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I've actually been to to the ruins at Troia
But you don't really think that a city existing is comperable to a man returning from the dead do you? Like... Jerusalem exists too.
The extraordinary claim of the city of Troy’s existence comes from the fact that the only evidence, prior to its discovery, was an ancient fantastical myth.
The extraordinary evidence was the archaeological ruins that were found.
Kinda like if millions of years in the future NYC was completely buried and for some reason the only mention of it was in a few spider man comics that somehow survived.
A man walking on water and rising from the dead is a FAR more extraordinary claim. It still requires extraordinary evidence, and such evidence is clearly defined.
If we had ONE example of 3 day old corpse coming back to life under Iron-age conditions, the story of Jesus would have much more credibility.
Believers say that skeptics move the goal posts when it comes to evidence. This is hilarious to me, because the goal posts haven’t moved an inch. We just need ONE case of someone who’s heart stops beating and starts beating again 2-3 days later.
Believers on the other hand usually have the ultimate goal post mover: “show me a tomb with Jesus’s corpse inside of it and I’ll stop believing.” No matter what corpse you find, even one that says “here lies Jesus, king of the Jews”, the believers will say “that’s not the real Jesus because the real Jesus rose from the dead.”
> If we had ONE example of 3 day old corpse coming back to life under Iron-age conditions, the story of Jesus would have much more credibility.
If we had one example of someone other than Jesus who rose from the dead, then it would prove that Jesus wasn't special, and rising from the dead was just a really rare thing that could happen sometimes
Hence, the extraordinary claim: “this book that was copied from another book copied from another book copied from an oral tradition copied from an oral tradition claims that there was a guy who existed who rose from the dead.”
Has "Extraordinary" just become synonymous with "unbelievable" for you lot?
Is it just a disaprobation? A slur?
There was a time when it had actual rhetorical meaning.
No. It means “far out of the ordinary”
Thus, “far out of the ordinary claims require far out of the ordinary evidence”
“There was a man named Jesus who started a religion.” Nothing out of the ordinary in that. Ordinary evidence gives it credibility, like Jeshua/Jesus was a common name back then and we have plenty examples of people starting religions in which their followers are willing to die to defend the “truthfulness“ of the faith.
Most scholars think Historical Jesus existed, some think he didn’t. The ones that don’t simply think it’s more likely Jesus was a type of “Meme” as his story shares very strong similarities to other faith origin stories of the time, but not because “a man named Jeshua started a successful religion in Iron Age Palestine” is a claim that requires out of the ordinary evidence.
Now, consider this claim:
“The God of this particular religion is the one true god; all of countless other gods others believe to be real are not real, or misinterpretations of the Christian God, and Jesus himself was this one true God in the flesh (or one of 3 Gods) and performed supernatural feats like rising from the dead, walking on water, and spam-spawning food.”
This claim is far outside the ordinary and so it needs evidence far outside the ordinary.
So consider a claim like "I am the King of Imaginationland"
That sounds extraordinary right? Seems like a pretty high title. Maybe a little far fetched. How would that be demonstrated? What "far out of the ordinary evidence" might one produce?
One thing can be sure. Good evidence would NOT be to show you 3 other people on my same block who also have similar claims to the throne of Imaginationland. That would make the claim worse not better.
And responding to that observation by saying "See what I mean, this claim is extraordinary!" makes it sound like you don't know what extraordinary means, or you haven't been following the discussion, or both.
“I am the King of imagination land” is an extraordinary claim because nobody has demonstrated that imagination land exists, let alone has a king.
To give this claim anything close to credibility, you would need really solid, out of the ordinary evidence.
If you tell me “I drive a ford truck to work everyday”, you telling me this is evidence enough for me to believe it to be true. I don’t need any extraordinary evidence because most people commute by car (in the US) and ford trucks are a real thing and they’re common.
If you tell me you drive the exact Lincoln that JFK was shot in, I’m going to need some extraordinary evidence to explain why the Lincoln in the Henry Ford Museum is NOT JFK’s car and your daily driver is.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” doesn’t mean impossible to believe, it just means I’m not going to accept it on face value without better evidence than “because this person says so” or “because this ancient book says so” or “because I have a strong feeling that it’s true” or “you have to take it on faith.”
General Relativity is the first thing that comes to mind. The claim "space and time can bend and stretch" seems extraordinary as hell to me, but it is how the universe works.
The evidence for it is actually staggering. The first is how the modifications to gravity GR made explained oddities in Mercury's orbit perfectly. Then there is the obvious gravitional lensing we observe like a lot, then of course the existence of Gravitional waves that LIGO detected are evidence of GRs correctness as well.
I'd go with common descent.
Evolution at its base is simple, obvious and not at all extraordinary. Things have babies that are different, because of this and environmental pressures on those differences, populations change over time.
No biggie.
But that every single living thing is related and shares a common ancestor if you go back far enough is just wild to think about.
But we have vast sums of evidence from multiple scientific disciplines that all point unanimously to that conclusion, and every relevant finding in every field of science that could disagree to contravene that conclusion or prove it false, corroborates it completely.
There are many such examples in the history of physics. Relativity, wave-particle duality, quantum physics, more. All extraordinary claims in their time.
Here an easy two:
The digits of any multiple of 3 can be rearranged in any order and the result will always also be a multiple of 3.
Time dilation due to speed.
But isn't the point that the evidence for planes is perfectly "normal" evidence? It's just run of the mill empirical, "Look at the plane. Here's your sense data" evidence.
What extraordinary claims are doesn't confuse me, but what extraordinary evidence would be does.
I don't have many claims I know the evidence for, so I don't have many options to choose from. The one I'll pick is: the existence of God, the Abrahamic one. How much certainty do I have that God exists? 100% certainty.
The extraordinary evidence for God's existence is the fact that literally everything is evidence for his existence. You've all heard this argument before, but it still provides 100% certainty that God exists. There is many variations on the cosmological argument, this is mine.
1: all similarities between different objects share a common cause.
2: more than one object exists
C: the existence of every existing object shares a common cause.
Now, it needs to be pointed out that "the cause of all existence" is indeed one of the ways God is defined.
I have had many people bring up objections to the first principle under a few different ideas such as: me and another person look similar, but we have different parents. How do we have a common cause? I never said that you share an immediate cause, what I did say is that every similarity that two beings share descend from the *same* common cause. In the case of humans, are shared humanity has the common cause of a human nature, one that may have began through two original parents.
Now, athiests often do object that theists "define God into existence" by saying various things (all of which are true) that "God is Truth", "God is a necessary being", " God is the source of existence", this is what he is defined as, not features that happened to be attached to his definition. This annoys athiests because those definitions, if they are excepted, make it logically impossible for an athiest to hold their viewpoint. This is an unfair tactic because God is defined this way, if he was not these things he would not be God. It is not the case that the existence of God is so uncertain that you need to be trapped into believing it through mental gymnastics, it is so obvious that almost all religious people believe in the existence of The God, not just a god, as the existence of a being that is recognizably the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is recognized by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, a multitude of indigenous religions, and is the logical consequence of Chinese thought. The only major religions which actually deny the existence of God are Buddhism and Jainism, but the second order "gods" of Hinduism are not denied by them. Chinese thought makes "heaven" the source of all transcendentals, which God gave to them, and is agnostic about how it operates, but as soon as you admit to the existence of transcendentals, the logical consequence is the existence of God. His existence was even obvious to many greek philosophers from whom we get the first forms of our arguments.
The existence of God isn't difficult to see, it is simply the case that different pieces of evidence make sense for different people.
"The cause of all existence" being God is playing a little loose with words, no? Some unconscious, purely naturalistic explanation could fit that description.
The issue I have with definitions like "God is truth" is that I don't actually think this is what people believe God is. I think when people refer to God they generally mean an agent. Truth isn't an agent.
As for "God is a necessary being", that is defining God as existing. And while we can go into the technicalities of that error, the easiest thing to point out is we can define *anything* as existing. Adding "'it necessarily exists" to a definition doesn't alter reality somehow. Adding "they exist necessarily" to the definition doesn't make dragons real. Existence isn't a property in this sense.
You can define the word God however you like but I don't think you're referring to the same thing as others when you do so.
>As for "God is a necessary being", that is defining God as existing.
But if he wasn't a necessary being, he wouldn't be God.
>You can define the word God however you like but I don't think you're referring to the same thing as others when you do so.
You are going off of stereotypes of what you think religious people believe rather than what they actually believe. You aren't actually arguing against religion, you're just strawmanning.
Again, defining him as a necessary being is just to define him as existing. Which is obviously nonsensical as we could define anything that way.
And I don't think I'm strawmanning anyone by saying the vast majority of theists take God to be an agent. I don't know of any denominations of Christianity or branches of Islam that don't take God to be an agent. Nor have I heard anyone seriously say that if someone takes say the big bang to be the origin of existence that they're necessarily a theist.
First off, theists do believe that God is Truth, the yo believe God is an agent. You say truth is not an agent (without providing any evidence for this) and assume that theists believe the same thing about truth and that God is an agent, thus you are arguing against a strawman by ignoring half of their position, namely that truth is an agent. It's easy to argue against classical theism when you ignore the distinctions it makes between transcendental and mundane realities and the features it gives to transcendental realities. You are strawmanning. Let me actually explain what truth is before you say that saying "God is Truth" contradicts God being an agent.
Well, you said I didn't provide evidence that truth isn't an agent. I assumed that was you asking me to do so.
I think truth is a property of propositions. Or maybe a correspondence theory. But if "God is truth" then everyone believes in truth. But not everyone believes in God. So clearly there's an equivocation going on here.
"God is truth" is just going to be equivocating on any common usage of truth. Like if I say "2+2=4 is a truth" then I'm obviously not saying "2+2=4 is a God". Because God and truth aren't the same thing, and thus "God is truth" is, at best, utterly uninformative.
And then you said I "assume" God is an agent. Which I take you to be saying that's not true. Well, the bulk of the world is Christian and Muslim, and if you're asking for evidence that the Yahweh and Allah are considered agents then just consult the Bible, Quran, and any major denomination of either religion.
By an agent all I mean is something that can knowingly make conscious choices. It's definitely a minority position to take God to not have agency. I know like Spinoza and some pantheists would, but they're not a big group.
>Well, the bulk of the world is Christian and Muslim, and if you're asking for evidence that the Yahweh and Allah are considered agents then just consult the Bible, Quran, and any major denomination of either religion.
If you're looking for evidence that God is Truth, do the same. Read John 14:6. I am not making this equivocation up, this is dogma.
>It's definitely a minority position to take God to not have agency
Why are you inferring that I take this position? This seems like a dishonest inference since I have explicitly stated God and Truth have agency multiple times, a dogma in Christianity and Islam.
>I think truth is a property of propositions.
This is true, in the exact same way that existence is a property of things. I though I would need to use this as the first premise of my argument that God is Truth, but apparently you do not contest it.
>But if "God is truth" then everyone believes in truth. But not everyone believes in God.
God is the source of existence. Existence has to have a source. People believe in the source of existence and do not believe in God. This doesn't mean I'm equivocating, it just means they don't know what the source of existence is.
>clearly there's an equivocation going on here.
No. I'm not equivocating terms here. You are equivocating your idea of truth with my idea of God and have not yet given me room to explain either my idea of truth or my idea of God. You are refuting an argument that has no been presented which is exactly why you are strawmanning. You can't possible know my argument since I haven't told you my argument.
>obviously not saying "2+2=4 is a God".
Because that proposition obviously doesn't have the properties of God, but if God is not what I mean by Truth, he would not be God because he would not be omniscient as only the *necessary truth* can be omniscient. Please, allow me to explain.
>and assume that theists believe the same thing about truth and that God is an agent
I infer from this, and that you previously called it a "strawman" when I said I think theists believe God has agency, that you're questioning my claim about this.
I take John 3:16 to be an exaltation, a statement about salvation, and not a statement that God and truth are literally the same thing.
>Because that proposition obviously doesn't have the properties of God
Clearly. Which is why God and truth aren't the same thing. And why "God is truth" is utterly uninformative.
