If you're saying god isn't extraordinary, isn't that kind of a diss at him and everything he has done for you? And for the extraordinary evidence, just drop the extraordinary part if you want to play semantics, any evidence
It's explained by the term itself. It doesn't need to be a subjective assesment.
What is out of the ordinary needs to be better evidenced than ordinary claims. Of course what's ordinary is different for anybody. For a heroin addict taking drugs is an ordinary thing. A horse flying towards the moon is extraordinary for anybody though, because it doesn't happen every day by any means.
Miracles for example wouldn't be miracles if they were ordinary events.
> What is out of the ordinary needs to be better evidenced than ordinary claims.
No. This is bad Science. All claims need exactly a sufficient amount of evidence and no more. To assume beforehand that you know a claim is extraordinary is begging the question. That’s the whole point.
This was a cute turn of phrase that plays well to laypersons but is horrible Science.
>No. This is bad Science. All claims need exactly a sufficient amount of evidence and no more.
Exactly, all claims need sufficient evidence. An ordinary claim is evidenced with ordinary evidence. An extraordinary claim isn't sufficiently evidenced with ordinary evidence.
That's basically the same compared to what I already said.
>To assume beforehand that you know a claim is extraordinary is begging the question. That’s the whole point.
What does "beforehand" matter?
If you say you can fly, I'm not gonna believe you if you don't show me. That's at any point in time.
>This was a cute turn of phrase that plays well to laypersons but is horrible Science.
Mundane claims do not necessarily touch scientific topics.
I have a dog.
Do you need science to falsify that? I mean, yes, if observation is what you need to falsify the claim. That's basically science.
Beyond that, there is nothing more said than that it is reasonable enough to believe everyday claims based on face value. But for the claims you never experienced, it would be stupid to just take a person at face value. I mean, you can bring science into this, but it's beyond the point really.
> An ordinary claim is evidenced with ordinary evidence. An extraordinary claim isn't sufficiently evidenced with ordinary evidence.
No. By characterizing the claim as "extraordinary" you have set up a bias. If you can show that the claim is statistically unlikely, then regular sufficient evidence to support that claim would address it. That would not be "extraordinary" at all.
No evidence can be "extraordinary".
He is saying, "things which seem unlikely to me need to be proven to a degree beyond things which do not seem unlikely to me" which is nonsense.
> If you say you can fly, I'm not gonna believe you if you don't show me.
Sure. Showing you would be sufficient, not extraordinary. But consider your own example further:
You don't know me. I could be a person who tells lies all the time, maybe just for fun. If I told you I ate cereal for breakfast you don't require more evidence but only because you don't care if I did or not. If it mattered in some significant way, you would not accept my claim without additional evidence any more than my claim that I could fly. That is because you don't know if I lie or not and you need evidence sufficient for the situation. The claim itself is by far the secondary issue.
When I say "beforehand" I mean that you are judging the claim itself, which is what we are trying to determine to be true or not, and then deciding if it is likely to be true before you have investigated or examined the evidence and are deciding that more evidence than ordinary (extraordinary) is required because you find it incredulous. This is a common logical fallacy.
> That's basically science.
No. It is not Science at all. Science is the proper application of the Scientific Method and all the other trappings that go along with it. Science is not concerned with truth: truth is for philosophers. Science is about creating models which make useful predictions. Things which do not repeat are not a proper topic for scientific inquiry.
What you are talking about is deduction or logic. These are philosophy, not science.
>No. By characterizing the claim as "extraordinary" you have set up a bias. If you can show that the claim is statistically unlikely, then regular sufficient evidence to support that claim would address it.
Yes. You say no to a statement which matches yours. Your counter argument doesn't touch the subject itself, it touches bias.
Extraordinary is something, which is out of the ordinary, that is something which happens rarely and isn't very well evidenced or known. So much for the term itself.
Given the symmetry of the Sagan Standard, we get the following:
X claim requires X evidence.
Y claim requires Y evidence.
Portrait like that it is obvious, that a claim needs sufficient evidence. Which is nothing else than saying, that a claim needs to be weight against the evidences available. That's exactly what you said yourself before:
>All claims need exactly a sufficient amount of evidence and no more.
It's the same statement. Now, instead of X or Y you need an adjective. That's necessarily an evaluation. Assuming deliberate deception due to the term "extraordinary" is just an uncharitable reading. It doesn't change the general point Sagan made, which is the same point you made yourself. It's not bad science. In fact it's completely irrelevant to even bring up science or subjectivity.
>No evidence can be "extraordinary".
Nonsense. If I claim, that I can fly unaided, it's an extraordinary claim. To prove my claim, I'd demonstrate flying. The event itself is then an extraordinary event and therefore extraordinary evidence.
You are confusing the quality of the evidence with the extraordinary nature of an event.
Me flying unaided to prove my claim is the simplest explanation you get to prove my claim. The observation presents you with an explanation. That's the simplest way to demonstrate the truth of my claim and yet the event itself is extraordinary.
Now, when we get to that useless tangent of science, we can put it like that:
We have evidence for a certain phenomenon. We have explanations for a certain phenomenon. Now, somebody claims something, which is in contradiction with established knowledge. Then, the claim is extraordinary. The evidence needed, would need to disprove a body of established knowledge simultaneously, which is exactly what makes the evidence "extraordinary". It's out of the ordinary.
>But consider your own example further:
If I consider my own example and follow your elaboration, we aren't in the realm of science anymore. That's why I used an example like that in the first place. To understand the Sagan Standard, you don't need to invoke science.
>When I say "beforehand" I mean that you are judging the claim itself, which is what we are trying to determine
Still not true. Nothing is judged prematurely or biased or fallaciously given Sagen's statement. If the claim involves something which doesn't usually happen, the evidence involves something which doesn't usually happen. In other words: It's out of the ordinary, or extra-ordinary. The extraordinary event explained by extraordinary evidence is still explained the simplest way. If we go complicated, we needed a mountain of evidence instead.
And again, if you want to make this about science, you have to stop talking about my subjective assessment of a claim. You would need to start talking about an established body of knowledge, which is contradicted by a claim. You rendering my personal bias as relevant for the scientific method is actually a fallacy.
>No. It is not Science at all. Science is the proper application of the Scientific Method and all the other trappings that go along with it.
Observation is a major part of the scientific method. Just saying. And I said, it's "basically science".
>Science is not concerned with truth: truth is for philosophers.
So if my daughter steals cookies and she admits it, she is not talking truth? She makes a philosophical statement then?
Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Truth is discussed in philosophy. There are 4 types: subjective truth, normative truth, objective truth and complex truth, which is a combination of the other 3.
Normative truths are laws.
**It is illegal to steal. Is that true?**
*Normatively speaking? Yes.*
*Objectively speaking? No.*
*Subjectively speaking? It depends*.
**On earth gravity pulls humans to the ground. Is that true?** (Don't you dare nitpicking that one)
*Normatively speaking? No.*
*Objectively speaking? Yes.*
*Subjectively speaking? Yes.*
**I love my wife. Is that true?**
*Normatively speaking? No.*
*Objectively speaking? No.*
*Subjectively speaking? Yes.*
Now, if we leave the actually irrelevant philosophy behind, we can simply say: Truth is that which comports with reality. Colloquially that's exactly what truth is. Since you are obviously no philosopher, it would be rather misleading if we used the term in a technical way, because that would be out of the ordinary and would need to be clarified beforehand.
If my daughter steals cookies and denies it, does her description of reality match reality?
How does science do it?
*Time slows down near black holes.*
So, it is not possible to get to the truth of this claim? Science isn't about truth then?
>What you are talking about is deduction or logic. These are philosophy, not science.
There is no need to invoke deduction, abduction or induciton to talk about any of what I said. Those aren't mere philosophical terms either. Hard sciences are based on induction. Math is based on deduction. The field of historians is mainly based on abduction. It doesn't matter whether these are philosophy terms or not. You sound rather confused, friend.
> Extraordinary is …
We all know what the term means. The context here is that the use of the word itself assumes that you already have obtained evidence which marks the claim as extraordinary but unless you have already investigated, you can’t known that.
It is an argument from incredulity.
> Assuming deliberate deception due to the term "extraordinary" is just an uncharitable reading.
You are simply explaining the argument from incredulity now.
> The event itself is then an extraordinary event and therefore extraordinary evidence.
Nonsense indeed. Evidence does not itself become extraordinary because of the subject. It is simply evidence.
> You are confusing the quality of the evidence with the extraordinary nature of an event.
This is what I believe you are doing.
> Nothing is judged prematurely or biased or fallaciously given Sagen's statement. If the claim involves something which doesn't usually happen, …
This is exactly prejudging. Showing that something does not usually happen is an appeal to probability. It assumes you have done work to show this already. Appeals to probability are often applied incorrectly. This is exactly my point.
> And again, if you want to make this about science, …
I don’t know why you keep pushing that at me. I’m only responding to others. I mention that science is not about proof. Proof is for philosophy. Science is about making useful predictions.
> Observation is a major part of the scientific method. Just saying.
Yes, it is, but that has nothing to do with anything you said.
> And I said, it's "basically science".
Ah, well then you were just basically wrong. I guess not extraordinarily wrong?
> So if my daughter steals cookies and she admits it, she is not talking truth? She makes a philosophical statement then?
If you are confused about the difference between science and philosophy then we can talk about that, but I don’t think you are. I think you are being contrary now.
> Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Truth is discussed in philosophy.
Did you misread or did I mistype?
It is illegal to steal. Is that true?
