What do you make of the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?
What constitutes an extraordinary claim? And what constitutes extraordinary evidence?
How do we view or apply this principle in the context of discussions of science and faith?
I’d be interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on this question.
Good questions. Just thinking of my own background and the context in which I’ve heard things like this, an extraordinary claim might be along the lines of “99% of scientists in the world are so ‘deceived’ that they have selectively ignored the mountains of evidence for a young earth and instead cling to a few undeveloped hypotheses that try to make the earth look old.” Most people won’t make that claim that explicitly, but something on a conspiracy level is fairly “extraordinary” considering how many people would all have to be in cahoots to prevent “the truth” from getting out.
One that challenges a widely held conception or paradigm of what is ordinary?
Extraordinary claims cannot pit reality against itself. When Galileo claimed evidence that the Earth hurtles around the Sun, he addressed the ordinary perception of standing on stationary ground with an exposition of inertia. Einstein’s spacetime accounted for Newton’s gravity under ordinarily experienced conditions. Extraordinary claims must encompass existing evidence along with the new. This is where YEC utterly fails - the evidence that the Earth is ancient is diverse and conclusive. Whatever the philosophical fuzziness around science and proof, a young Earth is as realistic as a geocentric Earth. YEC is in pursuit of an extraordinary claim that is not a deeper understanding of nature, but a pin-prick, one that blows up much of what we know of geology, cosmology, history, physics, anthropology, paleontology, and biology. That is an extraordinary claim based on delusion.
What comes to mind is from Hebrew studies: when someone advances a new hypothesis on what a rare word means, it isn’t enough to argue from how the scripture writers used the word, it’s necessary to examine the cognates in other languages, and not just in the close contemporary time, either, it has to include several centuries before and several after in order to establish the vector of meaning.
[after I wrote my post I noticed that @rsewell used the same example, great minds think alike?]
In matters of science, I tend to think of the principle in relation to human intuition. Newton put forth the idea that there is an instantaneous force that pulls masses towards one another. That makes intuitive sense, and simple evidence will probably convince most people. Einstein came along and claimed that mass warps spacetime, and those changes in spacetime travel at the speed of light. That is not intuitive, and it took some pretty cool and extraordinary evidence to convince the scientific community.
In matters of faith I think it is much more personal. I think faith is based more on a person’s experience than it is on evidence, at least from what I have heard from believers here and elsewhere. Faith isn’t something that people can convince you of with evidence. It is something that you convince yourself of. Faith has an emotional component that is absent in science, but I can also see how objective evidence can inform faith and personal experience.
YEC is different from both of these in many ways. YEC is a dogma that is impervious to evidence.
An extraordinary claim in the context of science and faith could be almost anything that’s presented as a new interpretation of either scientific facts or “revelation.” An extraordinary claim doesn’t need – and probably doesn’t even want – extraordinary evidence if the purpose of the claim is to deceive or manipulate or control others.
If an extraordinary claim is being presented as a legitimate addition to existing knowledge, with the intention to expand potential pathways for change, growth, and healing within human fields of study, then extraordinary evidence is probably necessary. But extraordinary evidence, no matter how carefully gathered and presented, is no match for the tenacity of a human brain that has fallen into brain habits such as severe status addiction and self-deceit.
I don’t think it’s possible to find “extraordinary evidence” that can universally persuade everybody within a short time frame (i.e. within a few months or years). There seems to be a time element to the extraordinary evidence, as if it has to sit like a batch of yeast bread for a very long time before the evidence is sufficiently “nourishing” for the vast majority of brains to be able to swallow it and process it. For example, 19th century germ theory, seemed preposterous to many at first, but over time started to seem like the only logical explanation.
Paradoxically, the logic that’s built solely on tradition and “lego-block” ingredients is more like a 20-year old can of soup that surely must be good to eat because it contains wholesome foods like carrots and pasta! (But really, it’s safe to eat, I promise, because I make the extraordinary claim of divine sanction on this soup!)
Having said that, there will always be a small number of individuals who, for reasons of their own, will never accept the extraordinary evidence, no matter how complete the scientific support.
It is called a double standard.