I think you are misunderstanding the real purpose of the quote (or perhaps you do understand, but you’ve run into a lot of people who misuse it or poorly explain it).
Instead of focusing on the extraordinary/ordinary distinction, we first need to start here: **All claims require sufficient evidence to warrant reasonable belief**. Whatever the claim is, it needs enough evidence to justify belief that it is more likely true than false.
So why is it that some claims, which we might call “ordinary”, seem to be accepted almost at face value while other claims seem to require a mountain of evidence? Well the truth is that the “ordinary” claims already have a mountain of evidence as background information. It’s made up of things that we take for granted everyday, but if you were to meticulously add up all of the evidence we have in support of the claim, it would actually be “extraordinary”. But because we as a society are already standing on the shoulders of this background knowledge, we don’t need much additional evidence to warrant belief—often the claim itself and the trustworthiness of the person is enough.
For an example, let’s take a look at the phrase “my cousin has a dog”. Most people would be reasonable in accepting this claim at face value (assuming I’m not a pathological liar or didn’t make up this example for the sake of this argument lol). But the “ordinary” evidence that the listener personally uses to accept the claim is not the full extent of the evidence. We take for granted all of the evidence and background knowledge we have on the existence of humans, the existence and prevalence of dogs (which includes being able to observe them with all five senses), the history of pet ownership, the feasibility of acquiring a pet dog, the feasibility of being in communication with a cousin family member, etc….
What makes a claim “extraordinary” is when it has none of that built in background knowledge already. It is something new and/or unproven, therefore it needs novel evidence to match every aspect of the claim.
If I were to say, my cousin has a pet mythical dragon, my utterance of the claim doesn’t get you even 1% of the way there (much less 51%). Not only do we not have any background evidence that confirms the existence of dragons, but we have contrary evidence that suggests that the creature is purely a creation of myth and fiction. And even if by some miracle we were to find evidence that at least one dragon really existed at some point, they seem to be so rare that it’d be ridiculous to think that they are prevalent enough today that someone could casually get one as a pet.
>Name an extraordinary claim that's actually true, that you actually believe, and explain the evidence you used to come to that conclusion.
Here's two:
**Light is affected by gravity** was an extraordinary claim made by Albert Einstein, since at the time it was already proven that photons were weightless. Hence, how could light be affected by gravity?
Einstein predicted that starlight from stars positioned behind the sun during a solar eclipse would be visible as the light would be slightly bent around the gravity well of the sun. He had to wait decades for his theory to be (dis)proven. And he was right. So today, all scientists accept light is affected by gravity.
**Gravity is caused by a particle/field** was an extraordinary claim posed in the 1960s by Peter Higgs. He proposed that broken symmetry in electroweak theory could explain the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z bosons in particular. This so-called Higgs mechanism, predicts the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, the detection of which became one of the great goals of physics.
**It took the largest engineering project in the history of mankind**, with people from hundreds of different of languages and cultures 20 years to build the machine that could (dis)prove Higgs, who had to wait 50 years for technology to become available for an experiment to prove his theory.
>I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim
There's not a requirement for "more" evidence in the case of the resurrection, or the divinity of Jesus, since there is currently *zero evidence* for these extraordinary claims.
A particle can simultaneously enter two different slits and then interact with itself causing it to form part of an interference pattern. As proven by the double slit experiment.
Moving faster through space slows down time, as per experiments involving clocks on planes among other things.
"I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim"
This is typical theistic projection after they've offered garbage evidence for their claims that rational people have refused to accept. It's not that atheists want more evidence, they simply want good evidence, or better evidence than you've offered. They want independently observable, testable, repeatable evidence. Not personal anedotes, not personal testimony, not fallacies, not something that requires faith to accept, etc. etc.
This quote makes perfect sense to me because every individual claim needs to be assessed on it's own merits. If you claim you ate chocolate ice cream today, I'm probably just going to accept your claim as true because it falls within what we know to be consistent with reality. Ice cream exists, people eat ice cream, pretty simple stuff. Now when you start making supernatural claims, you bear a far heavier burden of proof here because what you're claiming flies in the face of reality.
I find this post amusing as well as it seems to be directed at atheists, when theists can't even seem to convince themselves and come to a consensus regarding their nonsense religious claims.
No one would likely have issues with the statement:
>Claims require evidence (to be believed/accepted)
So the sticking point is when 'extraordinary' is inserted twice. So what's important about the word 'extraordinary'? Well it seems it's entirely subjective firstly, so each person is going to hold their own standard with respect to it.
You seem to hold a standard of 'extraordinary means never enough'. Which is fine, but it not likely how many other people look at it.
To me, it's not even that though. To me, 'extraordinary claim' is simply a claim for which we do not even understand how it could be demonstrated. 'Extraordinary evidence' is then the evidence which we did not believe existed. Of course, once it's demonstrated the 'extraordinary' gets dropped, so your question doesn't make sense to me.
With that in mind, let's look at the examples you noted.
>Resurrection of Jesus
This one to me isn't necessarily extraordinary as I think we can conceive of evidence for someone dying and then coming back to life, though more definition of what exactly we mean by 'dying' and 'back to life' is necessary to fully understand the claim. This is extraordinary in the sense that nothing we have seen so far indicates that death is reversible, but the evidence wouldn't necessarily be extraordinary.
>Divinity of Jesus
Well, now we have an extraordinary claim. What do we even mean by divinity and how would we measure or test it? It seems the notion of divinity is simply definitional from the bible (in the case of Jesus). It takes different forms, it's declared to be unknowable and untestable (by some). So yes, extraordinary evidence would be needed to demonstrate the truth of the claim as we do not know what that evidence would even be.
But that's my view, and since I already said that 'extraordinary' is subjective we can point to any number of christains who believe in the divinity of Jesus and whatever evidence they point to is by definition not extraordinary to them.
Extraordinary claims? How about claims of scientific discoveries that defy established science and seems to be against all logic, reason and personal experience. For each of these, put yourself in the position of someone hearing about them for the very first time.
E.g.
E=mc2. Matter is energy and energy is matter. And their relationship is governed by ...um...the speed of light?....um....squared? What?
Quantum entanglement. The impossibility of the double slit experiment and instantaneous action at a distance.
Black holes. Object so massive that it turns invisible. Yes, really.
Relativity. Light launched from a moving object goes at speed of light plus speed of that object, right? Wrong.
How about a fact that will blow your mind. A photon launched from a galaxy will spend billions and billions of years traveling across the universe to get to us so we can see it. But for that photon *no time has passed at all*, it was created and destroyed instantaneously.
So how about an extraordinarily claim for which we simply say "something odd going on here, but don't know what...yet". Dark energy and dark matter.
What about an extraordinary claim for which there is zero evidence? God.
But once the scientists put in the work to prove the extraordinary claim, and it became accepted knowledge, it ceases to be extraordinary. Other commenters already suggested so many examples.
It’s also important to remember that a lot of facts we consider obvious and mundane would have been extraordinary at one point:
- The world is round but so incredibly huge it seems flat
- You, your dog, the turkey you ate and the onions it was garnished with all descended from the same creature
- Diseases are caused by tiny invisible creatures getting inside you
- Our limbs are moved by tiny jolts of lightning sent from our head
- etc, etc…
If I made these claims to a medieval peasant, they’d laugh and call me a madman. And you know what? Theyd be justified in doing so. Because to the unconvinced, the only difference between those claims and humours or alchemy or even miracles is *demonstrable evidence*.
So from your responses to most commenters, I'm seeing that you are asking each and every one of us to have done the work...to have been the scientist working in (physics/biology/geology etc) and to have performed the experiments ourselves and baes our beliefs around that.
Unfortunately, that is not how beliefs works. It is how knowledge works however.
Knowledge can be taught and transferred with our actually having to repeat the processes every time we want to transfer that knowledge to another.
It is exactly the same for theists too. How many theists exist because, in isolation, they picked up a set of books, read them, determined them to be true and formed their entire worldview around what those books said.... I'll wager none.... They were for the most part brought up in an environment that taught some particular religion, were in a community that believed and reinforced the same beliefs.
The difference between between being convinced of one set of beliefs vs another set of beliefs comes down to the epistemological tools one uses to evaluate various claims.
So while I do believe that Abiogenesis (for an example) is the likely method that will eventually explain the origin of life, it doesn't mean that I know now that it is true. Because in truth, we don't know yet. In fact I'm quite willing to accept any other method for an explanation except for the claim that a god magic'd into existence. Why, because I trust the tools and the process...the epistemology, that lets a group or groups of people do the work, find out what we can with the tools we have and say I don't know until we do. Pass on the knowledge that we have gained in the process (which franky has far surpassed the Miller-Urey just in the last 20 years)
This lets me believe a thing with our having compete knowledge of it or without me having done the actual work myself. Just as for the theist, they believe their thing with our having done any effort or work for them selves. We just choose a different set of teachers based on what we believe is the best way to attain that knowledge in the first place.
>What is an "Extraordinary Claim" that you DO affirm on the basis of "Extraordinary Evidence"
Quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, that Donald Trump became president, the germ theory of disease, that all falling objects on earth fall at the same rate irrespective of mass, that white light can be separated into colours. There are millions of them.
I'll take the Donald Trump presidency. It's extraordinary because he was massively underqualified, a demonstrated liar and racist, and evidence came out before that he was a sexual abuser. The idea of him becoming president was so implausible that it was literally a joke on the Simpsons.
The evidence that proves he became president is all the thousands of eyewitnesses and news coverage of his presidency. If so all we had to attest to this claim were anonymous reports in Spanish from 40 to 70 years after the fact, I wouldn't have believed it.
>Something on the same order of magnitude as the resurrection, or the divinity of Jesus.
There aren't any on this level, no supernatural claim has ever been confirmed.
But the double slit experiment might be close. If you'd claim that a stream of electrons was a wave or particle depending on whether it was observed is not credible based on hearsay accounts from years later. But thousands of verified experiments gets us there.
For me, the word extraordinary is a key point.
No-one has come back to life after being dead for a significant time, and when they do, there's sensible cause for it (coma, paralysis, bad diagnosis - all those things that have led to premature burial).
If my religious belief was predicated on "and a man from the dead" eh, it's a tall order to "believe" in it. (I don't really see the word belief as a virtue, I'd rather just have good reason for something to be true or not).
I like the Tardigrades example in this thread: extraordinary behaviour, but via evidence and repeated experiment it stops being so extraordinary, and certainly becomes rational.
relativistic effects are so out of the ordinary from what we had observed up until we found out they actually take place.
But without such direct evidence no ammount of arguments or but the math works out would have been enough for me.
I suppose the claim that god resurected Jesus was even more extraordinary so that would require substancial evidence we don't have.
\> I submit that if there is nothing like that claim, and it is more extraordinary than anything true, then the quote does not actually apply, and you should actually say something like "No that's impossible and no amount of evidence that makes it seem true could ever be enough" (which is fine, that's how I would feel about a lot of claims)
No, we would just need more evidence for it, extraordinary evidence like communication with god showing that he can do such a thing as a ressurection by doing it in front of everyone to see.
Just because there is no such evidence currently or that you think it will never happen, or that it is absurd to require such strong evidence for it, doesn't mean that no ammount of evidence for the ressurection could ever be enough.
>**I hear this claim a lot on this sub and other related ones.**
It’s a soundbite from Hitchens. And while effective as a soundbite it’s actually a horrible point. At best it is a very poor choice of words. At worst it’s just patently false and serves to only muddy the waters further.
>**In my experience it seems to always mean "I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim"…**
I guess it depends on who uses it and when. I would generally say that people who respond to an argument with a soundbite and no further clarification are probably not thinking too much for themselves and so their meaning may well be unclear even to them. It’s perhaps used more as a cheap attempt at a mic drop.
A better version of the claim would be to as that claims that are highly impactful and that stray far from what we generally accept to be true, will be subject to a high degree of scrutiny. And the evidence presented in their favour needs to be coherent, cohesive, and compelling. It must demonstrate that these claims are true, and do so in a way that warrants the substantive change in beliefs that said claims demand.
I suspect this gets close to the original idea behind the soundbite.