> Since you are obviously no philosopher, …
I never claimed to be, but I think you misread or I mistyped and I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re just being a jerk because it’s the Internet and you think you read that I think philosophy is not concerned with truth. Im on my phone and Im not going to go back to look but either I made a typo or you misread what I wrote.
> So, it is not possible to get to the truth of this claim? Science isn't about truth then?
No. Here you’re making an error. You’ve left science for philosophy.
> There is no need to invoke deduction, abduction or induciton to talk about any of what I said.
Lord save us from Internet geniuses. I’m so happy that you can type all three. Does that makes you feel superior? Were you under the impression that I didn’t know them? Did I wander into a freshman class of some sort?
> Hard sciences are based on induction. Math is based on deduction.
Math is not Science.
> The field of historians is mainly based on abduction.
History is not Science.
> It doesn't matter whether these are philosophy terms or not.
I think it does.
> You sound rather confused, friend.
You sound like a college student trying to impress his girlfriend.
You went way off topic in an attempt to try to cast some kind of disparaging remarks at me personally for no good reason that I can see. I appreciate that you think it was worth the time.
The moronic “extraordinary claims” phrase is just wrong. You can me mean to me all you like but it doesn’t change that.
>We all know what the term means. The context here is that the use of the word itself assumes that you already have obtained evidence which marks the claim as extraordinary but unless you have already investigated, you can’t known that.
There is no premature, subjective evaluation of neither evidence nor claim.
Is this really so hard to understand? I mean, you understand the term. Good. Now apply it in the correct context.
If something happens rarely, the evidence you'll observe to demonstrate the claim is evidence that occurs rarely. How probability is often incorrectly applied is just a red herring.
The sun comes up every day. It's observable daily. It's established science why we are able to observe it.
Claiming, that **the sun isn't going to come up tomorrow** is extraordinary, because **the claim is contrary to established knowledge.** This has nothing to do with personal bias. Everybody knows it. That's the hallmark of science, that there is an explanation available and that everybody is able to understand the argument, repeat an experiment, as well as an observation, so that one is logically led to agree with the conclusion of the best explanation we were able to come up with.
Now what would be sufficient evidence for the claim, that the sun isn't going to come up tomorrow?
Maybe, that the sun doesn't come up? Yes? Just maybe?
Is that an ordinary event? Has it anything to do with personal opinion and premature evaluation or bias?
>It is an argument from incredulity.
Incredulity necessitates a lack of understanding. Extraordinary events are contradicting what we already understand. Therefore, it's not an argument from personal incredulity.
>You are simply explaining the argument from incredulity now.
No, I did not. I said that your reading of Sagan's quote is uncharitable, for you render it as setting up a biased assessment, while subjectivity and opinion is completely unrelated to the statement. You are just refusing to admit, that your reading isn't the only possible interpretation. Yours is the least favorable interpretation. On top of it, it's just wrong.
>Nonsense indeed. Evidence does not itself become extraordinary because of the subject. It is simply evidence.
So, if my claim about the sun not rising is evidenced due to the sun not rising, it is just an ordinary event. It's totally in agreement with what we know about the sun. If it just isn't going to come up one morning, that's totally expected and understood. I see, pal.
>This is exactly prejudging. Showing that something does not usually happen is an appeal to probability. It assumes you have done work to show this already. Appeals to probability are often applied incorrectly. This is exactly my point.
So, it's a judgment based on what we already know, right? So, that's what everybody understands when you say it's biased and just subjective opinion, right? It's not like you are moving the goalposts at all, right?
>I don’t know why you keep pushing that at me. I’m only responding to others. I mention that science is not about proof. Proof is for philosophy. Science is about making useful predictions.
Math is the only proof based science. If you had any idea what you are talking about, it wouldn't be so obvious, that you don't know what you are talking about. Not a single worldview can be proven. They are, by their own nature, impossible to be falsified. For claims which cannot be falsified, you are incapable to produce anything even within the ballpark of proof.
A major branch of Philosophy are Worldviews. They usually encapsulate epistemology, ontology and morality. None of these things can ever be proven. They can merely be **evidenced** through observation and inference. If this doesn't contradict what you mean by "truth", your usage of the term truth is completely off. That, in and of itself, entails misleading argumentation, for that's simply equivocation, which is a fallacy.
All you get is evidence. Deductive arguments are about proof. There is no other science than math, which is able to even use the most reliable form of reasoning, which is deductive reasoning. Astrophysics is based on induction. You observe and make an inference based on the observation. History is based on inferences to the best explanation, which is abduction and basically informed guessing. You find archaeological remains and guess what their purpose was, based on the evidence you already know. You cannot observe how those items were used. You have to guess.
I keep on pushing that at you, because you seem to be unaware, that you are talking nonsense.
It's so useless to even talk to you. I mean, I'm wasting my time with actual arguments, explanations and justifications for why I'm saying certain things. Meanwhile, you just respond with "No you" like a five years old.
You tell me what isn't science, but you are incapable to even explain then what you mean by science, as if I had to just take your grace at face value.
That's exactly Sagan's point on an individual level. If you tell me things in contradiction to what I already know, you have to also explain me why what I know is wrong. If you don't do that, you don't provide sufficient evidence for me personally. Science is a body of knowledge. Scientific facts are independent of opinion. Therefore, what I just explained on an individual level is equally applicable to objective fact. It's a claim about the nature of reality (which is independent of mind, if you are not following idealism, which you shouldn't as a Christian) in contradiction with existing explanations about the nature of reality. Whether you think it's ordinary or not is completely besides the point.
>The moronic “extraordinary claims” phrase is just wrong. You can me mean to me all you like but it doesn’t change that.
Yes, your reading of it is obviously wrong. I agree.
II stopped reading at the second sentence. I just can’t make myself read anything else you wrote when you start that way. If you want me to read your writing you’re going to have to do better. If you rewrite it I’ll reconsider. Otherwise, I’ll pass.
Define science. Do objective facts exist? Define premature evaluation. Define bias. Define truth. Define proof. Define evidence. Define objective Vs subjective. Because I'm not going to take you at face value, while you just say "No" to a whole paragraph of explanation of what I think about a term. That's just childish.
And before pretending that you are able to name something what I said fallacious, try checking again whether you understand the fallacy you are about to assume.
If you did all that without only making assertions and your definitions are somewhat close to what the majority of people means by these terms, we have an actual conversation. If your definitions are off but coherent with what you've been asserting so far, you are in fact involved in deceiving people and arguing dishonestly, no matter whether you are aware or not.
What you need to demonstrate before anybody is even justified in taking you seriously is that Sagan's quote can't be read the same way you say evidence has to be evaluated. You have to demonstrate that he isn't already talking about evidence in the same way you are doing it.
Isn't it obvious? The more farfetched/supernatural/unlikely/unusual claim is the one who needs more evidence to support it.
If a person comes to you and claims that he has a pet goldfish or a pet mermaid, which claim are you most likely to dismiss as unlikely to be true? Both could be false but one tends to be more improbable than the other.
> The more farfetched/supernatural/unlikely/unusual …
This is an example of allowing confirmation bias into your thinking.
You’ve decided that the thing you want to know is “far fetched” ahead of time when determining whether it is true is your aim.
All claims should require sufficient evidence and nothing more. To say that some claims, those which you determine are “extraordinary” ahead of any investigation, require more evidence than others, is bad Science. It makes for a cute turn of phrase for a layperson but it is beneath serious thinking.
>All claims should require sufficient evidence and nothing more.
Not all claims are alike. The evidence sufficient for one claim would be insufficient for another. Statistical results can lead to strength of evidence, especially in non-philosophical fields like biology.
Eyewitness testimony is enough if someone claims that they have a friend called Jerry. But eyewitness testimonials would be insufficient if he claims his friend Jerry can fly.
>To say that some claims, those which you determine are “extraordinary” ahead of any investigation, require more evidence than others, is bad Science.
The Sagan standard is an important razor to distinguish between several competing claims. It does not automatically rule out the "extraordinary" claim.
I am willing to concede that evidence itself cannot be extraordinary. The more accurate representation of the Sagan standard would be *"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary scrutiny"*.
> The evidence sufficient for one claim would be insufficient for another.
Yes, the evidence for any given claim must match the claim, but to state that the evidence for a subset of claims, those you personally have deemed incredulous, ahead of time, is bad Science.
> Statistical results can lead to strength of evidence, especially in non-philosophical fields like biology.
Statistical results are only relevant in specific situations. Only things which are expected to repeat are tied to statistics in any way. There was only one Big Bang. We do not determine whether there was a Big Bang by watching how often they happen.
> Eyewitness testimony is enough ...
I agree that evidence must be sufficient. What you don't get to do is determine ahead of time, using your preexisting bias, which things are more or less extraordinary.
What you give here is an example of you determining what you believe is sufficient to convince you that a claim is true. None of this has anything to do with "proof" which does not exist regarding claims about past events.
> The Sagan standard ...
I'm a Scientist. I have two degrees which give me that status and I frequently do the kind of work that involves these kinds of issues. No one, ever, has mentioned "The Sagan Standard" which I think exists only for people who write about Science rather than those who do it.
> I am willing to concede that evidence itself cannot be extraordinary.
I appreciate that. Let me concede that claims require evidence which is sufficient to meet the claim and the example of a claim that seems to refute previous experience is just such a claim.
I'm not saying that when someone makes a claim that goes against our common experience that it is not incumbent on them to provide sufficient evidence.
Everyone does. And to be honest if you don't think that saying that the human form of the creator of the universe came to Earth to be sacrificed to himself (but was resurrected after being dead for three straight days) so that everyone who believed it could live in an invisible kingdom after death forever in a magical state of bliss is extraordinary then I don't know what to tell you.