When I expect you to believe what I say then that doesn’t take as much evidence as when you expect me to believe what you say.
So you are saying an extra-ordinary claim is one which requires you to ignore mountains of evidence to the contrary? Seems to me that this boils down to just expecting all claims to have the preponderance of evidence in order to be accepted.
That’s pretty much in line with what I’ve been thinking about the question for some time.
I would put it this way.
If you want to claim that an evidence-based conclusion is wrong, then the evidence that you present against it must at the very minimum be of similar quality to the best evidence that is presented in support of it.
For example, the best evidence for evolution that I am aware of is endogenous retroviruses. These and other genetic features establish evolutionary relationships between humans and animals with an extremely high degree of statistical certainty. Any argument that attempts to challenge the evolutionary relationships between humans and animals must therefore be based on evidence of a similar mathematical, statistical and technical quality at the very minimum. A few isolated examples of fraud from more than a century ago, or a handful of tiny samples with huge error bars, simply isn’t going to cut it.
Agree with it wholeheartedly. If my neighbor told me he saw a movie and liked it, I wouldn’t doubt his story. If he told me his dog died, went through rigor mortis, was buried and rose from the dead 3 days later, I would certainly question his statement. This is the reason historical apologetics aimed at proving the Resurrection are virtually worthless.
I dunno. I am sometimes surprised at the simplicity of some of the things I actually understand that have lead to important conclusions that I guess some people find extraordinary.
The way fossils are layered is incredibly simple in some places like the Great Lakes Basin. Layer after layer of history. I mean, it is a lot of layers. Maybe that’s extraordinary. But the conclusions, or “claims,” don’t really seem extraordinary but logical.
The concept of natural selection is incredibly simple. Some people find the conclusions to be “extraordinary claims.” But really, what kind of extraordinary evidence does one need? One can watch it happen.
It’s easy for a lay person to feel overwhelmed. So much to know. So much one has forgotten and would have to relearn, facts as well as skills just to get up to speed with one topic. Yet we are regularly bombarded with new information based in evolution, climatology, geology, genetics, physics (all of them), virology, and more. It’s easy to see it all as Extraordinary Claims needing Extraordinary Evidence. If my ignorance of an area of science and inability to grasp the conclusions makes reasonable conclusions seem like “Extraordinary Claims,” it’s not the scientist’s fault.
I guess to me it’s weird for me to try to classify evidence as extraordinary or not. Not really sure what it means. To me there is either evidence or not evidence. Maybe I better understand it as something that seems unnatural requires more evidence that dismisses other claims.
Like let’s say someone showed me a video of Bigfoot and it looks real. I know the people, and they are not given to lies and legitimately seem to believe it’s real.
First I would want to have someone prove the video is not fake. Then I would want someone prove that it’s not someone in a costume. Then I would want others to search that area for the creature. I would even want them to capture it, and have multitudes of people independently examine and verify it. Then I would believe it. If that does not happen, I’ll just assume it was a well played out hoax.
But if someone showed me a video of a two headed grasshopper. I would probably accept it and think that’s cool. I would not feel the need to disprove other possibilities in order to accept.
So maybe that’s the same thing as the question you posed.
As far as science and faith. I guess the name standard. By default, I just don’t really accept supernatural claims.
If someone claims they can lay their hands on a corpse and bring it back to life. I would not believe it. If someone said they could see ghosts I would not believe it. If someone said they can use tarot cards I would not believe it. If someone said they will pray for this or that in my life, I would think it made zero difference on the outcome.
I watch a lot of horror films. None of them scare me. I don’t know why I like them more than action, comedy or whatever . I can displace reality enough to develop an interest in the story and characters. But I’m never scared. I sleep alone in my old house, on a dead end street, in a forest. Never once do I think werewolves, zombies or aliens are going to get me. Though I would accept the possibility of an alien before a zombie. So a lot of supernatural claims just kind of falls on deaf ears to me.
When it comes to faith claims in the Bible. I guess I’m at the point in my faith I don’t care either way. Do I think Jesus walked on water? Maybe. But I don’t care if he did and it was magic or if it’s a fictional story added in. Do I think a body was dead for three days and then came back to life? Maybe. I think it’s very illogical and highly unlikely and I don’t get why it would be 3 days versus 4 or 10. Or 1. I also don’t care. Resurrection could be a purely spiritual or other dimensional thing. I find it fun to ponder it a few moments every now and then. But
Mostly I just don’t care how it worked out.