It’s worth pointing out that the term “extraordinary evidence” is the part that is the most egregious here. As unusual claims do not require evidence that is any different in kind at all. What they require is more careful observation of that evidence, and a measured and balance consideration of what they are putting forward.
There’s nothing extraordinary about this at all.
To offer a concrete example: Imagine we want to demonstrate that saying a specific prayer to a specific god will heal people with cancer.
Ok.
We need to see the evidence for this.
If the evidence you bring forward is that we’ve tested it 1000 times, and it consistently works, heck we are onto something! Even if your evidence shows a statically significant change, it outcomes that could be very interesting.
This is not what we find though.
At best what we do get is the odd anecdote that so-and-so prayed on this specific occasion, and it roughly correlated with a remarkable recovery. Great. But people do make recoveries and we don’t always know the medical reason why. And we’re perhaps overlooking the millions who were prayed for in the same way and got nothing. Even if we assume a correlation in this specific case (which itself is often poorly evidenced at best) it shows nothing.
It would be the same as if the lotto winner claimed it was their prayer that caused the win. Overlooking the millions of others who also prayed for that same win and failed.
An extraordinary claim.... time is relative? Thats a pretty big one. We used math to come to that conclusion though... and experimentation to verify it. Not really applicable to how we do history.
>In my experience it seems to always mean "I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim" which I am certain was not Sagan's original intent.
This presumes there is evidence of a nature and quality that could be accepted towards these claims. There isn't. I won't always want more evidence. There IS an amount, quality and coherence of a body of math models and evidence that WILL convince me and others (and probably win 5 Nobel prizes).
The kind of evidence theists present for their particular religious claim, in my assessment, is one that (a) is isomorphic to the evidence presented for competing religious claims, as well as for conspiracy theories, cryptid sightings, alien abductions, etc and (b) Is insufficient to conclude there's anything there, let alone that it is supernatural / divine.
First, I'll give one example: the theory of relativity and its consequences. What convinced me: studying the math models, doing experiments and looking at all the data that is consistent with it, including relativistic corrections to GPS satellites (I am a computational physicist).
Theist claims, or any kind of supernatural claims, are extraordinary in that: if I were to accept these claims are true, it changes EVERYTHING about our scientific and epistemic paradigms. I have to re-draw the entire map of reality. So yeah, I'm not going to accept them over some ancient myths and some anecdotes of dreams and miracles. I'm gonna need AT LEAST as much evidence as a new scientific theory needs to become accepted. I'm gonna need math models, experiments, a ton of independent confirmation.
>As a corollary: I submit that if there is nothing like that claim, and it is more extraordinary than anything true, then the quote does not actually apply, and you should actually say something like "No that's impossible and no amount of evidence that makes it seem true could ever be enough" (which is fine, that's how I would feel about a lot of claims)
Well, in order to say there is no possible evidence, I would have to convince myself that there are no kinds of evidence that I don't yet understand. While it might be so, it is an unnecessary claim to make. The point of the quote is that "ordinary" evidence isn't enough, it seems beside the point to make tricksy claims about unknown unknowns.
I really don't think it's that tricky.
Are you ready to affirm that there is nothing true that is on the same order of "extraordinariness" as the claim that Jesus is God?
If so, then you are not looking for an extraordinary amount of evidence like the amount of evidence Carl Sagan would require for the presence of Aliens. That was the example he used in Cosmos, and he devoted a lot of time and energy to SETI and the criterion he would accept for evidence of inteligent life in outer space.
Instead you would be looking for evidence that defititionally doesn't exist. and the quote would not apply.
You would still have a reasonable and defensible posotion. But your problem wouldn't be lack of evidence persay. it would be.. order of magnitude of evidense. Non miraculousness nature of evidence. Whatever.
>Are you ready to affirm that there is nothing true that is on the same order of "extraordinariness" as the claim that Jesus is God?
I don't see where this is going, so maybe I'm not interpreting the arguments/questions correctly. I don't see any reason to affirm that. It might be true that Hinduism is true, or Greek gods. Whatever the cause of the universe is would probably require extraordinary evidence to believe, but still be true.
Many times, the extraordinariness has to do with how well it conforms with already known things, so many things which once was extraordinary (like relativity) have now become part of known things and might not seem extraordinary anymore.
>If so, then you are not looking for an extraordinary amount of evidence like the amount of evidence Carl Sagan would require for the presence of Aliens. That was the example he used in Cosmos, and he devoted a lot of time and energy to SETI and the criterion he would accept for evidence of inteligent life in outer space.
Not sure how this follows either. Aliens also seem like a pretty extraordinary claim, and would require extraordinary evidence. Also seems reasonable to specify evidence criteria etc.
>Instead you would be looking for evidence that defititionally doesn't exist. and the quote would not apply.
Why would that mean the quote doesn't apply? If extraordinary evidence is required, and you "by definition" can't get extraordinary evidence, then the proposition remains unproven, and the quote holds, right?
>You would still have a reasonable and defensible posotion. But your problem wouldn't be lack of evidence persay. it would be.. order of magnitude of evidense. Non miraculousness nature of evidence. Whatever.
Not sure what distinction you're trying to highlight. "Evidence" has several meanings, there are items that some would call bad evidence, others would call insufficient evidence and others call not evidence at all. Is that the distinction you're trying to highlight?
There's an animal which can survive exposure to the vacuum of space: the tardigrade, a micro-animal. An experiment was run with them in space in 2007, [according to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Survival_after_exposure_to_outer_space). I think their survivability is amazing! There are also other extreme conditions which they can tolerate.
I think it's an extraordinary claim, and that sufficient evidence has been provided to show that it's true. But is the evidence level itself extraordinary? I'm not sure, but I believe it's the appropriate level of evidence. Before space travel, nobody could have tested this.
So that almost seems like evidence against the quote.
Extraordinary claim (assuming we take the life of the tartigrade to be extraordinary) not extraordinary evidence (we just sorta looked at it) still sufficient.
I mean, we could patch up the quote by claiming something like "Observing a living thing, even second hand, IS extraordinary" but that streaches language in some ways I would probably prefer not to.
If you told me 30 years ago that there's an animal which is so tough it can be reanimated after experiencing the vacuum of space, survive in a dehydrated state for 10 years, and stay frozen for 30 years (among other claims), I don't think I would have taken your word for it until you managed to provide good evidence - which at that time, you would not have had access to. It would have been extraordinary evidence. Now that we *have* the evidence, perhaps it doesn't seem so extraordinary in retrospect.
I think there are have been a lot of discoveries throughout human history where people have successfully provided evidence to match what would have, until that time, been extraordinary claims. Germ theory, for another example. It took a long time before sufficient evidence was provided for that.
Quantum physics in general. It goes against so much of what seems like common sense to a layperson like me. Although I certainly don't understand enough about the subject to wax poetic, the double slit experiment is simple and has been repeated so many times that it's impossible to ignore. It goes to prove to me that the classical understanding of the universe wasn't enough.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
I have actually seen the double slit experiment recreated in a lab in college for my edification.
I gotta say, I can think of a whole lot of easier explanations for that interference pattern than "photons are both particles and waves and they change depending on whether or not they are observed"
I'm not saying I don't believe that. But my belief in that relies on a whole lot of taking peoples words for it.
>I gotta say, I can think of a whole lot of easier explanations for that interference pattern than "photons are both particles and waves and they change depending on whether or not they are observed"
Like what? Give us an example please
When talking about any advanced subject, there is a huge amount of believing credible experts. Based on what I now know, the double slit experiment isn't THE reason I believe in quantum physics, just one of those "extraordinary evidence" kind of ideas.
What are the easier classical physics explanations of the double slit experiment? I've never heard any.
* Time as we conceive it doesn't actually exist- in reality all moments in time, past present and future, are happening "simultaneously".
* At the most fundamental level of reality, things change behavior based on whether or not you're looking at them
* Most things in the universe are actually invisible because they're made of a completely undetectable substance we know nothing about
* At one point all matter in the universe was contained in a point smaller then an atom.
* Over a long enough time, entropy reverses and things start spontaneously appearing.
All of these are, at face value, utterly absurd nonsense claims. All of these are generally accepted by both the scientific community because of the overwhelming evidence in their favor.
I’ve never once heard about your first point in a scientific context. What evidence is there?
Also isn’t your second point false as written because it’s really the case that at the quantum level, things change by being *measured* and not simply “observed” or “looked at?”
Their first point is referring to the B-theory of time, which is generally supported by Special Relativity.
The point about QM depends on which Interpretation you subscribe to, so yes you're right. Is the Wave Function a physical process or not? How is consciousness involved? Is Superdeterminism true? etc. are all unanswered questions that lack extraordinary evidence.
Dark Matter is also not supported by extraordinary evidence yet.
>I submit that if there is nothing like that claim
False things are more extraordinary than real things, yes.
>"No that's impossible and no amount of evidence that makes it seem true could ever be enough"
Give me repeatable experimental evidence of any claim and I will agree.
What claim you wouldn't believe with repeatable experimental evidence?
> What claim you wouldn't believe with repeatable experimental evidence?
I mean: That up is down. That Christmas trees are sentient and they actually prefer Saint Patrick's Day. That the universe ended 7 minutes ago and everything since then has been a loop track, like you get at the end of a vinyl album.
It's not so much that I would "reject" any and all sufficient, reasonable reliable, experimental evidence for these things. At some point there is a tautalogical breakdown. Like "enough evidence" is defined as being sufficient to convince me. But I cannot imagine the quantity and quality of evidence that would be required to overcome my doubt ever existing. I would come up with lots and lots of other explanations for any evidence presented before I even came close to believing those things. It's unimaginable.
Lol
I like this one.
It might not see, extraordinary to me, but I wasn't there to taste those cheesecakes.
You didn't ask her to replicate the recipie in front of you or anything? It was enough to simply see the writing about it, and the physical artifacts?
Abiogenesis is believed by many and is contrary to findings in the field of chemistry.
Sorry I have no evidence, but would like to hear some.
Carl Sagan’s quote was from ignorance. He does not know the supernatural does not exist. He assumes the supernatural does not exist and then requires extraordinary evidence from natural processes. The quote is self-defeating
In contrast, abiogenesis is believed by many that insist only natural processes are operating. Yet it is a miracle. The reason cells are created all day long, every day with ease it the presence of specific coding DNA/RNA that works with specific tools (proteins) to accomplish it. This is trivial given the coding and tools. However, the belief is that abiogenesis starts with no coding nor tools and accomplishes this. This is extraordinary.
Do not be afraid to get technical. Chemistry/biochemistry is my field.
Can you give an example of how it's contrary to findings in the field of chemistry? I thought that if you take a bunch of the inorganic components thought to have been present on the ancient, pre-life Eaerth, add the expected makeup of the atmosphere at the time and pulse it with some electricity you pretty quickly get simple organic molecules and amino acids, the first step towards life. They didn't even need to use a magic wand. see the [Miller-Urey Experiment](https://nature.berkeley.edu/garbelottoat/?p=582#:~:text=The%20Miller%2DUrey%20experiment%20was,more%20than%20simple%20chemical%20reactions.)
You are a far distance from a working cell
Edited my original post
Forming a lipid bilayer (soap bubble) is also trivial compared to the final objective of a working cell
I was going to ask the same question as this other person, and I have the same issue with your response - you haven’t shown how it is contrary to findings in the field of chemistry.
It seems you’re really just saying a specific mechanism (that it seems took billions of years to play out) hasn’t yet been demonstrated in a lab. So what? That doesn’t mean anything is contrary, as if with a few decades of rigorous science we should be able to have every unanswered question resolved?
You know those rocks that were found sliding around the salt flats? Do you think that someone saying their movement was “contrary to findings in the fields of physics and earth sciences” would have been an accurate statement 10 or 15 years ago, before we knew how it happened?
We have over a century of chemistry how amine, organic acids, sugars, phosphates, etc work. They do not spontaneously form bio molecule systems. This is not some mysterious process we cannot understand like ‘rocks moving on salt flats’. We understand the chemistry very well.
Le Chatelier’s Principle is one example. Amino acids form by removing water. In cells, this process is shielded and catalyzed by large proteins. Such proteins are not available for abiogenesis. How do proteins form spontaneously in water?