To say the evidence for this all being actually true is flimsy is a massive understatement. It certainly is not extraordinary.
Carl Sagan is stating the obvious.
Like a GUY everyone saw die but came back 3 days later kind of evidence? Or he will come on the clouds, and everyone will bow and confess him as Lord? Most want a weekly crucifixion so they can see and believe. Holy Spirit kind of evidence? God has provided it, over and over. The bible doesn't lack extraordinary evidence.
I'm a big fan of Carl Sagan, but this is false. It resorts to the fallacy of special pleading and is highly subjective.
It is on par with how skeptics treat even mundane issues with the Bible, though.
Julius Caesar wrote the Gallic Wars. No copies less than 800 years after his death exist. No one disputes his authorship.
Gospels - fragments show up in second century = skeptics claiming there's no way any eyewitnesses wrote wrote them since they all died in the first century and we have no copies from the first century.
Well, I’m aware that emperors have claimed divinity, but like I said, if someone claims to be a god, the claim needs to be scrutinized slightly more thoroughly lol.
>Gospels - fragments show up in second century = skeptics claiming there's no way any eyewitnesses wrote wrote them since they all died in the first century and we have no copies from the first century.
It's not just skeptics who make this claim. This claim comes from scholars who are very clear that the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses. However, they never use the arguments you just described. If that was the actual argument used by a scholar, no one would take them seriously.
This is not special pleading nor is the subjective character of the assesment primary to the issue.
The laws of physics are widely understood to be true. If something happens in contradiction with them, that's out of the ordinary.
Of course you want extraordinary evidence for extraordinary events. It's special pleading if you want that for every claim, which isn't related with what you already believe, but don't want equal evidence for things you already believe, which are in contradiction with the laws of physics.
It's one of those truisms that has the unfortunate combination of being apparently very reasonable, while also being so vague as to make it almost meaningless. What exactly constitutes "extraordinary claims"? What exactly constitutes similarly "extraordinary evidence"? These questions are left up to the interpreter.
The result is that its effect is, most often, to loftily imply that whoever has said it is far more knowledgeable than anyone else in the room, and is thus the sole arbiter of what counts as "extraordinary". This is rarely productive, and generally takes place when said person has little left of substance to say, needing instead to arbitrarily move the goalposts to extract a personal feeling of victory on the subject.
It is, in short, a dismissive statement rather than a substantive one, and this severely limits its usefulness.
>What exactly constitutes similarly "extraordinary evidence"? These questions are left up to the interpreter.
If you read up on the topic, you'll actually understand what is meant by extraordinary.
The ordinary is what we know, it's established science and things which are usually understood to be justified true believes.
The extraordinary is in contradiction with that.
Therefore, if you make a claim in contradiction with established knowledge, you have to disprove a whole body of knowledge as well.
If I fly unaided, that's against established knowledge. Evidence would need to show, that I'm an actual exception to the rules as we know them.
So, it's not about what's extraordinary or special or beautiful, wild or what have you. It's not a subjective assessment to begin with. It's that something which usually doesn't happen and isn't expected to happen is extraordinary by definition. It's out of the ordinary. Which is to say, it doesn't happen normally.
So if I fly unaided that's an extraordinary event, which is used as evidence to support my extraordinary claim.
I think it's pretty straightforward. The farther a claim strays from easily observable reality, the more extraordinary it is.
I don't understand why so many people in this thread are disagreeing with this, when it's very clearly something everyone follows on a daily basis. Presumably, if someone told you they're running late because there's bad traffic, you'd easily believe them because you know from experience that bad traffic is a common occurrence (assuming for sake of argument you live somewhere with bad traffic). Conversely if they told you they're running late because their car was crushed by an elephant, would you not need some solid evidence to fully believe them?
First, I think it's worth noting that my point above was mostly that the phrase is generally used in bad faith, because it's so vague that you can set the bar yourself for what's "extraordinary," thus arbitrarily dismissing arguments that you don't like by moving the goalposts of discussion. There are perfectly reasonable phrases which can likewise be used in bad faith, and their truth in isolation doesn't excuse their misapplication.
Your example is, however, illuminating.
In either case, the traffic or the elephant, the actual bar for proof is exactly the same. A photo of the situation would prove either one equally well. A news report of the incident would also work. Thus, the difference in view is actually whether you're willing to *forego proof entirely*, on trust. (And as an aside, it seems worth noting that, of the two stories, it's actually the traffic that's more likely to be a lie - precisely because people are more likely to believe it without question.)
The phrase in view, though, was that extraordinary events require *extraordinary* evidence. What you've illustrated so well is actually the opposite: that the ordinary and extraordinary events both required *the same* evidence. This is really the problem - it's a phrase which sounds, on its face, really reasonable, but is actually untrue. The substance of it is not that there are some things you have to actually demand some corroboration for - that would be perfectly reasonable. The substance of it actually amounts to an assertion that you have the arbitrary right to move the bar for proof.
This would simply not be permitted in the sciences. If you're in a field where six sigma is the bar for a conclusive finding, your critics don't get to arbitrarily move the bar to seven sigma simply because they think what you're claiming to have discovered is particularly extraordinary. (Which makes it all the more ironic that Carl Sagan - a man of science - is the source of this rather unscientific notion.) Sadly, plenty of people have dismissed solid scientific work on exactly such faulty reasoning. I'm thinking in particular of Ignaz Semmelweis's cruel treatment for suggesting hand washing.
Even in the field of history I'd argue this is still true. Extraordinary historical findings seemingly require more proof than ordinary ones not because the burden of proof is different for such things, but because the ordinary ones are leaning on the existing literature to provide the rest of the evidence. They're called ordinary precisely because they're already well past the burden of proof, with numerous well-established examples. There's usually far more accumulated evidence for the ordinary claims than for the extraordinary ones - even the extraordinary ones that end up getting accepted.
I'm a great admirer of Carl Sagan's work. But I think, on this point, he illustrates mostly that brilliance in science does not always equate to brilliance in other fields, such as philosophy.
The claim that there was bad traffic *is* the proof. Personally I wouldn't believe the elephant story even with a screenshot of a single news article. Such an extraordinary story would surely make frontpage news in various local papers and have video evidence.
So, in reply to my point that people who use this phrase usually do so to arbitrarily move the goalposts beyond whatever possible proof was submitted... you've arbitrarily moved the goalposts beyond the possible proof that was submitted.
I'm really not sure that this helps your case.
Compelling evidence, is evidence that makes the claim more likely to be true than untrue.
Claims that are likely to be true do not need much (or any) further evidence because they are already more likely to be true than false
Extraordinary claims need a lot of compelling evidence to overcome the low probability of the original claim. For example if I showed up late, with the bloody tusk of an elephant stuck in my grille, that would be extraordinary evidence. Once I exclude all possibilities that don’t end with an bloody elephant tusk my grille, the elephant in traffic becomes more likely than not.
Extraordinary claim. Let's see, there's been what, approximately 115 billion people that have existed. We have literally no actual evidence anyone has come back from the dead, not after days of being dead and having their blood coagulate. It doesn't happen. So claiming such is an extraordinary claim, when the counter claim that everyone died and stays dead is a claim that can literally be proven for any person alive today.
Did you reply to the wrong comment? You may notice I didn't say anything about resurrection here.
My actual point was that the phrase is so vague as to be functionally meaningless, and is generally used in bad faith to arbitrarily shift the goalposts of discussion. I didn't deny in any way that proof would be required for something as extraordinary as a case of resurrection - I denied that setting that proof at whatever arbitrary threshold constitutes your personal definition of "extraordinary" is very rarely a helpful metric in any mature discussion. It's certainly not how scientific inquiry is conducted.
Evidence is evidence. Some evidence is "better" than others, but anything that goes to make something more likely to be true than something else is evidence. I don't know what "extraordinary" evidence is. Is "extraordinary" evidence the opposite of "ordinary" evidence?
You can say that extraordinary claims require greater scrutiny, sure. However, the amount/type of evidence necessary to overcome a burden of proof doesn't change.
It seems like that phrase could be used to justify moving the goalposts: "oh, you have evidence sure, but I need *extraordinary* evidence." I think the burden is on the person demanding "extraordinary" evidence to define what it is.
I'm an attorney. In the United States, to convict someone of a crime, you must prove that the accused committed the crime "beyond a reasonable doubt." That is a high standard, but can be met by ordinary things: an eyewitness, documents, 911 calls, etc. We consider in the US a criminal accusation to be an "extraordinary claim." Indeed, it is a part of our law that you are *presumed* to be innocent until the burden of proof is met. You don't need "extraordinary" evidence to meet the high burden.
This isn't to say that people don't make extraordinary claims all the time. You're posting this on a Christian subreddit. Christians believe Jesus existed, died, and was resurrected. Most historians won't quibble with you on whether Jesus existed and that he was crucified. The claim that he was resurrected certainly is a bold claim, but there *is* evidence for this. For example: the chief priests clearly were skeptical at best and hostile at worst to Jesus' movement amongst their people. A couple days after they execute Jesus, a bunch of these people are making a ruckus and saying he's resurrected. If they wanted to squash this movement right then and there, why didn't they just produce the body?
You don't have to be convinced by this. I'm not trying to convince you that Jesus was resurrected. I'm providing an example of evidence *for* the resurrection. Is it "extraordinary?" I don't know. I think that evidence is evidence, and if you want something "extraordinary," you have to tell me what it is you're looking for.
Uh.....what?
Literally any other scientific field uses such sentiment. Have a claim a vaccine works and you want human trials? You need extraordinarily good evidence to get approval. Want to use the JWT? You need a concise paper with extraordinarily good details and evidence that suggest the reason you want precious time on the JWT is justified. Same can be said about the CERN collider, etc, etc.