In other words, if it is something with no implications or reason for you to care much about then you require little evidence to accept him at his word.
But if that turned out to be his alibi for a murder being investigated – if more hinged on his claim than first appeared – then we would require significantly more evidence to accept his claim, wouldn’t we?
Yes, so maybe it’s all about our differences (differences in a positive way). We don’t all think the same way and we don’t all have the same starting point of facts and learning and experience when something new comes along. So what seems like a big leap to one person might be the next small sequential step to another person.
Yes, but then we start arguing about who gets to define the quality of the best evidence.
There’s so much to learn, and our learning is so intertwined in our biological brains with other aspects of our humanity, that maybe we have to learn to accept the limitations and imperfections of our own learning.
This isn’t what I was getting at. The examples I gave, such as layers of fossils are really, really simple. Dig down, and find out that there are very different things in the different layers of the Great Lakes Basin. The deeper you dig, the more you find something you hadn’t seen before un upper layers. This is incredibly simple.
The “extraordinary” only comes in, when the expected or demanded implications of this layering is not supported by what one can clearly see.
I hear that phrase (often credited to Carl Sagan) being tossed around in atheist circles when asked what evidence would they consider would support the existence of (the Christian) God. Once I asked one of my atheist friends what he meant by this. When pressed, it came down to "Since to believe in God is to believe in miracles, I would only be convinced by miraculous evidence, like the finger of God appearing in the sky and rearranging the stars to spell “I am God, believe in me”. After pondering this for a second he said…well…nah…I’d actually probably write that experience off as a delusion, or momentary psychotic break. Basically, he admitted that NO evidence would be of the quality to convince him of the existence of the supernatural.
This is what came to mind for me as well. I’ve heard many online atheists make this claim to justify dismissing the Bible and all historical evidence for the resurrection as a historical claim. It is usually about determining upon whom the honus of proof lies. I happen to lean toward understanding the resurrection symbolically so I find historical evidence not to be relevant in either direction.
There are a number of objective indicators of this. Such as, for example, the sizes of the error bars, the number of different data points, or economic value.
Won’t apply to every area of study though. One thing that’s become evident from the discussions I’ve been having about this both here and on Facebook is that “extraordinary claims” and “extraordinary evidence” aren’t always all that well defined. While there are some cases that are pretty clear-cut, there is a significant grey area that leaves quite a bit open to interpretation it seems.
There is a star cluster that spells “HI”. However, given the large number of star clusters, the chance of one of them forming a relatively simple shape resembling two letters is not that low.
Summarizing what many have already gotten at, it is reasonable to have a higher standard for adequate evidence when it comes to either a claim that seems to go against well-established ideas or a claim that has significant consequences. But such standards must be applied to the things I want to be true as well as to those I don’t, and judging what is a well-established idea has significant subjectivity.
I see a spectrum and balance between extremes here. On the one end of that spectrum is the naiveté of believing the magic show and whatever people tell me. On the other end is the willful ignorance of refusing to see any evidence challenging what we believe to be the case.
And yes the naiveté end can include how much we credit our personal experiences. Setting aside the experience some may have of drug or mental condition induced hallucinations, how can we know that what we have seen isn’t a magic show of somebody’s devising? For myself I was never interested in that kind of evidence, and I told God not to bother trying that kind of thing on me. An experience like that is certainly no answer to the questions of coherence and consistency. But once you have established that the idea is coherently and consistently possible, then expecting evidence can be unreasonable. Most things we believe don’t provide that much evidence.
But since some things do provide evidence (even overwhelming evidence), this suggest different levels of epistemological status, particularly between what we have sufficient evidence for our own personal belief and what we have sufficient evidence to expect others to accept as true. Scientific facts with its written procedures any can follow to get the same results is in the latter category. On the other hand, trying to restrict yourself to the findings of science is delusional. Life requires choices where no such evidence is provided – subjective participation far beyond the objective observation of science. The point being that this difference in epistemological status is not the answer to where we find a balance on the above spectrum.