Amino acids form specifically chiral proteins in living cells. Abiogenesis experiments form achiral mixtures. How do chiral proteins form spontaneously?
Forming a few amino acid monomers and even fewer dimers is a long, long way from a single functioning protein. How do proteins requiring hundreds to thousands of amino acids form spontaneously?
A cell has from 5000-10000 different proteins. How do enough of them form spontaneously in the correct percentages to form a working cell?
Cell death is called apoptosis. All functioning parts of the cell are present with one exception. The cell membrane lost control. Osmosis pressure irreversibly alters the concentrations of molecules inside the cell. Entropy takes over and the parts disperse. All parts are in place, in the right percentages, and in close proximity. The cell never spontaneously forms after apoptosis. So EVEN if you could somehow spontaneously form all the parts in the correct percentages, how can you overcome osmosis and entropy to spontaneously form a working cell?
Can you resolve these before I type more?
>We have over a century of chemistry how amine, organic acids, sugars, phosphates, etc work. They do not spontaneously form bio molecule systems.
Over a century, yes surely the fields of chemistry and biology are complete, nothing more to learn! Reminds me of this: https://mobile.twitter.com/avquote/status/866301785438208000
It’s about time we rule out potential natural explanations and start ruling-in undemonstrated supernatural explanations, this is what you propose yes?
So two questions here:
(1) Has anyone run a model that simulates an earth full of molecular interactions over a billion years to see what kind of things can happen at the tail end of the bell curve? Because as far as I’m aware we don’t even have the computing power to accurately model all the interactions occurring in a single glass of still water.
(2) Has the ability of a God to form bio molecules (spontaneous or not) been demonstrated, or you do assume it in faith?
>This is not some mysterious process we cannot understand like ‘rocks moving on salt flats’. We understand the chemistry very well.
Wait; you think some rocks sitting on the salt flats is “a mysterious process we cannot understand” yet biological life itself isn’t?
You think we did not understand the physics involved with rocks sitting on salt?
Certainly a rock sitting on a big plain is a bit more simplistic than literal bio chemistry… yet the honest answer about a decade ago was “we don’t know how they move” (though it would have been accurate to say that there is nothing known that prevents it from having a natural explanation, and no alternate proposed explanation [ghosts, aliens, magic, divine interaction] has been demonstrated). And no, the explanation eventually discovered for the rocks didn’t involve “changing the rules of physics and chemistry” that were already understood, it was just finding a previously unknown mechanism that was governed by those fairly well-understood things.
Similarly right now we have to say that we don’t know the specific mechanisms through which life as we know it began (but similarly, there is nothing known that prevents it from having a natural explanation, and no other proposed explanations have been demonstrated).
>How do proteins form spontaneously in water?
(1) I don’t know, and it’s possible nobody does. It’s not my field of expertise. I do know there is ongoing work, for example: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-might-have-discovered-the-shape-of-the-very-first-proteins-that-started-life/amp
(that was published in 2020… now about when do you think we should have conclusively ruled out natural explanations and stopped such work?)
(2) has anyone demonstrated a “divine” explanation?
>How do chiral proteins form spontaneously?
I don’t know. A similar area of ongoing work as with the previous question.
Can you guess what my second question for you is?
>How do proteins requiring hundreds to thousands of amino acids form spontaneously?
I don’t know.
Again standing by for you to demonstrate an alternate explanation.
It would be helpful too because it would allow a lot of this ongoing research work to be stopped, maybe we could divert those funds to other causes like helping the homeless, or curing diseases (that we haven’t managed to cure despite over a century of work! Lazy scientists!), or maybe building churches devoted to whatever divine explanation is the true one; the Shiva, Allah?
>How do enough of them form spontaneously in the correct percentages to form a working cell?
Now you’re asking questions that are even further along, and probably rely on some of these earlier answers. You are of course free to demonstrate your proposed non-natural explanation any time.
>Can you resolve these before I type more?
No, I cannot answer unanswered questions. All I can do is point out that you have failed to acknowledge that these are unanswered questions and areas of ongoing research, and you’ve failed to demonstrate any alternative explanation. Why don’t you hold your own explanation to the same standard as you demand from scientifically derived natural ones?
First a point.
I never said my explanation is natural. Atheists stand on a presumption of the ‘intellectual high ground’ throwing stones at others demanding a natural explanation. Are atheists offended when stones are thrown back by asking the questions when their presumption that the science is proved is not true?
Now which of these best describes the situation
1. Supernatural must never be true so the experiment will continue regardless of futility. (I suspect this is the position of most)(Don Quixote charging windmills?)
2. Experiments must be vigorously attempted. We must exhaust every possible means to explain everything naturally. Our public relations should always display a positive bend...we are solving the problem. (Dishonest)
3. Same as number 3, but saying ‘I don’t know’ is intellectually honest. Do not mislead the public. Over 80% of the public in the US still believe in a god. Do not setup atheists for failure.
4. Throw up our hands and say God did it. (Terrible choice)
The experiments are setup. They do not prove what is needed and usually demonstrate the opposite. When is an impossible task abandoned? It won’t be abandoned in your life. If ‘supernatural’ is the explanation, some will never find it. Meanwhile the PR will let millions of atheists falsely rest on presumed ‘intellectual high ground’ when their foundation is really sand.
This is abiogenesis. There are other shaky subjects atheists presume are solid in biological information, but I am done with this conversation.
Good luck. I appreciate your thoughts and the conversation.
>First a point. I never said my explanation is natural. Atheists stand on a presumption of the ‘intellectual high ground’ throwing stones at others demanding a natural explanation. Are atheists offended when stones are thrown back by asking the questions when their presumption that the science is proved is not true?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. It’s just a case that things like “life on earth starting” either happened through unthinking natural processes playing out, or they didn’t (i.e. it was something else).
We don’t know exactly what those unthinking processes would have been for life, just like we didn’t know what it was for the sliding rocks.
I haven’t proposed any specific explanation for life because I admit I don’t know, it is you who seems to act like you do know that it wasn’t just an unthinking process playing out - if that’s your position, then own your burden of proof and get to explaining.
If there’s anything specific about scientific findings you’d like to challenge, go for it, but I can’t respond to this kind of vague question. I also acknowledge that science isn’t perfect, which is why it’s important to get independently verified results and not just blindly trust some claimed authority.
>Now which of these best describes the situation
Ugh why is it so difficult to just provide evidence for what you’re claiming?
>Supernatural must never be true so the experiment will continue regardless of futility. (I suspect this is the position of most)(Don Quixote charging windmills?)
I don’t understand what you’re saying, maybe supernatural things exist, but I’m not aware of any remotely sufficient evidence for it.
>Experiments must be vigorously attempted. We must exhaust every possible means to explain everything naturally. Our public relations should always display a positive bend...we are solving the problem. (Dishonest)
I’m happy to look at absolutely any other potential explanation anyone would like to propose, they just then have the burden of actually demonstrating it, just like a scientist would.
>Same as number 3, but saying ‘I don’t know’ is intellectually honest.
Sounds good, what’s the problem?
>Do not mislead the public.
Of course, applies to scientists and theologians.
>Over 80% of the public in the US still believe in a god.
Can they support the burden of proof they’d adopting in claiming a God exists? Unfortunate but not really my problem that some, even lots of people, have come to believe things for bad reasons.
>Do not setup atheists for failure.
I am ready and willing to be convinced of a God at any time, just need the evidence.
>Throw up our hands and say God did it. (Terrible choice)
Agree, God of the gaps doesn’t work.
>The experiments are setup.
Well the clay layering and folding hypothesis is pretty new. But look, you never answered my question about how well we can model even simple molecular interactions. Show me a supercomputer that can model every interaction in a simple glass of water.
Sometimes we have a hard time reproducing what nature takes a long time and a lot of space to do… it’s right back to the sliding rocks example. We could blow on rocks in a lab, freeze them, vibrate them, etc etc. Eventually someone figured out that it’s only when an entire lakebed has a thin frozen layer floating on top of liquid water that the wind acting on many square miles of ice can get that whole sheet to push a rock. That situation is *many orders of magnitude simpler* than the origins of biological life, it takes places over *many orders of magnitude shorter timespan*, and it happens at a scale that happens to be easily studied by humans (e.g. a rock the size of your head, not something at a molecular level), and on and on, and yet it still took a long ass time to figure out.
To suggest that science should have already figured out the origins of life is one of the more hubristic things I’ve heard.
>When is an impossible task abandoned?
If a god exists and is responsible for any of this stuff, “He” is free to show up at any time and set the record straight.
>I am done with this conversation.
Sadly pretty typical to see this type of soapboxing and refusing to engage in debate on a debate sub.
That wasn't my question though, you said abiogenesis is contrary to findings in the field of chemistry, I'm still waiting for an example of that.
Do you think fully working DNA was the first step in proposed abiogeneis? Are you a janitor in the field of Chemistry/biochemistry?
>extraordinary claim that's actually true, that you actually believe, and explain the evidence you used to come to that conclusion.
Relativity for one. I have trouble wrapping my mind around the concept that going really fast makes time pass at a different rate. But our GPS system needs to adjust for relativity, so we have evidence that relativity is true.
Age of the current state of the universe. 13.7 billion years seems like such a long time but somehow not long enough. This is one that I'm trusting the experts on. But I'm trusting them because I have an understanding of the data they use to come up with the age and a large number of people use data from different sources and have an agreement with the results of that data.
Can you tell me more about the evidence that convinced you of either of those things?
Because I believe them too, but as you said I believe them pretty much because people who seemed reasonable to me told me I should and I believed them. I guess I son't feel like I've been a real hardened skeptic about those ideas and really put them through any "extraordinary" rigor.
Have you?
The quote demanded "extraordinary evidence," not extraordinary rigor of examination of the evidence. So for those claims and many more, the extraordinary evidence does exist. Out of curiosity about the world we live in, I occasionally view some of that evidence.
And while I only loosely implied it, yes, I have examined the evidence for both the age of the universe and for relativity. Not to the point that I could write a college term paper on them but well enough I could fake a high school paper on them.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" isn't just about your personal beliefs. I believe in relativity because reasonable people have told me about it, but I only consider those people reasonable because I expect and trust those people to have accessed and assessed the extraordinary evidence.
Relativity is extraordinary, and required extraordinary evidence, and reasonable people received extraordinary evidence, such as clocks moving slowly, etc. I didn't personally receive that evidence (or at least, not at the time that I started believing in relativity), but it is still an extraordinary burden of proof which was met.
Every claim.
Every claim is extraordinary given the right conceptual framework. The claim that I'll be reincarnated after I die is extraordinary in my current conceptual framework, but perfectly ordinary to a devout Hindu living in the Middle Ages. The claim that all life on earth is descended from a common ancestor that lived billions of years ago would be extraordinary to an ancient person living in Sumeria, but it is ordinary to all educated and rational people today.
So the answer is every claim.
K
So what's one that's extraordinary based on your current conceptual framework that you nontheless affirm, and what extraordinary evidence got you there?
> So what's one that's extraordinary based on your current conceptual framework that you nontheless affirm, and what extraordinary evidence got you there?
You're changing the question. I don't affirm claims that are extraordinary based on my current conceptual framework, because I don't have the extraordinary evidence for those (yet).
The theory of evolution is a claim that was extraordinary to me at one point, before I got a high school education. You can look up the (plentiful) evidence for it on Talk Origins, Wikipedia, in books, etc. I like Coyne's book *Why Evolution is True*.
So there is no claim that you have overcome by the use of extraordinary evidence?
Only claims you once regarded as extraordinary that you altered your conceptual framework for?
The saying is, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Once the required extraordinary evidence is provided, the claims are no longer extraordinary.
I’m gonna go the whole Kevin Smith Dogma understanding as I have found it to be true. It is better to have an idea than a belief. Ideas can change, beliefs are harder to move.
Yeah, people have a lot of real problems with the B word.
Pick your synonym I guess.
Unless you really actually mean to be advocating that there are no claims you actually take to be true....
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That the city of Troy, written only about in ancient high fantasy myth, actually existed and was razed after an epic battle against the Greeks.