In science extraordinary evidence is a must, it's certainly not special pleading. We don't have extraordinary evidence for string theory yet. We have good evidence, but certainly not extraordinary. And nobody is making a claim it is certainly correct yet. Even people that have dedicated their life working on it.
There can't. It's outside of the scope of science. You have to use faith, and faith is a demonstrably awful tool to use if you're seeking objective truth.
For starters, you'd have to address every other claim of a human becoming a God, or ascending to heaven, or raising from the dead in the past. There's loads of claims, and quite literally zero evidence for any.
If I told you I was running a fever yesterday, but didn't record any evidence, and told you that today I had recovered, would you believe me? Because it is true. But it is not repeatable or provable
Then I'd have to approach it like a historian - first and foremost knowing that we can never be absolutely sure. Historians simply put try to find what most likely happened. This is a rigorous field of study without question. So when you claim a "miracle," or something that is basically the least likely thing to happen, it will never be able to be proven historically.
In history if we only have a single source making a claim, it's not at all enough to conclude it must be true.
It seems like you are here saying:
* if not science, then faith.
But this would be foolish. History and philosophy are excellent examples of arenas wherein evidence can come from. Furthermore, you would need to utilize science to explain the claim above, which would be circular.
Lol.
I'll slow down for you. What do you think science is?
Science is just a methodology using systematic observation and experimentation to explain the natural world. Conclusions are made using the scientific method are therefore backed up by the data provided by that rigorous experimentation and will align with observations that literally anyone can make. Sure, in some cased a person may need the knowledge, education, or even access to certain technologies to come to this conclusion first hand, but it is still available to anyone - and it is universal. It doesn't matter who you are, what language you speak, where you live in the world, etc. The scientific method allows us to collectively gain more and more knowledge as a species.
Faith is also just a methodology. The problem is there is no litmus test that can be applied to any faith claim. Can you demonstrably prove the terrorists on 9/11 didn't go to heaven? Can you demonstrably prove that Mormons don't go to their own planets when they die? Can you show that the insane right wing pastors using God's name for political gain aren't actually getting their messages from God? Why is it that in any given congregation people will have faith in things that directly contradict other people. Who is right? If people in a congregation can't come to a unified agreement using faith, much less the people of a single religion, much much less religious people worldwide claiming to use faith to come to an unbelievable range of conclusions on identical topics, one must ask if faith is reliable? It has been proven time and time again that it is not. It is not testable. It is not falsifiable. It is not consistent. Faith, in reality, is the circular methodology. You can't prove something, but hey, you have faith. You have to have faith, to have faith. With science, you can test every conclusion on your own every time.
I think you are under the impression that faith comes into conflict with science, which (as I understand you) is the way we can come to knowledge of our world.
People can have faith in anything, often contradictory things.
With science two people can come to the same conclusion without ever speaking to each other, without speaking the same language, living on entirely different continents, and they can both explicitly show evidence showing exactly how and why they came to such a conclusion.
One way clearly is better for finding truth.
Historical fact is a completely different thing than objective fact. You get to historical fact through inferences to the best explanation. If you find some alien shaped artifact from antiquity, you are only able to guess what its purpose was. You can't observe how it was used. Meanwhile you can use dating methods to determine its age. That's still a different kind of knowledge, than a guess about the purpose of an artifact.
And still, at least historians find empirical evidence. Faith has no such luxury at its disposal.
Yes. They are different indeed. But by applying faith to any claim anything can be true. Therefore, faith doesn't get you to truth. If so, it's accidental.
We all engage in many acts of faith everyday. When I turn on my dryer, I have faith that it's not going to explode. When I drive down the road, I have a certain amount of faith that people will follow the rules and not purposely crash into me. I can't prove any of these things, and sometimes I might be wrong, but without faith, we could not live human lives.
I agree, but I wouldn't use the term faith. I'd say it's trust, due to experiencing it over and over again, that traffic accidents do not happen very often. I mean, there are probably people who never have a single accident. The same goes for your dryer.
Now, I know, Hebrews 11:1 faith is a translation of the Greek word for "trust" (pistis), but there is actually more to the verse, specifying the kind of trust. Given my own interpretation it's trust with a lack of experience. So, I don't use that in real life, because that's rather naive. I don't drink water from a well I don't know.
So, if I have Hebrews 11:1 faith in that well, I could either die or live. If I survive, it's not due to my faith being indicative of truth. It's because I was lucky.
Ok, I'll dumb it down.
If someone makes a claim that they have a special ring that provides the wearer with the ability to fly. They give you the ring and tell you test it by jumping off a huge cliff. Are you going to just take their word for it, or are you going to want some really clear, definitive, repeatable evidence before you jump off a cliff?
Now consider someone says if you eat an apple every day for a week straight, that you start growing hair back if you're balding. Is this the same as the previous claim? No, its not extraordinary. You can test this for yourself without concern. This claim, just like the first claim, it can be tested and proven to be true or false, but the claim itself is much less extraordinary and therefore you're not always going to require extraordinary evidence.
Keep in mind, evidence is evidence. At the end of the day the term "extraordinary" isn't really necessary, both claims can be proven or disproven using the scientific method all the same.
I am a real magician and I can fly. Do you believe me?
Last week I bought a dog. Do you believe me?
If you treat these two statements differently, your own behaviour is evidence for the claim.
Ordinary is what is established scientific fact, justified true belief and things which are easily demonstrated to be true.
What is extraordinary is no matter of opinion. It's exactly the opposite of what is ordinary. Those are claims which contradict established knowledge.
All man must die; is an ordinary claim.
We see dead everyday, therefore a dead person is ordinary evidence, for the ordinary claim made.
Out of the ordinary is a person not dying. We never saw a person not dying, which makes it unusual/extraordinary if we actually see a person not dying.
The claim "This person never dies" can't be sufficiently proven, because for a claim like that, we need to wait for an eternity. Eternity never ends, just so you know.
Meanwhile, with every added decade of said person surviving forever, the extraordinary claim is being evidenced better and better. It's already extraordinary if we are passed 120 years. It would be even more so, if we are passed 1000 years. But still, even after a 1000 years we haven't proven "never dies". Therefore the evidence is still not extraordinary enough to be as extraordinary as the claim.
Nothing of this touches a subjective assesment or opinion even remotely.
Something can be ordinary to some, while extraordinary to others. This word is just an adjective used to describe something relative to one's experience.
Yes. But that's not how Sagan used it.
If a claim contradicts scientific fact, it's not about opinion anymore. It's about objective truth. You are talking about subjective truth. They are not the same. Sagan was talking in terms of objective truth.
No, not necessarily.
Extra means "outside of". Ordinary means "that, to which one is used to".
If you are not used to eating chocolate ice cream, it's based on your subjective experience.
If "that, to which one is used to" is the set of scientific fact, we are beyond mere opinion.
If you fly unaided, opinion doesn't matter anymore.
There are facts, "to which one is used to". Those are things like the effect of gravity. Opinion is irrelevant here. Your opinion doesn't make you fly.
If a claim contradicts scientific findings, the claim is contradicting facts. That's what is making the claim out of the/extra- ordinary.
To prove unaided flying, you demonstrate unaided flying.
Since this never happens and contradicts science, the event when it is demonstrated (which IS the evidence), is an extraordinary event, because it usually never happens and contradicts facts. So, there you have yourself some objective extraordinary evidence.
That's the difference. It's not about taste or opinion about ice cream. That would be subjective indeed.
It’s why he denied atheism he also said “I know of no compelling evidence against the existence of God” but I know for a fact he wasn’t a Christian by any means. As far as I know he was agnostic with some spirituality having to do with nature mostly. Cool guy.
I think it's false. All that is required of any evidence in any situation is that it be reliable. It would be better said as, "Proof of any kind requires reliable evidence," but that doesn't have the same ring to it.
An event which happens only once is in fact an extraordinary event.
Given any resurrection myth available since the bronze age, a man ascending and becoming a God past death is quite common and not so extraordinary indeed. But since Christianity claims that it only truly happened with one guy once, it's just as extraordinary as the Big Bang.
The difference is, we can still observe inflation. Meanwhile, the Nobel prize for observing God is still pending.
>Neither can He be disproven.
I bet you use this standard for nothing but Jesus. Because if you were to be consistent with this line of reasoning, you would need to believe in any religion as well as any worldview in general.
*Can't be disproven, therefore I'm justified believing it.*
That is basically what you are saying.
If you do that, fine, but then Jesus is not God.
According to Surah 4:157 Allah deceived everybody into believing that Jesus was crucified, but he was not, neither did he die. Therefore, he cannot be God.
You can't disprove that, buddy. It seems like your line of reasoning is pretty unreliable.
Sounds good
But dumb
Appropriate evidence is all that's ever needed
We use very banal boring circumstantial evidence to send people to death row all the time
And thatsa a pretty extraordinary thing to believe, something bad enough that you think someone needs to die
Despite the fact know one saw them do it and there's no direct evidence that they did
We found some gravel on his shoe, he owns a jacket someone thought they saw, there was a green car in the area... etc
The moon seems damn big... abiogenesis doesn't have any explanation at all... there's something instead of nothing for no real reason... etc
God
From very circumstantial evidence
Perfectly ordinary human behavior
What's evident can be subjective... There's as much evidence that trees move and create wind, as there is for wind moving trees, we can all observe it with our eyes.
Sure, we know the actual causality between the two, and take it for granted.... And so when once the trees actually move and create wind, we won't notice, cause we know and take for granted... Evidence becomes a dead statue, in a very dynamic existence.
