that's evidence, but its not EXTRAORDINARY evidence"

Yeah, I was just telekinetically hovering over my roof this morning and a thousand people saw me, right after I put my pants on.

Really, who can tell whether it was the hovering or dressing that's the extraordinary claim? It would take selective hyperskepticism and/or pseudoskepticism to be able to pretend to tell the difference.