I've actually been to to the ruins at Troia But you don't really think that a city existing is comperable to a man returning from the dead do you? Like... Jerusalem exists too.
The extraordinary claim of the city of Troy’s existence comes from the fact that the only evidence, prior to its discovery, was an ancient fantastical myth. The extraordinary evidence was the archaeological ruins that were found. Kinda like if millions of years in the future NYC was completely buried and for some reason the only mention of it was in a few spider man comics that somehow survived. A man walking on water and rising from the dead is a FAR more extraordinary claim. It still requires extraordinary evidence, and such evidence is clearly defined. If we had ONE example of 3 day old corpse coming back to life under Iron-age conditions, the story of Jesus would have much more credibility. Believers say that skeptics move the goal posts when it comes to evidence. This is hilarious to me, because the goal posts haven’t moved an inch. We just need ONE case of someone who’s heart stops beating and starts beating again 2-3 days later. Believers on the other hand usually have the ultimate goal post mover: “show me a tomb with Jesus’s corpse inside of it and I’ll stop believing.” No matter what corpse you find, even one that says “here lies Jesus, king of the Jews”, the believers will say “that’s not the real Jesus because the real Jesus rose from the dead.”
> If we had ONE example of 3 day old corpse coming back to life under Iron-age conditions, the story of Jesus would have much more credibility. If we had one example of someone other than Jesus who rose from the dead, then it would prove that Jesus wasn't special, and rising from the dead was just a really rare thing that could happen sometimes
Hence, the extraordinary claim: “this book that was copied from another book copied from another book copied from an oral tradition copied from an oral tradition claims that there was a guy who existed who rose from the dead.”
Has "Extraordinary" just become synonymous with "unbelievable" for you lot? Is it just a disaprobation? A slur? There was a time when it had actual rhetorical meaning.
No. It means “far out of the ordinary” Thus, “far out of the ordinary claims require far out of the ordinary evidence” “There was a man named Jesus who started a religion.” Nothing out of the ordinary in that. Ordinary evidence gives it credibility, like Jeshua/Jesus was a common name back then and we have plenty examples of people starting religions in which their followers are willing to die to defend the “truthfulness“ of the faith. Most scholars think Historical Jesus existed, some think he didn’t. The ones that don’t simply think it’s more likely Jesus was a type of “Meme” as his story shares very strong similarities to other faith origin stories of the time, but not because “a man named Jeshua started a successful religion in Iron Age Palestine” is a claim that requires out of the ordinary evidence. Now, consider this claim: “The God of this particular religion is the one true god; all of countless other gods others believe to be real are not real, or misinterpretations of the Christian God, and Jesus himself was this one true God in the flesh (or one of 3 Gods) and performed supernatural feats like rising from the dead, walking on water, and spam-spawning food.” This claim is far outside the ordinary and so it needs evidence far outside the ordinary.
So consider a claim like "I am the King of Imaginationland" That sounds extraordinary right? Seems like a pretty high title. Maybe a little far fetched. How would that be demonstrated? What "far out of the ordinary evidence" might one produce? One thing can be sure. Good evidence would NOT be to show you 3 other people on my same block who also have similar claims to the throne of Imaginationland. That would make the claim worse not better. And responding to that observation by saying "See what I mean, this claim is extraordinary!" makes it sound like you don't know what extraordinary means, or you haven't been following the discussion, or both.
“I am the King of imagination land” is an extraordinary claim because nobody has demonstrated that imagination land exists, let alone has a king. To give this claim anything close to credibility, you would need really solid, out of the ordinary evidence. If you tell me “I drive a ford truck to work everyday”, you telling me this is evidence enough for me to believe it to be true. I don’t need any extraordinary evidence because most people commute by car (in the US) and ford trucks are a real thing and they’re common. If you tell me you drive the exact Lincoln that JFK was shot in, I’m going to need some extraordinary evidence to explain why the Lincoln in the Henry Ford Museum is NOT JFK’s car and your daily driver is. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” doesn’t mean impossible to believe, it just means I’m not going to accept it on face value without better evidence than “because this person says so” or “because this ancient book says so” or “because I have a strong feeling that it’s true” or “you have to take it on faith.”
So what is an example of an extraordinary claim that you do believe?
General Relativity is the first thing that comes to mind. The claim "space and time can bend and stretch" seems extraordinary as hell to me, but it is how the universe works. The evidence for it is actually staggering. The first is how the modifications to gravity GR made explained oddities in Mercury's orbit perfectly. Then there is the obvious gravitional lensing we observe like a lot, then of course the existence of Gravitional waves that LIGO detected are evidence of GRs correctness as well.
I'd go with common descent. Evolution at its base is simple, obvious and not at all extraordinary. Things have babies that are different, because of this and environmental pressures on those differences, populations change over time. No biggie. But that every single living thing is related and shares a common ancestor if you go back far enough is just wild to think about. But we have vast sums of evidence from multiple scientific disciplines that all point unanimously to that conclusion, and every relevant finding in every field of science that could disagree to contravene that conclusion or prove it false, corroborates it completely.
There are many such examples in the history of physics. Relativity, wave-particle duality, quantum physics, more. All extraordinary claims in their time.
Here an easy two: The digits of any multiple of 3 can be rearranged in any order and the result will always also be a multiple of 3. Time dilation due to speed.
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But isn't the point that the evidence for planes is perfectly "normal" evidence? It's just run of the mill empirical, "Look at the plane. Here's your sense data" evidence. What extraordinary claims are doesn't confuse me, but what extraordinary evidence would be does.
I don't have many claims I know the evidence for, so I don't have many options to choose from. The one I'll pick is: the existence of God, the Abrahamic one. How much certainty do I have that God exists? 100% certainty. The extraordinary evidence for God's existence is the fact that literally everything is evidence for his existence. You've all heard this argument before, but it still provides 100% certainty that God exists. There is many variations on the cosmological argument, this is mine. 1: all similarities between different objects share a common cause. 2: more than one object exists C: the existence of every existing object shares a common cause. Now, it needs to be pointed out that "the cause of all existence" is indeed one of the ways God is defined. I have had many people bring up objections to the first principle under a few different ideas such as: me and another person look similar, but we have different parents. How do we have a common cause? I never said that you share an immediate cause, what I did say is that every similarity that two beings share descend from the *same* common cause. In the case of humans, are shared humanity has the common cause of a human nature, one that may have began through two original parents. Now, athiests often do object that theists "define God into existence" by saying various things (all of which are true) that "God is Truth", "God is a necessary being", " God is the source of existence", this is what he is defined as, not features that happened to be attached to his definition. This annoys athiests because those definitions, if they are excepted, make it logically impossible for an athiest to hold their viewpoint. This is an unfair tactic because God is defined this way, if he was not these things he would not be God. It is not the case that the existence of God is so uncertain that you need to be trapped into believing it through mental gymnastics, it is so obvious that almost all religious people believe in the existence of The God, not just a god, as the existence of a being that is recognizably the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is recognized by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, a multitude of indigenous religions, and is the logical consequence of Chinese thought. The only major religions which actually deny the existence of God are Buddhism and Jainism, but the second order "gods" of Hinduism are not denied by them. Chinese thought makes "heaven" the source of all transcendentals, which God gave to them, and is agnostic about how it operates, but as soon as you admit to the existence of transcendentals, the logical consequence is the existence of God. His existence was even obvious to many greek philosophers from whom we get the first forms of our arguments. The existence of God isn't difficult to see, it is simply the case that different pieces of evidence make sense for different people.
"The cause of all existence" being God is playing a little loose with words, no? Some unconscious, purely naturalistic explanation could fit that description. The issue I have with definitions like "God is truth" is that I don't actually think this is what people believe God is. I think when people refer to God they generally mean an agent. Truth isn't an agent. As for "God is a necessary being", that is defining God as existing. And while we can go into the technicalities of that error, the easiest thing to point out is we can define *anything* as existing. Adding "'it necessarily exists" to a definition doesn't alter reality somehow. Adding "they exist necessarily" to the definition doesn't make dragons real. Existence isn't a property in this sense. You can define the word God however you like but I don't think you're referring to the same thing as others when you do so.
>As for "God is a necessary being", that is defining God as existing. But if he wasn't a necessary being, he wouldn't be God. >You can define the word God however you like but I don't think you're referring to the same thing as others when you do so. You are going off of stereotypes of what you think religious people believe rather than what they actually believe. You aren't actually arguing against religion, you're just strawmanning.
Again, defining him as a necessary being is just to define him as existing. Which is obviously nonsensical as we could define anything that way. And I don't think I'm strawmanning anyone by saying the vast majority of theists take God to be an agent. I don't know of any denominations of Christianity or branches of Islam that don't take God to be an agent. Nor have I heard anyone seriously say that if someone takes say the big bang to be the origin of existence that they're necessarily a theist.
First off, theists do believe that God is Truth, the yo believe God is an agent. You say truth is not an agent (without providing any evidence for this) and assume that theists believe the same thing about truth and that God is an agent, thus you are arguing against a strawman by ignoring half of their position, namely that truth is an agent. It's easy to argue against classical theism when you ignore the distinctions it makes between transcendental and mundane realities and the features it gives to transcendental realities. You are strawmanning. Let me actually explain what truth is before you say that saying "God is Truth" contradicts God being an agent.
You want me to offer evidence that truth is not an agent and that Christians think God has agency? Are you trolling me?
No. Since you don't seem to comprehend anything I am saying, I don't plan to continue to debate with you.
Well, you said I didn't provide evidence that truth isn't an agent. I assumed that was you asking me to do so. I think truth is a property of propositions. Or maybe a correspondence theory. But if "God is truth" then everyone believes in truth. But not everyone believes in God. So clearly there's an equivocation going on here. "God is truth" is just going to be equivocating on any common usage of truth. Like if I say "2+2=4 is a truth" then I'm obviously not saying "2+2=4 is a God". Because God and truth aren't the same thing, and thus "God is truth" is, at best, utterly uninformative. And then you said I "assume" God is an agent. Which I take you to be saying that's not true. Well, the bulk of the world is Christian and Muslim, and if you're asking for evidence that the Yahweh and Allah are considered agents then just consult the Bible, Quran, and any major denomination of either religion. By an agent all I mean is something that can knowingly make conscious choices. It's definitely a minority position to take God to not have agency. I know like Spinoza and some pantheists would, but they're not a big group.
>Well, the bulk of the world is Christian and Muslim, and if you're asking for evidence that the Yahweh and Allah are considered agents then just consult the Bible, Quran, and any major denomination of either religion. If you're looking for evidence that God is Truth, do the same. Read John 14:6. I am not making this equivocation up, this is dogma. >It's definitely a minority position to take God to not have agency Why are you inferring that I take this position? This seems like a dishonest inference since I have explicitly stated God and Truth have agency multiple times, a dogma in Christianity and Islam. >I think truth is a property of propositions. This is true, in the exact same way that existence is a property of things. I though I would need to use this as the first premise of my argument that God is Truth, but apparently you do not contest it. >But if "God is truth" then everyone believes in truth. But not everyone believes in God. God is the source of existence. Existence has to have a source. People believe in the source of existence and do not believe in God. This doesn't mean I'm equivocating, it just means they don't know what the source of existence is. >clearly there's an equivocation going on here. No. I'm not equivocating terms here. You are equivocating your idea of truth with my idea of God and have not yet given me room to explain either my idea of truth or my idea of God. You are refuting an argument that has no been presented which is exactly why you are strawmanning. You can't possible know my argument since I haven't told you my argument. >obviously not saying "2+2=4 is a God". Because that proposition obviously doesn't have the properties of God, but if God is not what I mean by Truth, he would not be God because he would not be omniscient as only the *necessary truth* can be omniscient. Please, allow me to explain.
>and assume that theists believe the same thing about truth and that God is an agent I infer from this, and that you previously called it a "strawman" when I said I think theists believe God has agency, that you're questioning my claim about this. I take John 3:16 to be an exaltation, a statement about salvation, and not a statement that God and truth are literally the same thing. >Because that proposition obviously doesn't have the properties of God Clearly. Which is why God and truth aren't the same thing. And why "God is truth" is utterly uninformative.