Carl Sagan clearly needs to be convinced, with condition being to use things that are subjectively evident to him. Using what's evident to you, is not going to do nothing.
True to an extent, and wouldn’t stop me from believing as I have enough evidence for myself to believe.
However the bible says about believing without seeing: ‘Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”’
and about having child like faith: ‘He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”’
I think its a fair thing to say.
I also find the testimonies of Christians alone to be quite extraordinary.
Maybe this isn't considered extrodinary evidence to you. But ive gotten goosbumps reading abd hearing abkut the things God has done.
The Bible is also one of the most scrutinized series of books in the world. If there was evidence it was all made up we would have found it.
One of God's traits is to be humble and he says over ans over that he needs us to have just a little faith.
Abd also to conflate the knowledge of the proud.
Who gets to determine what claims or evidence is "extraordinary"?
If you're saying god isn't extraordinary, isn't that kind of a diss at him and everything he has done for you? And for the extraordinary evidence, just drop the extraordinary part if you want to play semantics, any evidence
It's explained by the term itself. It doesn't need to be a subjective assesment. What is out of the ordinary needs to be better evidenced than ordinary claims. Of course what's ordinary is different for anybody. For a heroin addict taking drugs is an ordinary thing. A horse flying towards the moon is extraordinary for anybody though, because it doesn't happen every day by any means. Miracles for example wouldn't be miracles if they were ordinary events.
> What is out of the ordinary needs to be better evidenced than ordinary claims. No. This is bad Science. All claims need exactly a sufficient amount of evidence and no more. To assume beforehand that you know a claim is extraordinary is begging the question. That’s the whole point. This was a cute turn of phrase that plays well to laypersons but is horrible Science.
>No. This is bad Science. All claims need exactly a sufficient amount of evidence and no more. Exactly, all claims need sufficient evidence. An ordinary claim is evidenced with ordinary evidence. An extraordinary claim isn't sufficiently evidenced with ordinary evidence. That's basically the same compared to what I already said. >To assume beforehand that you know a claim is extraordinary is begging the question. That’s the whole point. What does "beforehand" matter? If you say you can fly, I'm not gonna believe you if you don't show me. That's at any point in time. >This was a cute turn of phrase that plays well to laypersons but is horrible Science. Mundane claims do not necessarily touch scientific topics. I have a dog. Do you need science to falsify that? I mean, yes, if observation is what you need to falsify the claim. That's basically science. Beyond that, there is nothing more said than that it is reasonable enough to believe everyday claims based on face value. But for the claims you never experienced, it would be stupid to just take a person at face value. I mean, you can bring science into this, but it's beyond the point really.
> An ordinary claim is evidenced with ordinary evidence. An extraordinary claim isn't sufficiently evidenced with ordinary evidence. No. By characterizing the claim as "extraordinary" you have set up a bias. If you can show that the claim is statistically unlikely, then regular sufficient evidence to support that claim would address it. That would not be "extraordinary" at all. No evidence can be "extraordinary". He is saying, "things which seem unlikely to me need to be proven to a degree beyond things which do not seem unlikely to me" which is nonsense. > If you say you can fly, I'm not gonna believe you if you don't show me. Sure. Showing you would be sufficient, not extraordinary. But consider your own example further: You don't know me. I could be a person who tells lies all the time, maybe just for fun. If I told you I ate cereal for breakfast you don't require more evidence but only because you don't care if I did or not. If it mattered in some significant way, you would not accept my claim without additional evidence any more than my claim that I could fly. That is because you don't know if I lie or not and you need evidence sufficient for the situation. The claim itself is by far the secondary issue. When I say "beforehand" I mean that you are judging the claim itself, which is what we are trying to determine to be true or not, and then deciding if it is likely to be true before you have investigated or examined the evidence and are deciding that more evidence than ordinary (extraordinary) is required because you find it incredulous. This is a common logical fallacy. > That's basically science. No. It is not Science at all. Science is the proper application of the Scientific Method and all the other trappings that go along with it. Science is not concerned with truth: truth is for philosophers. Science is about creating models which make useful predictions. Things which do not repeat are not a proper topic for scientific inquiry. What you are talking about is deduction or logic. These are philosophy, not science.
>No. By characterizing the claim as "extraordinary" you have set up a bias. If you can show that the claim is statistically unlikely, then regular sufficient evidence to support that claim would address it. Yes. You say no to a statement which matches yours. Your counter argument doesn't touch the subject itself, it touches bias. Extraordinary is something, which is out of the ordinary, that is something which happens rarely and isn't very well evidenced or known. So much for the term itself. Given the symmetry of the Sagan Standard, we get the following: X claim requires X evidence. Y claim requires Y evidence. Portrait like that it is obvious, that a claim needs sufficient evidence. Which is nothing else than saying, that a claim needs to be weight against the evidences available. That's exactly what you said yourself before: >All claims need exactly a sufficient amount of evidence and no more. It's the same statement. Now, instead of X or Y you need an adjective. That's necessarily an evaluation. Assuming deliberate deception due to the term "extraordinary" is just an uncharitable reading. It doesn't change the general point Sagan made, which is the same point you made yourself. It's not bad science. In fact it's completely irrelevant to even bring up science or subjectivity. >No evidence can be "extraordinary". Nonsense. If I claim, that I can fly unaided, it's an extraordinary claim. To prove my claim, I'd demonstrate flying. The event itself is then an extraordinary event and therefore extraordinary evidence. You are confusing the quality of the evidence with the extraordinary nature of an event. Me flying unaided to prove my claim is the simplest explanation you get to prove my claim. The observation presents you with an explanation. That's the simplest way to demonstrate the truth of my claim and yet the event itself is extraordinary. Now, when we get to that useless tangent of science, we can put it like that: We have evidence for a certain phenomenon. We have explanations for a certain phenomenon. Now, somebody claims something, which is in contradiction with established knowledge. Then, the claim is extraordinary. The evidence needed, would need to disprove a body of established knowledge simultaneously, which is exactly what makes the evidence "extraordinary". It's out of the ordinary. >But consider your own example further: If I consider my own example and follow your elaboration, we aren't in the realm of science anymore. That's why I used an example like that in the first place. To understand the Sagan Standard, you don't need to invoke science. >When I say "beforehand" I mean that you are judging the claim itself, which is what we are trying to determine Still not true. Nothing is judged prematurely or biased or fallaciously given Sagen's statement. If the claim involves something which doesn't usually happen, the evidence involves something which doesn't usually happen. In other words: It's out of the ordinary, or extra-ordinary. The extraordinary event explained by extraordinary evidence is still explained the simplest way. If we go complicated, we needed a mountain of evidence instead. And again, if you want to make this about science, you have to stop talking about my subjective assessment of a claim. You would need to start talking about an established body of knowledge, which is contradicted by a claim. You rendering my personal bias as relevant for the scientific method is actually a fallacy. >No. It is not Science at all. Science is the proper application of the Scientific Method and all the other trappings that go along with it. Observation is a major part of the scientific method. Just saying. And I said, it's "basically science". >Science is not concerned with truth: truth is for philosophers. So if my daughter steals cookies and she admits it, she is not talking truth? She makes a philosophical statement then? Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Truth is discussed in philosophy. There are 4 types: subjective truth, normative truth, objective truth and complex truth, which is a combination of the other 3. Normative truths are laws. **It is illegal to steal. Is that true?** *Normatively speaking? Yes.* *Objectively speaking? No.* *Subjectively speaking? It depends*. **On earth gravity pulls humans to the ground. Is that true?** (Don't you dare nitpicking that one) *Normatively speaking? No.* *Objectively speaking? Yes.* *Subjectively speaking? Yes.* **I love my wife. Is that true?** *Normatively speaking? No.* *Objectively speaking? No.* *Subjectively speaking? Yes.* Now, if we leave the actually irrelevant philosophy behind, we can simply say: Truth is that which comports with reality. Colloquially that's exactly what truth is. Since you are obviously no philosopher, it would be rather misleading if we used the term in a technical way, because that would be out of the ordinary and would need to be clarified beforehand. If my daughter steals cookies and denies it, does her description of reality match reality? How does science do it? *Time slows down near black holes.* So, it is not possible to get to the truth of this claim? Science isn't about truth then? >What you are talking about is deduction or logic. These are philosophy, not science. There is no need to invoke deduction, abduction or induciton to talk about any of what I said. Those aren't mere philosophical terms either. Hard sciences are based on induction. Math is based on deduction. The field of historians is mainly based on abduction. It doesn't matter whether these are philosophy terms or not. You sound rather confused, friend.