I agree with but I was going in a slightly different direction. For me, I took an extraordinary claim as one that goes towards the miraculous. Hence my example of the dog rising from the dead. I think there are many scenarios where we can accept or doubt testimony.
A friend telling me an incidental detail is something I would not really question. “I saw a cyber truck driving to work today.” My friend could be mistaken but I would just assume the veracity of this statement.
But as you point out, if it was a husband of a dead woman’s body found telling someone an alibi, its going to need to be corroborated. Also, a friend telling me something ridiculously improbable is something I would question. As an example, a friend could tell me they dealt out a full deck of shuffled cards and predicted the sequence exactly before hand. I simply would not believe them. The odds of it are too low to take seriously in my opinion. Million to one interactions occur regularly for us given all the events we process on a daily basis, but somethings are so unlikely as to warrant complete skepticism from me.
Another example would be a friend saying they saw a water moccasin while fishing in a lake here. I would doubt their claim because we don’t have water moccasins in CT. I cannot prove someone did not release one here (or one somehow hitched a ride and got lost) but I would think my friend just saw a snake in the water and thought it a water moccasin as so many other residents here do. Most people do not spend a lot of time in the woods here and have not perused the CT Snakes field guide or know what is out there and what isn’t. If my friend was a snake expert and claimed to handle and identify the snake carefully, my skepticism would be reduced a ton.
If someone was trying to sell me something (car, new product or even a new religion or new take on an old one, etc), I have to be a little more skeptical of their testimony or claims about it as well. Maybe bring in an expert with me.
My friend can tell me he won the powerball jackpot and even though the odds are astronomical, I know someone is going to win. This happens regularly. It is expected for one person to win once in a while given so many tickets sold. That at least happens. So I could generally begin to buy this if it was a reliable person. I might not be 100% convinced until they pulled up in a Lamborghini.
But when someone tells me something happened like a very very dead dog rising from the dead three days later, this violates everything I have ever experienced and my understanding of natural law and the ordered nature of the universe that holds true in all my experiences and assumptions. This person is telling me something that “doesn’t seem to happen, ever, to anyone,” happened. This is the problem with “extraordinary” claims to me.
I can accept miracles (supernatural) occur but only after a transformative experience with God. Meaning a report of a miracle from a 2,000 year old text is not going to do it for me. But a real, spiritual experience with God while reading the Bible can open me to the wide that this is more than just a normal book and this Being can do works I deem impossible. It is God using Scripture and the Church to impact me personally that has led me to think Jesus Rose from the dead, as the Scriptures say.
The conservative Christian usually wants us to naively believe the testimony of ancient, anonymous texts that claim someone rose from the dead. This is silly. We do not know who wrote them, their education level, we cannot cross-examine the authors, their exact compositional history is last, their path of dissemination and preservation uncertain in parts, we cannot perfectly date the works, figure out their literary relationship, ask them questions, figure out where this information comes from, we cannot ask if they pushing an agenda, ask all their peers and competitors what they think of their claims, interview others supposedly present, figure out what social and political pressures are on them, and so much data is missing from the time… etc. Even if we figure out some of these things, all of them are probability based solutions and when we put multiple together, the whole argument becomes weaker.
History works in terms of what is most probable. A human mistakenly thinking something “impossible” happened is a common event in our universe. Many of the apostles thought something happened for sure. But moving from that to saying something “impossible” happened just is not possible historically. So yes, the more extraordinary the claim, the more evidence I require. What matters in all these case is source analysis. I have some friends I know are very objective. I have some other that catch 7lb, 12 trout that becomes 12lb and 7oz in retelling. So the laurels of the author or source is very important. Unfortunately, in the case of the Gospels, we really don’t know enough about them with certainty for them to hold the weight some Christians want them to historically. History itself just cannot grapple with miracles, which are theological statements anyways (“God acted here”).
I also find burden of proof arguments lame and lazy most of the time. I seek truth. The burden is always on me to figure out what and why I believe it. In my experience, both sides claim “burden of proof” and to me that just says none of them really care to challenge their own beliefs.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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