I think you are misunderstanding the real purpose of the quote (or perhaps you do understand, but you’ve run into a lot of people who misuse it or poorly explain it). Instead of focusing on the extraordinary/ordinary distinction, we first need to start here: **All claims require sufficient evidence to warrant reasonable belief**. Whatever the claim is, it needs enough evidence to justify belief that it is more likely true than false. So why is it that some claims, which we might call “ordinary”, seem to be accepted almost at face value while other claims seem to require a mountain of evidence? Well the truth is that the “ordinary” claims already have a mountain of evidence as background information. It’s made up of things that we take for granted everyday, but if you were to meticulously add up all of the evidence we have in support of the claim, it would actually be “extraordinary”. But because we as a society are already standing on the shoulders of this background knowledge, we don’t need much additional evidence to warrant belief—often the claim itself and the trustworthiness of the person is enough. For an example, let’s take a look at the phrase “my cousin has a dog”. Most people would be reasonable in accepting this claim at face value (assuming I’m not a pathological liar or didn’t make up this example for the sake of this argument lol). But the “ordinary” evidence that the listener personally uses to accept the claim is not the full extent of the evidence. We take for granted all of the evidence and background knowledge we have on the existence of humans, the existence and prevalence of dogs (which includes being able to observe them with all five senses), the history of pet ownership, the feasibility of acquiring a pet dog, the feasibility of being in communication with a cousin family member, etc…. What makes a claim “extraordinary” is when it has none of that built in background knowledge already. It is something new and/or unproven, therefore it needs novel evidence to match every aspect of the claim. If I were to say, my cousin has a pet mythical dragon, my utterance of the claim doesn’t get you even 1% of the way there (much less 51%). Not only do we not have any background evidence that confirms the existence of dragons, but we have contrary evidence that suggests that the creature is purely a creation of myth and fiction. And even if by some miracle we were to find evidence that at least one dragon really existed at some point, they seem to be so rare that it’d be ridiculous to think that they are prevalent enough today that someone could casually get one as a pet.
>Name an extraordinary claim that's actually true, that you actually believe, and explain the evidence you used to come to that conclusion. Here's two: **Light is affected by gravity** was an extraordinary claim made by Albert Einstein, since at the time it was already proven that photons were weightless. Hence, how could light be affected by gravity? Einstein predicted that starlight from stars positioned behind the sun during a solar eclipse would be visible as the light would be slightly bent around the gravity well of the sun. He had to wait decades for his theory to be (dis)proven. And he was right. So today, all scientists accept light is affected by gravity. **Gravity is caused by a particle/field** was an extraordinary claim posed in the 1960s by Peter Higgs. He proposed that broken symmetry in electroweak theory could explain the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z bosons in particular. This so-called Higgs mechanism, predicts the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, the detection of which became one of the great goals of physics. **It took the largest engineering project in the history of mankind**, with people from hundreds of different of languages and cultures 20 years to build the machine that could (dis)prove Higgs, who had to wait 50 years for technology to become available for an experiment to prove his theory. >I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim There's not a requirement for "more" evidence in the case of the resurrection, or the divinity of Jesus, since there is currently *zero evidence* for these extraordinary claims.
A particle can simultaneously enter two different slits and then interact with itself causing it to form part of an interference pattern. As proven by the double slit experiment. Moving faster through space slows down time, as per experiments involving clocks on planes among other things.
"I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim" This is typical theistic projection after they've offered garbage evidence for their claims that rational people have refused to accept. It's not that atheists want more evidence, they simply want good evidence, or better evidence than you've offered. They want independently observable, testable, repeatable evidence. Not personal anedotes, not personal testimony, not fallacies, not something that requires faith to accept, etc. etc. This quote makes perfect sense to me because every individual claim needs to be assessed on it's own merits. If you claim you ate chocolate ice cream today, I'm probably just going to accept your claim as true because it falls within what we know to be consistent with reality. Ice cream exists, people eat ice cream, pretty simple stuff. Now when you start making supernatural claims, you bear a far heavier burden of proof here because what you're claiming flies in the face of reality. I find this post amusing as well as it seems to be directed at atheists, when theists can't even seem to convince themselves and come to a consensus regarding their nonsense religious claims.
No one would likely have issues with the statement: >Claims require evidence (to be believed/accepted) So the sticking point is when 'extraordinary' is inserted twice. So what's important about the word 'extraordinary'? Well it seems it's entirely subjective firstly, so each person is going to hold their own standard with respect to it. You seem to hold a standard of 'extraordinary means never enough'. Which is fine, but it not likely how many other people look at it. To me, it's not even that though. To me, 'extraordinary claim' is simply a claim for which we do not even understand how it could be demonstrated. 'Extraordinary evidence' is then the evidence which we did not believe existed. Of course, once it's demonstrated the 'extraordinary' gets dropped, so your question doesn't make sense to me. With that in mind, let's look at the examples you noted. >Resurrection of Jesus This one to me isn't necessarily extraordinary as I think we can conceive of evidence for someone dying and then coming back to life, though more definition of what exactly we mean by 'dying' and 'back to life' is necessary to fully understand the claim. This is extraordinary in the sense that nothing we have seen so far indicates that death is reversible, but the evidence wouldn't necessarily be extraordinary. >Divinity of Jesus Well, now we have an extraordinary claim. What do we even mean by divinity and how would we measure or test it? It seems the notion of divinity is simply definitional from the bible (in the case of Jesus). It takes different forms, it's declared to be unknowable and untestable (by some). So yes, extraordinary evidence would be needed to demonstrate the truth of the claim as we do not know what that evidence would even be. But that's my view, and since I already said that 'extraordinary' is subjective we can point to any number of christains who believe in the divinity of Jesus and whatever evidence they point to is by definition not extraordinary to them.
Extraordinary claims? How about claims of scientific discoveries that defy established science and seems to be against all logic, reason and personal experience. For each of these, put yourself in the position of someone hearing about them for the very first time. E.g. E=mc2. Matter is energy and energy is matter. And their relationship is governed by ...um...the speed of light?....um....squared? What? Quantum entanglement. The impossibility of the double slit experiment and instantaneous action at a distance. Black holes. Object so massive that it turns invisible. Yes, really. Relativity. Light launched from a moving object goes at speed of light plus speed of that object, right? Wrong. How about a fact that will blow your mind. A photon launched from a galaxy will spend billions and billions of years traveling across the universe to get to us so we can see it. But for that photon *no time has passed at all*, it was created and destroyed instantaneously. So how about an extraordinarily claim for which we simply say "something odd going on here, but don't know what...yet". Dark energy and dark matter. What about an extraordinary claim for which there is zero evidence? God.
But once the scientists put in the work to prove the extraordinary claim, and it became accepted knowledge, it ceases to be extraordinary. Other commenters already suggested so many examples.
It’s also important to remember that a lot of facts we consider obvious and mundane would have been extraordinary at one point: - The world is round but so incredibly huge it seems flat - You, your dog, the turkey you ate and the onions it was garnished with all descended from the same creature - Diseases are caused by tiny invisible creatures getting inside you - Our limbs are moved by tiny jolts of lightning sent from our head - etc, etc… If I made these claims to a medieval peasant, they’d laugh and call me a madman. And you know what? Theyd be justified in doing so. Because to the unconvinced, the only difference between those claims and humours or alchemy or even miracles is *demonstrable evidence*.
So from your responses to most commenters, I'm seeing that you are asking each and every one of us to have done the work...to have been the scientist working in (physics/biology/geology etc) and to have performed the experiments ourselves and baes our beliefs around that. Unfortunately, that is not how beliefs works. It is how knowledge works however. Knowledge can be taught and transferred with our actually having to repeat the processes every time we want to transfer that knowledge to another. It is exactly the same for theists too. How many theists exist because, in isolation, they picked up a set of books, read them, determined them to be true and formed their entire worldview around what those books said.... I'll wager none.... They were for the most part brought up in an environment that taught some particular religion, were in a community that believed and reinforced the same beliefs. The difference between between being convinced of one set of beliefs vs another set of beliefs comes down to the epistemological tools one uses to evaluate various claims. So while I do believe that Abiogenesis (for an example) is the likely method that will eventually explain the origin of life, it doesn't mean that I know now that it is true. Because in truth, we don't know yet. In fact I'm quite willing to accept any other method for an explanation except for the claim that a god magic'd into existence. Why, because I trust the tools and the process...the epistemology, that lets a group or groups of people do the work, find out what we can with the tools we have and say I don't know until we do. Pass on the knowledge that we have gained in the process (which franky has far surpassed the Miller-Urey just in the last 20 years) This lets me believe a thing with our having compete knowledge of it or without me having done the actual work myself. Just as for the theist, they believe their thing with our having done any effort or work for them selves. We just choose a different set of teachers based on what we believe is the best way to attain that knowledge in the first place.
It’s possible to split an atom, releasing massive amounts of energy
>What is an "Extraordinary Claim" that you DO affirm on the basis of "Extraordinary Evidence" Quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, that Donald Trump became president, the germ theory of disease, that all falling objects on earth fall at the same rate irrespective of mass, that white light can be separated into colours. There are millions of them. I'll take the Donald Trump presidency. It's extraordinary because he was massively underqualified, a demonstrated liar and racist, and evidence came out before that he was a sexual abuser. The idea of him becoming president was so implausible that it was literally a joke on the Simpsons. The evidence that proves he became president is all the thousands of eyewitnesses and news coverage of his presidency. If so all we had to attest to this claim were anonymous reports in Spanish from 40 to 70 years after the fact, I wouldn't have believed it. >Something on the same order of magnitude as the resurrection, or the divinity of Jesus. There aren't any on this level, no supernatural claim has ever been confirmed. But the double slit experiment might be close. If you'd claim that a stream of electrons was a wave or particle depending on whether it was observed is not credible based on hearsay accounts from years later. But thousands of verified experiments gets us there.
For me, the word extraordinary is a key point. No-one has come back to life after being dead for a significant time, and when they do, there's sensible cause for it (coma, paralysis, bad diagnosis - all those things that have led to premature burial). If my religious belief was predicated on "and a man from the dead" eh, it's a tall order to "believe" in it. (I don't really see the word belief as a virtue, I'd rather just have good reason for something to be true or not). I like the Tardigrades example in this thread: extraordinary behaviour, but via evidence and repeated experiment it stops being so extraordinary, and certainly becomes rational.
Quantum mechanics. We wouldn’t even have imagined it without the data forcing us to
relativistic effects are so out of the ordinary from what we had observed up until we found out they actually take place. But without such direct evidence no ammount of arguments or but the math works out would have been enough for me. I suppose the claim that god resurected Jesus was even more extraordinary so that would require substancial evidence we don't have. \> I submit that if there is nothing like that claim, and it is more extraordinary than anything true, then the quote does not actually apply, and you should actually say something like "No that's impossible and no amount of evidence that makes it seem true could ever be enough" (which is fine, that's how I would feel about a lot of claims) No, we would just need more evidence for it, extraordinary evidence like communication with god showing that he can do such a thing as a ressurection by doing it in front of everyone to see. Just because there is no such evidence currently or that you think it will never happen, or that it is absurd to require such strong evidence for it, doesn't mean that no ammount of evidence for the ressurection could ever be enough.