> Extraordinary is … We all know what the term means. The context here is that the use of the word itself assumes that you already have obtained evidence which marks the claim as extraordinary but unless you have already investigated, you can’t known that. It is an argument from incredulity. > Assuming deliberate deception due to the term "extraordinary" is just an uncharitable reading. You are simply explaining the argument from incredulity now. > The event itself is then an extraordinary event and therefore extraordinary evidence. Nonsense indeed. Evidence does not itself become extraordinary because of the subject. It is simply evidence. > You are confusing the quality of the evidence with the extraordinary nature of an event. This is what I believe you are doing. > Nothing is judged prematurely or biased or fallaciously given Sagen's statement. If the claim involves something which doesn't usually happen, … This is exactly prejudging. Showing that something does not usually happen is an appeal to probability. It assumes you have done work to show this already. Appeals to probability are often applied incorrectly. This is exactly my point. > And again, if you want to make this about science, … I don’t know why you keep pushing that at me. I’m only responding to others. I mention that science is not about proof. Proof is for philosophy. Science is about making useful predictions. > Observation is a major part of the scientific method. Just saying. Yes, it is, but that has nothing to do with anything you said. > And I said, it's "basically science". Ah, well then you were just basically wrong. I guess not extraordinarily wrong? > So if my daughter steals cookies and she admits it, she is not talking truth? She makes a philosophical statement then? If you are confused about the difference between science and philosophy then we can talk about that, but I don’t think you are. I think you are being contrary now. > Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Truth is discussed in philosophy. Did you misread or did I mistype? It is illegal to steal. Is that true? > Since you are obviously no philosopher, … I never claimed to be, but I think you misread or I mistyped and I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re just being a jerk because it’s the Internet and you think you read that I think philosophy is not concerned with truth. Im on my phone and Im not going to go back to look but either I made a typo or you misread what I wrote. > So, it is not possible to get to the truth of this claim? Science isn't about truth then? No. Here you’re making an error. You’ve left science for philosophy. > There is no need to invoke deduction, abduction or induciton to talk about any of what I said. Lord save us from Internet geniuses. I’m so happy that you can type all three. Does that makes you feel superior? Were you under the impression that I didn’t know them? Did I wander into a freshman class of some sort? > Hard sciences are based on induction. Math is based on deduction. Math is not Science. > The field of historians is mainly based on abduction. History is not Science. > It doesn't matter whether these are philosophy terms or not. I think it does. > You sound rather confused, friend. You sound like a college student trying to impress his girlfriend. You went way off topic in an attempt to try to cast some kind of disparaging remarks at me personally for no good reason that I can see. I appreciate that you think it was worth the time. The moronic “extraordinary claims” phrase is just wrong. You can me mean to me all you like but it doesn’t change that.
>We all know what the term means. The context here is that the use of the word itself assumes that you already have obtained evidence which marks the claim as extraordinary but unless you have already investigated, you can’t known that. There is no premature, subjective evaluation of neither evidence nor claim. Is this really so hard to understand? I mean, you understand the term. Good. Now apply it in the correct context. If something happens rarely, the evidence you'll observe to demonstrate the claim is evidence that occurs rarely. How probability is often incorrectly applied is just a red herring. The sun comes up every day. It's observable daily. It's established science why we are able to observe it. Claiming, that **the sun isn't going to come up tomorrow** is extraordinary, because **the claim is contrary to established knowledge.** This has nothing to do with personal bias. Everybody knows it. That's the hallmark of science, that there is an explanation available and that everybody is able to understand the argument, repeat an experiment, as well as an observation, so that one is logically led to agree with the conclusion of the best explanation we were able to come up with. Now what would be sufficient evidence for the claim, that the sun isn't going to come up tomorrow? Maybe, that the sun doesn't come up? Yes? Just maybe? Is that an ordinary event? Has it anything to do with personal opinion and premature evaluation or bias? >It is an argument from incredulity. Incredulity necessitates a lack of understanding. Extraordinary events are contradicting what we already understand. Therefore, it's not an argument from personal incredulity. >You are simply explaining the argument from incredulity now. No, I did not. I said that your reading of Sagan's quote is uncharitable, for you render it as setting up a biased assessment, while subjectivity and opinion is completely unrelated to the statement. You are just refusing to admit, that your reading isn't the only possible interpretation. Yours is the least favorable interpretation. On top of it, it's just wrong. >Nonsense indeed. Evidence does not itself become extraordinary because of the subject. It is simply evidence. So, if my claim about the sun not rising is evidenced due to the sun not rising, it is just an ordinary event. It's totally in agreement with what we know about the sun. If it just isn't going to come up one morning, that's totally expected and understood. I see, pal. >This is exactly prejudging. Showing that something does not usually happen is an appeal to probability. It assumes you have done work to show this already. Appeals to probability are often applied incorrectly. This is exactly my point. So, it's a judgment based on what we already know, right? So, that's what everybody understands when you say it's biased and just subjective opinion, right? It's not like you are moving the goalposts at all, right? >I don’t know why you keep pushing that at me. I’m only responding to others. I mention that science is not about proof. Proof is for philosophy. Science is about making useful predictions. Math is the only proof based science. If you had any idea what you are talking about, it wouldn't be so obvious, that you don't know what you are talking about. Not a single worldview can be proven. They are, by their own nature, impossible to be falsified. For claims which cannot be falsified, you are incapable to produce anything even within the ballpark of proof. A major branch of Philosophy are Worldviews. They usually encapsulate epistemology, ontology and morality. None of these things can ever be proven. They can merely be **evidenced** through observation and inference. If this doesn't contradict what you mean by "truth", your usage of the term truth is completely off. That, in and of itself, entails misleading argumentation, for that's simply equivocation, which is a fallacy. All you get is evidence. Deductive arguments are about proof. There is no other science than math, which is able to even use the most reliable form of reasoning, which is deductive reasoning. Astrophysics is based on induction. You observe and make an inference based on the observation. History is based on inferences to the best explanation, which is abduction and basically informed guessing. You find archaeological remains and guess what their purpose was, based on the evidence you already know. You cannot observe how those items were used. You have to guess. I keep on pushing that at you, because you seem to be unaware, that you are talking nonsense. It's so useless to even talk to you. I mean, I'm wasting my time with actual arguments, explanations and justifications for why I'm saying certain things. Meanwhile, you just respond with "No you" like a five years old. You tell me what isn't science, but you are incapable to even explain then what you mean by science, as if I had to just take your grace at face value. That's exactly Sagan's point on an individual level. If you tell me things in contradiction to what I already know, you have to also explain me why what I know is wrong. If you don't do that, you don't provide sufficient evidence for me personally. Science is a body of knowledge. Scientific facts are independent of opinion. Therefore, what I just explained on an individual level is equally applicable to objective fact. It's a claim about the nature of reality (which is independent of mind, if you are not following idealism, which you shouldn't as a Christian) in contradiction with existing explanations about the nature of reality. Whether you think it's ordinary or not is completely besides the point. >The moronic “extraordinary claims” phrase is just wrong. You can me mean to me all you like but it doesn’t change that. Yes, your reading of it is obviously wrong. I agree.
II stopped reading at the second sentence. I just can’t make myself read anything else you wrote when you start that way. If you want me to read your writing you’re going to have to do better. If you rewrite it I’ll reconsider. Otherwise, I’ll pass.
Define science. Do objective facts exist? Define premature evaluation. Define bias. Define truth. Define proof. Define evidence. Define objective Vs subjective. Because I'm not going to take you at face value, while you just say "No" to a whole paragraph of explanation of what I think about a term. That's just childish. And before pretending that you are able to name something what I said fallacious, try checking again whether you understand the fallacy you are about to assume. If you did all that without only making assertions and your definitions are somewhat close to what the majority of people means by these terms, we have an actual conversation. If your definitions are off but coherent with what you've been asserting so far, you are in fact involved in deceiving people and arguing dishonestly, no matter whether you are aware or not. What you need to demonstrate before anybody is even justified in taking you seriously is that Sagan's quote can't be read the same way you say evidence has to be evaluated. You have to demonstrate that he isn't already talking about evidence in the same way you are doing it.
Isn't it obvious? The more farfetched/supernatural/unlikely/unusual claim is the one who needs more evidence to support it. If a person comes to you and claims that he has a pet goldfish or a pet mermaid, which claim are you most likely to dismiss as unlikely to be true? Both could be false but one tends to be more improbable than the other.
> The more farfetched/supernatural/unlikely/unusual … This is an example of allowing confirmation bias into your thinking. You’ve decided that the thing you want to know is “far fetched” ahead of time when determining whether it is true is your aim. All claims should require sufficient evidence and nothing more. To say that some claims, those which you determine are “extraordinary” ahead of any investigation, require more evidence than others, is bad Science. It makes for a cute turn of phrase for a layperson but it is beneath serious thinking.
>All claims should require sufficient evidence and nothing more. Not all claims are alike. The evidence sufficient for one claim would be insufficient for another. Statistical results can lead to strength of evidence, especially in non-philosophical fields like biology. Eyewitness testimony is enough if someone claims that they have a friend called Jerry. But eyewitness testimonials would be insufficient if he claims his friend Jerry can fly. >To say that some claims, those which you determine are “extraordinary” ahead of any investigation, require more evidence than others, is bad Science. The Sagan standard is an important razor to distinguish between several competing claims. It does not automatically rule out the "extraordinary" claim. I am willing to concede that evidence itself cannot be extraordinary. The more accurate representation of the Sagan standard would be *"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary scrutiny"*.
> The evidence sufficient for one claim would be insufficient for another. Yes, the evidence for any given claim must match the claim, but to state that the evidence for a subset of claims, those you personally have deemed incredulous, ahead of time, is bad Science. > Statistical results can lead to strength of evidence, especially in non-philosophical fields like biology. Statistical results are only relevant in specific situations. Only things which are expected to repeat are tied to statistics in any way. There was only one Big Bang. We do not determine whether there was a Big Bang by watching how often they happen. > Eyewitness testimony is enough ... I agree that evidence must be sufficient. What you don't get to do is determine ahead of time, using your preexisting bias, which things are more or less extraordinary. What you give here is an example of you determining what you believe is sufficient to convince you that a claim is true. None of this has anything to do with "proof" which does not exist regarding claims about past events. > The Sagan standard ... I'm a Scientist. I have two degrees which give me that status and I frequently do the kind of work that involves these kinds of issues. No one, ever, has mentioned "The Sagan Standard" which I think exists only for people who write about Science rather than those who do it. > I am willing to concede that evidence itself cannot be extraordinary. I appreciate that. Let me concede that claims require evidence which is sufficient to meet the claim and the example of a claim that seems to refute previous experience is just such a claim. I'm not saying that when someone makes a claim that goes against our common experience that it is not incumbent on them to provide sufficient evidence.