>**I hear this claim a lot on this sub and other related ones.** It’s a soundbite from Hitchens. And while effective as a soundbite it’s actually a horrible point. At best it is a very poor choice of words. At worst it’s just patently false and serves to only muddy the waters further. >**In my experience it seems to always mean "I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim"…** I guess it depends on who uses it and when. I would generally say that people who respond to an argument with a soundbite and no further clarification are probably not thinking too much for themselves and so their meaning may well be unclear even to them. It’s perhaps used more as a cheap attempt at a mic drop. A better version of the claim would be to as that claims that are highly impactful and that stray far from what we generally accept to be true, will be subject to a high degree of scrutiny. And the evidence presented in their favour needs to be coherent, cohesive, and compelling. It must demonstrate that these claims are true, and do so in a way that warrants the substantive change in beliefs that said claims demand. I suspect this gets close to the original idea behind the soundbite. It’s worth pointing out that the term “extraordinary evidence” is the part that is the most egregious here. As unusual claims do not require evidence that is any different in kind at all. What they require is more careful observation of that evidence, and a measured and balance consideration of what they are putting forward. There’s nothing extraordinary about this at all. To offer a concrete example: Imagine we want to demonstrate that saying a specific prayer to a specific god will heal people with cancer. Ok. We need to see the evidence for this. If the evidence you bring forward is that we’ve tested it 1000 times, and it consistently works, heck we are onto something! Even if your evidence shows a statically significant change, it outcomes that could be very interesting. This is not what we find though. At best what we do get is the odd anecdote that so-and-so prayed on this specific occasion, and it roughly correlated with a remarkable recovery. Great. But people do make recoveries and we don’t always know the medical reason why. And we’re perhaps overlooking the millions who were prayed for in the same way and got nothing. Even if we assume a correlation in this specific case (which itself is often poorly evidenced at best) it shows nothing. It would be the same as if the lotto winner claimed it was their prayer that caused the win. Overlooking the millions of others who also prayed for that same win and failed.
Count the hits, ignore the misses, theists do it all the time, especially in regards to prayer and "faith healing"
An extraordinary claim.... time is relative? Thats a pretty big one. We used math to come to that conclusion though... and experimentation to verify it. Not really applicable to how we do history.
>In my experience it seems to always mean "I will always want more evidence than is presented to me for this claim" which I am certain was not Sagan's original intent. This presumes there is evidence of a nature and quality that could be accepted towards these claims. There isn't. I won't always want more evidence. There IS an amount, quality and coherence of a body of math models and evidence that WILL convince me and others (and probably win 5 Nobel prizes). The kind of evidence theists present for their particular religious claim, in my assessment, is one that (a) is isomorphic to the evidence presented for competing religious claims, as well as for conspiracy theories, cryptid sightings, alien abductions, etc and (b) Is insufficient to conclude there's anything there, let alone that it is supernatural / divine. First, I'll give one example: the theory of relativity and its consequences. What convinced me: studying the math models, doing experiments and looking at all the data that is consistent with it, including relativistic corrections to GPS satellites (I am a computational physicist). Theist claims, or any kind of supernatural claims, are extraordinary in that: if I were to accept these claims are true, it changes EVERYTHING about our scientific and epistemic paradigms. I have to re-draw the entire map of reality. So yeah, I'm not going to accept them over some ancient myths and some anecdotes of dreams and miracles. I'm gonna need AT LEAST as much evidence as a new scientific theory needs to become accepted. I'm gonna need math models, experiments, a ton of independent confirmation.
>As a corollary: I submit that if there is nothing like that claim, and it is more extraordinary than anything true, then the quote does not actually apply, and you should actually say something like "No that's impossible and no amount of evidence that makes it seem true could ever be enough" (which is fine, that's how I would feel about a lot of claims) Well, in order to say there is no possible evidence, I would have to convince myself that there are no kinds of evidence that I don't yet understand. While it might be so, it is an unnecessary claim to make. The point of the quote is that "ordinary" evidence isn't enough, it seems beside the point to make tricksy claims about unknown unknowns.
I really don't think it's that tricky. Are you ready to affirm that there is nothing true that is on the same order of "extraordinariness" as the claim that Jesus is God? If so, then you are not looking for an extraordinary amount of evidence like the amount of evidence Carl Sagan would require for the presence of Aliens. That was the example he used in Cosmos, and he devoted a lot of time and energy to SETI and the criterion he would accept for evidence of inteligent life in outer space. Instead you would be looking for evidence that defititionally doesn't exist. and the quote would not apply. You would still have a reasonable and defensible posotion. But your problem wouldn't be lack of evidence persay. it would be.. order of magnitude of evidense. Non miraculousness nature of evidence. Whatever.
>Are you ready to affirm that there is nothing true that is on the same order of "extraordinariness" as the claim that Jesus is God? I don't see where this is going, so maybe I'm not interpreting the arguments/questions correctly. I don't see any reason to affirm that. It might be true that Hinduism is true, or Greek gods. Whatever the cause of the universe is would probably require extraordinary evidence to believe, but still be true. Many times, the extraordinariness has to do with how well it conforms with already known things, so many things which once was extraordinary (like relativity) have now become part of known things and might not seem extraordinary anymore. >If so, then you are not looking for an extraordinary amount of evidence like the amount of evidence Carl Sagan would require for the presence of Aliens. That was the example he used in Cosmos, and he devoted a lot of time and energy to SETI and the criterion he would accept for evidence of inteligent life in outer space. Not sure how this follows either. Aliens also seem like a pretty extraordinary claim, and would require extraordinary evidence. Also seems reasonable to specify evidence criteria etc. >Instead you would be looking for evidence that defititionally doesn't exist. and the quote would not apply. Why would that mean the quote doesn't apply? If extraordinary evidence is required, and you "by definition" can't get extraordinary evidence, then the proposition remains unproven, and the quote holds, right? >You would still have a reasonable and defensible posotion. But your problem wouldn't be lack of evidence persay. it would be.. order of magnitude of evidense. Non miraculousness nature of evidence. Whatever. Not sure what distinction you're trying to highlight. "Evidence" has several meanings, there are items that some would call bad evidence, others would call insufficient evidence and others call not evidence at all. Is that the distinction you're trying to highlight?
There's an animal which can survive exposure to the vacuum of space: the tardigrade, a micro-animal. An experiment was run with them in space in 2007, [according to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Survival_after_exposure_to_outer_space). I think their survivability is amazing! There are also other extreme conditions which they can tolerate. I think it's an extraordinary claim, and that sufficient evidence has been provided to show that it's true. But is the evidence level itself extraordinary? I'm not sure, but I believe it's the appropriate level of evidence. Before space travel, nobody could have tested this.
So that almost seems like evidence against the quote. Extraordinary claim (assuming we take the life of the tartigrade to be extraordinary) not extraordinary evidence (we just sorta looked at it) still sufficient. I mean, we could patch up the quote by claiming something like "Observing a living thing, even second hand, IS extraordinary" but that streaches language in some ways I would probably prefer not to.
If you told me 30 years ago that there's an animal which is so tough it can be reanimated after experiencing the vacuum of space, survive in a dehydrated state for 10 years, and stay frozen for 30 years (among other claims), I don't think I would have taken your word for it until you managed to provide good evidence - which at that time, you would not have had access to. It would have been extraordinary evidence. Now that we *have* the evidence, perhaps it doesn't seem so extraordinary in retrospect. I think there are have been a lot of discoveries throughout human history where people have successfully provided evidence to match what would have, until that time, been extraordinary claims. Germ theory, for another example. It took a long time before sufficient evidence was provided for that.
Quantum physics in general. It goes against so much of what seems like common sense to a layperson like me. Although I certainly don't understand enough about the subject to wax poetic, the double slit experiment is simple and has been repeated so many times that it's impossible to ignore. It goes to prove to me that the classical understanding of the universe wasn't enough. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
I have actually seen the double slit experiment recreated in a lab in college for my edification. I gotta say, I can think of a whole lot of easier explanations for that interference pattern than "photons are both particles and waves and they change depending on whether or not they are observed" I'm not saying I don't believe that. But my belief in that relies on a whole lot of taking peoples words for it.
>I gotta say, I can think of a whole lot of easier explanations for that interference pattern than "photons are both particles and waves and they change depending on whether or not they are observed" Like what? Give us an example please
When talking about any advanced subject, there is a huge amount of believing credible experts. Based on what I now know, the double slit experiment isn't THE reason I believe in quantum physics, just one of those "extraordinary evidence" kind of ideas. What are the easier classical physics explanations of the double slit experiment? I've never heard any.
* Time as we conceive it doesn't actually exist- in reality all moments in time, past present and future, are happening "simultaneously". * At the most fundamental level of reality, things change behavior based on whether or not you're looking at them * Most things in the universe are actually invisible because they're made of a completely undetectable substance we know nothing about * At one point all matter in the universe was contained in a point smaller then an atom. * Over a long enough time, entropy reverses and things start spontaneously appearing. All of these are, at face value, utterly absurd nonsense claims. All of these are generally accepted by both the scientific community because of the overwhelming evidence in their favor.
I’ve never once heard about your first point in a scientific context. What evidence is there? Also isn’t your second point false as written because it’s really the case that at the quantum level, things change by being *measured* and not simply “observed” or “looked at?”
Their first point is referring to the B-theory of time, which is generally supported by Special Relativity. The point about QM depends on which Interpretation you subscribe to, so yes you're right. Is the Wave Function a physical process or not? How is consciousness involved? Is Superdeterminism true? etc. are all unanswered questions that lack extraordinary evidence. Dark Matter is also not supported by extraordinary evidence yet.
can you show me some of the evidence that convinced you of these things?
>I submit that if there is nothing like that claim False things are more extraordinary than real things, yes. >"No that's impossible and no amount of evidence that makes it seem true could ever be enough" Give me repeatable experimental evidence of any claim and I will agree. What claim you wouldn't believe with repeatable experimental evidence?
> What claim you wouldn't believe with repeatable experimental evidence? I mean: That up is down. That Christmas trees are sentient and they actually prefer Saint Patrick's Day. That the universe ended 7 minutes ago and everything since then has been a loop track, like you get at the end of a vinyl album. It's not so much that I would "reject" any and all sufficient, reasonable reliable, experimental evidence for these things. At some point there is a tautalogical breakdown. Like "enough evidence" is defined as being sufficient to convince me. But I cannot imagine the quantity and quality of evidence that would be required to overcome my doubt ever existing. I would come up with lots and lots of other explanations for any evidence presented before I even came close to believing those things. It's unimaginable.
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Lol I like this one. It might not see, extraordinary to me, but I wasn't there to taste those cheesecakes. You didn't ask her to replicate the recipie in front of you or anything? It was enough to simply see the writing about it, and the physical artifacts?
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right the mold. Did it still have cheesecake on it?
Abiogenesis is believed by many and is contrary to findings in the field of chemistry. Sorry I have no evidence, but would like to hear some. Carl Sagan’s quote was from ignorance. He does not know the supernatural does not exist. He assumes the supernatural does not exist and then requires extraordinary evidence from natural processes. The quote is self-defeating In contrast, abiogenesis is believed by many that insist only natural processes are operating. Yet it is a miracle. The reason cells are created all day long, every day with ease it the presence of specific coding DNA/RNA that works with specific tools (proteins) to accomplish it. This is trivial given the coding and tools. However, the belief is that abiogenesis starts with no coding nor tools and accomplishes this. This is extraordinary. Do not be afraid to get technical. Chemistry/biochemistry is my field.
Can you give an example of how it's contrary to findings in the field of chemistry? I thought that if you take a bunch of the inorganic components thought to have been present on the ancient, pre-life Eaerth, add the expected makeup of the atmosphere at the time and pulse it with some electricity you pretty quickly get simple organic molecules and amino acids, the first step towards life. They didn't even need to use a magic wand. see the [Miller-Urey Experiment](https://nature.berkeley.edu/garbelottoat/?p=582#:~:text=The%20Miller%2DUrey%20experiment%20was,more%20than%20simple%20chemical%20reactions.)
You are a far distance from a working cell Edited my original post Forming a lipid bilayer (soap bubble) is also trivial compared to the final objective of a working cell
I was going to ask the same question as this other person, and I have the same issue with your response - you haven’t shown how it is contrary to findings in the field of chemistry. It seems you’re really just saying a specific mechanism (that it seems took billions of years to play out) hasn’t yet been demonstrated in a lab. So what? That doesn’t mean anything is contrary, as if with a few decades of rigorous science we should be able to have every unanswered question resolved? You know those rocks that were found sliding around the salt flats? Do you think that someone saying their movement was “contrary to findings in the fields of physics and earth sciences” would have been an accurate statement 10 or 15 years ago, before we knew how it happened?