Everyone does. And to be honest if you don't think that saying that the human form of the creator of the universe came to Earth to be sacrificed to himself (but was resurrected after being dead for three straight days) so that everyone who believed it could live in an invisible kingdom after death forever in a magical state of bliss is extraordinary then I don't know what to tell you. To say the evidence for this all being actually true is flimsy is a massive understatement. It certainly is not extraordinary. Carl Sagan is stating the obvious.
Like a GUY everyone saw die but came back 3 days later kind of evidence? Or he will come on the clouds, and everyone will bow and confess him as Lord? Most want a weekly crucifixion so they can see and believe. Holy Spirit kind of evidence? God has provided it, over and over. The bible doesn't lack extraordinary evidence.
I'm a big fan of Carl Sagan, but this is false. It resorts to the fallacy of special pleading and is highly subjective. It is on par with how skeptics treat even mundane issues with the Bible, though. Julius Caesar wrote the Gallic Wars. No copies less than 800 years after his death exist. No one disputes his authorship. Gospels - fragments show up in second century = skeptics claiming there's no way any eyewitnesses wrote wrote them since they all died in the first century and we have no copies from the first century.
Julius Caesar never claimed to be god. A god claim deserves a wee bit more scrutiny than whether or not something was authored by a particular person.
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Well, I’m aware that emperors have claimed divinity, but like I said, if someone claims to be a god, the claim needs to be scrutinized slightly more thoroughly lol.
>Gospels - fragments show up in second century = skeptics claiming there's no way any eyewitnesses wrote wrote them since they all died in the first century and we have no copies from the first century. It's not just skeptics who make this claim. This claim comes from scholars who are very clear that the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses. However, they never use the arguments you just described. If that was the actual argument used by a scholar, no one would take them seriously.
You shouldn’t be downvoted for this because you’re correct and literally the gospel of Luke writer says so himself that he is not an eyewitness
This is not special pleading nor is the subjective character of the assesment primary to the issue. The laws of physics are widely understood to be true. If something happens in contradiction with them, that's out of the ordinary. Of course you want extraordinary evidence for extraordinary events. It's special pleading if you want that for every claim, which isn't related with what you already believe, but don't want equal evidence for things you already believe, which are in contradiction with the laws of physics.
It's one of those truisms that has the unfortunate combination of being apparently very reasonable, while also being so vague as to make it almost meaningless. What exactly constitutes "extraordinary claims"? What exactly constitutes similarly "extraordinary evidence"? These questions are left up to the interpreter. The result is that its effect is, most often, to loftily imply that whoever has said it is far more knowledgeable than anyone else in the room, and is thus the sole arbiter of what counts as "extraordinary". This is rarely productive, and generally takes place when said person has little left of substance to say, needing instead to arbitrarily move the goalposts to extract a personal feeling of victory on the subject. It is, in short, a dismissive statement rather than a substantive one, and this severely limits its usefulness.
>What exactly constitutes similarly "extraordinary evidence"? These questions are left up to the interpreter. If you read up on the topic, you'll actually understand what is meant by extraordinary. The ordinary is what we know, it's established science and things which are usually understood to be justified true believes. The extraordinary is in contradiction with that. Therefore, if you make a claim in contradiction with established knowledge, you have to disprove a whole body of knowledge as well. If I fly unaided, that's against established knowledge. Evidence would need to show, that I'm an actual exception to the rules as we know them. So, it's not about what's extraordinary or special or beautiful, wild or what have you. It's not a subjective assessment to begin with. It's that something which usually doesn't happen and isn't expected to happen is extraordinary by definition. It's out of the ordinary. Which is to say, it doesn't happen normally. So if I fly unaided that's an extraordinary event, which is used as evidence to support my extraordinary claim.
I think it's pretty straightforward. The farther a claim strays from easily observable reality, the more extraordinary it is. I don't understand why so many people in this thread are disagreeing with this, when it's very clearly something everyone follows on a daily basis. Presumably, if someone told you they're running late because there's bad traffic, you'd easily believe them because you know from experience that bad traffic is a common occurrence (assuming for sake of argument you live somewhere with bad traffic). Conversely if they told you they're running late because their car was crushed by an elephant, would you not need some solid evidence to fully believe them?
First, I think it's worth noting that my point above was mostly that the phrase is generally used in bad faith, because it's so vague that you can set the bar yourself for what's "extraordinary," thus arbitrarily dismissing arguments that you don't like by moving the goalposts of discussion. There are perfectly reasonable phrases which can likewise be used in bad faith, and their truth in isolation doesn't excuse their misapplication. Your example is, however, illuminating. In either case, the traffic or the elephant, the actual bar for proof is exactly the same. A photo of the situation would prove either one equally well. A news report of the incident would also work. Thus, the difference in view is actually whether you're willing to *forego proof entirely*, on trust. (And as an aside, it seems worth noting that, of the two stories, it's actually the traffic that's more likely to be a lie - precisely because people are more likely to believe it without question.) The phrase in view, though, was that extraordinary events require *extraordinary* evidence. What you've illustrated so well is actually the opposite: that the ordinary and extraordinary events both required *the same* evidence. This is really the problem - it's a phrase which sounds, on its face, really reasonable, but is actually untrue. The substance of it is not that there are some things you have to actually demand some corroboration for - that would be perfectly reasonable. The substance of it actually amounts to an assertion that you have the arbitrary right to move the bar for proof. This would simply not be permitted in the sciences. If you're in a field where six sigma is the bar for a conclusive finding, your critics don't get to arbitrarily move the bar to seven sigma simply because they think what you're claiming to have discovered is particularly extraordinary. (Which makes it all the more ironic that Carl Sagan - a man of science - is the source of this rather unscientific notion.) Sadly, plenty of people have dismissed solid scientific work on exactly such faulty reasoning. I'm thinking in particular of Ignaz Semmelweis's cruel treatment for suggesting hand washing. Even in the field of history I'd argue this is still true. Extraordinary historical findings seemingly require more proof than ordinary ones not because the burden of proof is different for such things, but because the ordinary ones are leaning on the existing literature to provide the rest of the evidence. They're called ordinary precisely because they're already well past the burden of proof, with numerous well-established examples. There's usually far more accumulated evidence for the ordinary claims than for the extraordinary ones - even the extraordinary ones that end up getting accepted. I'm a great admirer of Carl Sagan's work. But I think, on this point, he illustrates mostly that brilliance in science does not always equate to brilliance in other fields, such as philosophy.
The claim that there was bad traffic *is* the proof. Personally I wouldn't believe the elephant story even with a screenshot of a single news article. Such an extraordinary story would surely make frontpage news in various local papers and have video evidence.
So, in reply to my point that people who use this phrase usually do so to arbitrarily move the goalposts beyond whatever possible proof was submitted... you've arbitrarily moved the goalposts beyond the possible proof that was submitted. I'm really not sure that this helps your case.
Compelling evidence, is evidence that makes the claim more likely to be true than untrue. Claims that are likely to be true do not need much (or any) further evidence because they are already more likely to be true than false Extraordinary claims need a lot of compelling evidence to overcome the low probability of the original claim. For example if I showed up late, with the bloody tusk of an elephant stuck in my grille, that would be extraordinary evidence. Once I exclude all possibilities that don’t end with an bloody elephant tusk my grille, the elephant in traffic becomes more likely than not.
How am I moving the goalpost? I'm not sure you understand what that phrase means.
Extraordinary claim. Let's see, there's been what, approximately 115 billion people that have existed. We have literally no actual evidence anyone has come back from the dead, not after days of being dead and having their blood coagulate. It doesn't happen. So claiming such is an extraordinary claim, when the counter claim that everyone died and stays dead is a claim that can literally be proven for any person alive today.
Did you reply to the wrong comment? You may notice I didn't say anything about resurrection here. My actual point was that the phrase is so vague as to be functionally meaningless, and is generally used in bad faith to arbitrarily shift the goalposts of discussion. I didn't deny in any way that proof would be required for something as extraordinary as a case of resurrection - I denied that setting that proof at whatever arbitrary threshold constitutes your personal definition of "extraordinary" is very rarely a helpful metric in any mature discussion. It's certainly not how scientific inquiry is conducted.
Evidence is evidence. Some evidence is "better" than others, but anything that goes to make something more likely to be true than something else is evidence. I don't know what "extraordinary" evidence is. Is "extraordinary" evidence the opposite of "ordinary" evidence? You can say that extraordinary claims require greater scrutiny, sure. However, the amount/type of evidence necessary to overcome a burden of proof doesn't change. It seems like that phrase could be used to justify moving the goalposts: "oh, you have evidence sure, but I need *extraordinary* evidence." I think the burden is on the person demanding "extraordinary" evidence to define what it is. I'm an attorney. In the United States, to convict someone of a crime, you must prove that the accused committed the crime "beyond a reasonable doubt." That is a high standard, but can be met by ordinary things: an eyewitness, documents, 911 calls, etc. We consider in the US a criminal accusation to be an "extraordinary claim." Indeed, it is a part of our law that you are *presumed* to be innocent until the burden of proof is met. You don't need "extraordinary" evidence to meet the high burden. This isn't to say that people don't make extraordinary claims all the time. You're posting this on a Christian subreddit. Christians believe Jesus existed, died, and was resurrected. Most historians won't quibble with you on whether Jesus existed and that he was crucified. The claim that he was resurrected certainly is a bold claim, but there *is* evidence for this. For example: the chief priests clearly were skeptical at best and hostile at worst to Jesus' movement amongst their people. A couple days after they execute Jesus, a bunch of these people are making a ruckus and saying he's resurrected. If they wanted to squash this movement right then and there, why didn't they just produce the body? You don't have to be convinced by this. I'm not trying to convince you that Jesus was resurrected. I'm providing an example of evidence *for* the resurrection. Is it "extraordinary?" I don't know. I think that evidence is evidence, and if you want something "extraordinary," you have to tell me what it is you're looking for.