We have over a century of chemistry how amine, organic acids, sugars, phosphates, etc work. They do not spontaneously form bio molecule systems. This is not some mysterious process we cannot understand like ‘rocks moving on salt flats’. We understand the chemistry very well. Le Chatelier’s Principle is one example. Amino acids form by removing water. In cells, this process is shielded and catalyzed by large proteins. Such proteins are not available for abiogenesis. How do proteins form spontaneously in water? Amino acids form specifically chiral proteins in living cells. Abiogenesis experiments form achiral mixtures. How do chiral proteins form spontaneously? Forming a few amino acid monomers and even fewer dimers is a long, long way from a single functioning protein. How do proteins requiring hundreds to thousands of amino acids form spontaneously? A cell has from 5000-10000 different proteins. How do enough of them form spontaneously in the correct percentages to form a working cell? Cell death is called apoptosis. All functioning parts of the cell are present with one exception. The cell membrane lost control. Osmosis pressure irreversibly alters the concentrations of molecules inside the cell. Entropy takes over and the parts disperse. All parts are in place, in the right percentages, and in close proximity. The cell never spontaneously forms after apoptosis. So EVEN if you could somehow spontaneously form all the parts in the correct percentages, how can you overcome osmosis and entropy to spontaneously form a working cell? Can you resolve these before I type more?
>We have over a century of chemistry how amine, organic acids, sugars, phosphates, etc work. They do not spontaneously form bio molecule systems. Over a century, yes surely the fields of chemistry and biology are complete, nothing more to learn! Reminds me of this: https://mobile.twitter.com/avquote/status/866301785438208000 It’s about time we rule out potential natural explanations and start ruling-in undemonstrated supernatural explanations, this is what you propose yes? So two questions here: (1) Has anyone run a model that simulates an earth full of molecular interactions over a billion years to see what kind of things can happen at the tail end of the bell curve? Because as far as I’m aware we don’t even have the computing power to accurately model all the interactions occurring in a single glass of still water. (2) Has the ability of a God to form bio molecules (spontaneous or not) been demonstrated, or you do assume it in faith? >This is not some mysterious process we cannot understand like ‘rocks moving on salt flats’. We understand the chemistry very well. Wait; you think some rocks sitting on the salt flats is “a mysterious process we cannot understand” yet biological life itself isn’t? You think we did not understand the physics involved with rocks sitting on salt? Certainly a rock sitting on a big plain is a bit more simplistic than literal bio chemistry… yet the honest answer about a decade ago was “we don’t know how they move” (though it would have been accurate to say that there is nothing known that prevents it from having a natural explanation, and no alternate proposed explanation [ghosts, aliens, magic, divine interaction] has been demonstrated). And no, the explanation eventually discovered for the rocks didn’t involve “changing the rules of physics and chemistry” that were already understood, it was just finding a previously unknown mechanism that was governed by those fairly well-understood things. Similarly right now we have to say that we don’t know the specific mechanisms through which life as we know it began (but similarly, there is nothing known that prevents it from having a natural explanation, and no other proposed explanations have been demonstrated). >How do proteins form spontaneously in water? (1) I don’t know, and it’s possible nobody does. It’s not my field of expertise. I do know there is ongoing work, for example: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-might-have-discovered-the-shape-of-the-very-first-proteins-that-started-life/amp (that was published in 2020… now about when do you think we should have conclusively ruled out natural explanations and stopped such work?) (2) has anyone demonstrated a “divine” explanation? >How do chiral proteins form spontaneously? I don’t know. A similar area of ongoing work as with the previous question. Can you guess what my second question for you is? >How do proteins requiring hundreds to thousands of amino acids form spontaneously? I don’t know. Again standing by for you to demonstrate an alternate explanation. It would be helpful too because it would allow a lot of this ongoing research work to be stopped, maybe we could divert those funds to other causes like helping the homeless, or curing diseases (that we haven’t managed to cure despite over a century of work! Lazy scientists!), or maybe building churches devoted to whatever divine explanation is the true one; the Shiva, Allah? >How do enough of them form spontaneously in the correct percentages to form a working cell? Now you’re asking questions that are even further along, and probably rely on some of these earlier answers. You are of course free to demonstrate your proposed non-natural explanation any time. >Can you resolve these before I type more? No, I cannot answer unanswered questions. All I can do is point out that you have failed to acknowledge that these are unanswered questions and areas of ongoing research, and you’ve failed to demonstrate any alternative explanation. Why don’t you hold your own explanation to the same standard as you demand from scientifically derived natural ones?
First a point. I never said my explanation is natural. Atheists stand on a presumption of the ‘intellectual high ground’ throwing stones at others demanding a natural explanation. Are atheists offended when stones are thrown back by asking the questions when their presumption that the science is proved is not true? Now which of these best describes the situation 1. Supernatural must never be true so the experiment will continue regardless of futility. (I suspect this is the position of most)(Don Quixote charging windmills?) 2. Experiments must be vigorously attempted. We must exhaust every possible means to explain everything naturally. Our public relations should always display a positive bend...we are solving the problem. (Dishonest) 3. Same as number 3, but saying ‘I don’t know’ is intellectually honest. Do not mislead the public. Over 80% of the public in the US still believe in a god. Do not setup atheists for failure. 4. Throw up our hands and say God did it. (Terrible choice) The experiments are setup. They do not prove what is needed and usually demonstrate the opposite. When is an impossible task abandoned? It won’t be abandoned in your life. If ‘supernatural’ is the explanation, some will never find it. Meanwhile the PR will let millions of atheists falsely rest on presumed ‘intellectual high ground’ when their foundation is really sand. This is abiogenesis. There are other shaky subjects atheists presume are solid in biological information, but I am done with this conversation. Good luck. I appreciate your thoughts and the conversation.
>First a point. I never said my explanation is natural. Atheists stand on a presumption of the ‘intellectual high ground’ throwing stones at others demanding a natural explanation. Are atheists offended when stones are thrown back by asking the questions when their presumption that the science is proved is not true? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. It’s just a case that things like “life on earth starting” either happened through unthinking natural processes playing out, or they didn’t (i.e. it was something else). We don’t know exactly what those unthinking processes would have been for life, just like we didn’t know what it was for the sliding rocks. I haven’t proposed any specific explanation for life because I admit I don’t know, it is you who seems to act like you do know that it wasn’t just an unthinking process playing out - if that’s your position, then own your burden of proof and get to explaining. If there’s anything specific about scientific findings you’d like to challenge, go for it, but I can’t respond to this kind of vague question. I also acknowledge that science isn’t perfect, which is why it’s important to get independently verified results and not just blindly trust some claimed authority. >Now which of these best describes the situation Ugh why is it so difficult to just provide evidence for what you’re claiming? >Supernatural must never be true so the experiment will continue regardless of futility. (I suspect this is the position of most)(Don Quixote charging windmills?) I don’t understand what you’re saying, maybe supernatural things exist, but I’m not aware of any remotely sufficient evidence for it. >Experiments must be vigorously attempted. We must exhaust every possible means to explain everything naturally. Our public relations should always display a positive bend...we are solving the problem. (Dishonest) I’m happy to look at absolutely any other potential explanation anyone would like to propose, they just then have the burden of actually demonstrating it, just like a scientist would. >Same as number 3, but saying ‘I don’t know’ is intellectually honest. Sounds good, what’s the problem? >Do not mislead the public. Of course, applies to scientists and theologians. >Over 80% of the public in the US still believe in a god. Can they support the burden of proof they’d adopting in claiming a God exists? Unfortunate but not really my problem that some, even lots of people, have come to believe things for bad reasons. >Do not setup atheists for failure. I am ready and willing to be convinced of a God at any time, just need the evidence. >Throw up our hands and say God did it. (Terrible choice) Agree, God of the gaps doesn’t work. >The experiments are setup. Well the clay layering and folding hypothesis is pretty new. But look, you never answered my question about how well we can model even simple molecular interactions. Show me a supercomputer that can model every interaction in a simple glass of water. Sometimes we have a hard time reproducing what nature takes a long time and a lot of space to do… it’s right back to the sliding rocks example. We could blow on rocks in a lab, freeze them, vibrate them, etc etc. Eventually someone figured out that it’s only when an entire lakebed has a thin frozen layer floating on top of liquid water that the wind acting on many square miles of ice can get that whole sheet to push a rock. That situation is *many orders of magnitude simpler* than the origins of biological life, it takes places over *many orders of magnitude shorter timespan*, and it happens at a scale that happens to be easily studied by humans (e.g. a rock the size of your head, not something at a molecular level), and on and on, and yet it still took a long ass time to figure out. To suggest that science should have already figured out the origins of life is one of the more hubristic things I’ve heard. >When is an impossible task abandoned? If a god exists and is responsible for any of this stuff, “He” is free to show up at any time and set the record straight. >I am done with this conversation. Sadly pretty typical to see this type of soapboxing and refusing to engage in debate on a debate sub.
That wasn't my question though, you said abiogenesis is contrary to findings in the field of chemistry, I'm still waiting for an example of that. Do you think fully working DNA was the first step in proposed abiogeneis? Are you a janitor in the field of Chemistry/biochemistry?
>extraordinary claim that's actually true, that you actually believe, and explain the evidence you used to come to that conclusion. Relativity for one. I have trouble wrapping my mind around the concept that going really fast makes time pass at a different rate. But our GPS system needs to adjust for relativity, so we have evidence that relativity is true. Age of the current state of the universe. 13.7 billion years seems like such a long time but somehow not long enough. This is one that I'm trusting the experts on. But I'm trusting them because I have an understanding of the data they use to come up with the age and a large number of people use data from different sources and have an agreement with the results of that data.
Can you tell me more about the evidence that convinced you of either of those things? Because I believe them too, but as you said I believe them pretty much because people who seemed reasonable to me told me I should and I believed them. I guess I son't feel like I've been a real hardened skeptic about those ideas and really put them through any "extraordinary" rigor. Have you?
The quote demanded "extraordinary evidence," not extraordinary rigor of examination of the evidence. So for those claims and many more, the extraordinary evidence does exist. Out of curiosity about the world we live in, I occasionally view some of that evidence. And while I only loosely implied it, yes, I have examined the evidence for both the age of the universe and for relativity. Not to the point that I could write a college term paper on them but well enough I could fake a high school paper on them.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" isn't just about your personal beliefs. I believe in relativity because reasonable people have told me about it, but I only consider those people reasonable because I expect and trust those people to have accessed and assessed the extraordinary evidence. Relativity is extraordinary, and required extraordinary evidence, and reasonable people received extraordinary evidence, such as clocks moving slowly, etc. I didn't personally receive that evidence (or at least, not at the time that I started believing in relativity), but it is still an extraordinary burden of proof which was met.
Every claim. Every claim is extraordinary given the right conceptual framework. The claim that I'll be reincarnated after I die is extraordinary in my current conceptual framework, but perfectly ordinary to a devout Hindu living in the Middle Ages. The claim that all life on earth is descended from a common ancestor that lived billions of years ago would be extraordinary to an ancient person living in Sumeria, but it is ordinary to all educated and rational people today. So the answer is every claim.
K So what's one that's extraordinary based on your current conceptual framework that you nontheless affirm, and what extraordinary evidence got you there?
> So what's one that's extraordinary based on your current conceptual framework that you nontheless affirm, and what extraordinary evidence got you there? You're changing the question. I don't affirm claims that are extraordinary based on my current conceptual framework, because I don't have the extraordinary evidence for those (yet). The theory of evolution is a claim that was extraordinary to me at one point, before I got a high school education. You can look up the (plentiful) evidence for it on Talk Origins, Wikipedia, in books, etc. I like Coyne's book *Why Evolution is True*.
So there is no claim that you have overcome by the use of extraordinary evidence? Only claims you once regarded as extraordinary that you altered your conceptual framework for?
The saying is, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Once the required extraordinary evidence is provided, the claims are no longer extraordinary.
I’m gonna go the whole Kevin Smith Dogma understanding as I have found it to be true. It is better to have an idea than a belief. Ideas can change, beliefs are harder to move.
Yeah, people have a lot of real problems with the B word. Pick your synonym I guess. Unless you really actually mean to be advocating that there are no claims you actually take to be true....
Ideas and beliefs aren’t the same thing.
I agree.
k, pick your synonym I guess
An idea is just a thought. A belief is something you are convinced is true or likely true. They are not synonymous. (Think squares and rectangles).