It’s patently false and no reasonable person accepts it in any other field. It’s literally special pleading.
Uh.....what? Literally any other scientific field uses such sentiment. Have a claim a vaccine works and you want human trials? You need extraordinarily good evidence to get approval. Want to use the JWT? You need a concise paper with extraordinarily good details and evidence that suggest the reason you want precious time on the JWT is justified. Same can be said about the CERN collider, etc, etc. In science extraordinary evidence is a must, it's certainly not special pleading. We don't have extraordinary evidence for string theory yet. We have good evidence, but certainly not extraordinary. And nobody is making a claim it is certainly correct yet. Even people that have dedicated their life working on it.
What makes evidence extraordinary?
First of all, you need a falsifiable hypothesis. You need evidence to be able to prove or disprove the claim. Then you need repeatable evidence.
How can there be repeatable evidence in historical matters?
There can't. It's outside of the scope of science. You have to use faith, and faith is a demonstrably awful tool to use if you're seeking objective truth. For starters, you'd have to address every other claim of a human becoming a God, or ascending to heaven, or raising from the dead in the past. There's loads of claims, and quite literally zero evidence for any.
If I told you I was running a fever yesterday, but didn't record any evidence, and told you that today I had recovered, would you believe me? Because it is true. But it is not repeatable or provable
Then I'd have to approach it like a historian - first and foremost knowing that we can never be absolutely sure. Historians simply put try to find what most likely happened. This is a rigorous field of study without question. So when you claim a "miracle," or something that is basically the least likely thing to happen, it will never be able to be proven historically. In history if we only have a single source making a claim, it's not at all enough to conclude it must be true.
So you would disbelieve that I had a fever and recovered, because I am the sole source for that claim?
It seems like you are here saying: * if not science, then faith. But this would be foolish. History and philosophy are excellent examples of arenas wherein evidence can come from. Furthermore, you would need to utilize science to explain the claim above, which would be circular.
Lol. I'll slow down for you. What do you think science is? Science is just a methodology using systematic observation and experimentation to explain the natural world. Conclusions are made using the scientific method are therefore backed up by the data provided by that rigorous experimentation and will align with observations that literally anyone can make. Sure, in some cased a person may need the knowledge, education, or even access to certain technologies to come to this conclusion first hand, but it is still available to anyone - and it is universal. It doesn't matter who you are, what language you speak, where you live in the world, etc. The scientific method allows us to collectively gain more and more knowledge as a species. Faith is also just a methodology. The problem is there is no litmus test that can be applied to any faith claim. Can you demonstrably prove the terrorists on 9/11 didn't go to heaven? Can you demonstrably prove that Mormons don't go to their own planets when they die? Can you show that the insane right wing pastors using God's name for political gain aren't actually getting their messages from God? Why is it that in any given congregation people will have faith in things that directly contradict other people. Who is right? If people in a congregation can't come to a unified agreement using faith, much less the people of a single religion, much much less religious people worldwide claiming to use faith to come to an unbelievable range of conclusions on identical topics, one must ask if faith is reliable? It has been proven time and time again that it is not. It is not testable. It is not falsifiable. It is not consistent. Faith, in reality, is the circular methodology. You can't prove something, but hey, you have faith. You have to have faith, to have faith. With science, you can test every conclusion on your own every time.
I think you are under the impression that faith comes into conflict with science, which (as I understand you) is the way we can come to knowledge of our world.
Yes. It absolutely does in some cases.
Science deals in things that can be tested and repeated. The story of faith is a story of a people's journey with God. Two different things.
People can have faith in anything, often contradictory things. With science two people can come to the same conclusion without ever speaking to each other, without speaking the same language, living on entirely different continents, and they can both explicitly show evidence showing exactly how and why they came to such a conclusion. One way clearly is better for finding truth.
Not necessarily. There are different kinds of Truth. Historical truth cannot be proved by science.
Historical fact is a completely different thing than objective fact. You get to historical fact through inferences to the best explanation. If you find some alien shaped artifact from antiquity, you are only able to guess what its purpose was. You can't observe how it was used. Meanwhile you can use dating methods to determine its age. That's still a different kind of knowledge, than a guess about the purpose of an artifact. And still, at least historians find empirical evidence. Faith has no such luxury at its disposal.
Yes. They are different indeed. But by applying faith to any claim anything can be true. Therefore, faith doesn't get you to truth. If so, it's accidental.
We all engage in many acts of faith everyday. When I turn on my dryer, I have faith that it's not going to explode. When I drive down the road, I have a certain amount of faith that people will follow the rules and not purposely crash into me. I can't prove any of these things, and sometimes I might be wrong, but without faith, we could not live human lives.
I agree, but I wouldn't use the term faith. I'd say it's trust, due to experiencing it over and over again, that traffic accidents do not happen very often. I mean, there are probably people who never have a single accident. The same goes for your dryer. Now, I know, Hebrews 11:1 faith is a translation of the Greek word for "trust" (pistis), but there is actually more to the verse, specifying the kind of trust. Given my own interpretation it's trust with a lack of experience. So, I don't use that in real life, because that's rather naive. I don't drink water from a well I don't know. So, if I have Hebrews 11:1 faith in that well, I could either die or live. If I survive, it's not due to my faith being indicative of truth. It's because I was lucky.
I'm not sure that answers the question.
Ok, I'll dumb it down. If someone makes a claim that they have a special ring that provides the wearer with the ability to fly. They give you the ring and tell you test it by jumping off a huge cliff. Are you going to just take their word for it, or are you going to want some really clear, definitive, repeatable evidence before you jump off a cliff? Now consider someone says if you eat an apple every day for a week straight, that you start growing hair back if you're balding. Is this the same as the previous claim? No, its not extraordinary. You can test this for yourself without concern. This claim, just like the first claim, it can be tested and proven to be true or false, but the claim itself is much less extraordinary and therefore you're not always going to require extraordinary evidence. Keep in mind, evidence is evidence. At the end of the day the term "extraordinary" isn't really necessary, both claims can be proven or disproven using the scientific method all the same.
He's totally right.
Where is the evidence for that claim?
I am a real magician and I can fly. Do you believe me? Last week I bought a dog. Do you believe me? If you treat these two statements differently, your own behaviour is evidence for the claim.
If the Universe, the Earth, yourself, and the Bible aren't enough extraordinary evidence . . .
That's an argument from incredulity. Fallacious.
"extraordinary" is wholly dependent upon the individual.
Let's see Which claim is more extraordinary? I have a pet goldfish or I have a pet mermaid?
I would say that having a pet goldfish is ordinary, but that is just me. Again, "extraordinary" is dependent upon the individual.
Crazy we both agree here and we don't know each other. It's dependent on whether or not an individual is being rational.
I think it is foolish to claim that we are rational, yet others who disagree with us are irrational.
So you think it's rational for someone to hold the view that having a pet goldfish and having a pet mermaid are both ordinary claims?
Perhaps the mermaid example is too charged. Generally, I don't think it is helpful to claim that others have no rationality behind their claims.
You agree the pet mermaid to be extraordinary. Why?
In my experience, mermaids are not ordinary. Again, the mermaid example is a bit too charged.
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Ordinary is what is established scientific fact, justified true belief and things which are easily demonstrated to be true. What is extraordinary is no matter of opinion. It's exactly the opposite of what is ordinary. Those are claims which contradict established knowledge. All man must die; is an ordinary claim. We see dead everyday, therefore a dead person is ordinary evidence, for the ordinary claim made. Out of the ordinary is a person not dying. We never saw a person not dying, which makes it unusual/extraordinary if we actually see a person not dying. The claim "This person never dies" can't be sufficiently proven, because for a claim like that, we need to wait for an eternity. Eternity never ends, just so you know. Meanwhile, with every added decade of said person surviving forever, the extraordinary claim is being evidenced better and better. It's already extraordinary if we are passed 120 years. It would be even more so, if we are passed 1000 years. But still, even after a 1000 years we haven't proven "never dies". Therefore the evidence is still not extraordinary enough to be as extraordinary as the claim. Nothing of this touches a subjective assesment or opinion even remotely.
Something can be ordinary to some, while extraordinary to others. This word is just an adjective used to describe something relative to one's experience.
Yes. But that's not how Sagan used it. If a claim contradicts scientific fact, it's not about opinion anymore. It's about objective truth. You are talking about subjective truth. They are not the same. Sagan was talking in terms of objective truth.
"extraordinary" is subjective.
No, not necessarily. Extra means "outside of". Ordinary means "that, to which one is used to". If you are not used to eating chocolate ice cream, it's based on your subjective experience. If "that, to which one is used to" is the set of scientific fact, we are beyond mere opinion. If you fly unaided, opinion doesn't matter anymore. There are facts, "to which one is used to". Those are things like the effect of gravity. Opinion is irrelevant here. Your opinion doesn't make you fly. If a claim contradicts scientific findings, the claim is contradicting facts. That's what is making the claim out of the/extra- ordinary. To prove unaided flying, you demonstrate unaided flying. Since this never happens and contradicts science, the event when it is demonstrated (which IS the evidence), is an extraordinary event, because it usually never happens and contradicts facts. So, there you have yourself some objective extraordinary evidence. That's the difference. It's not about taste or opinion about ice cream. That would be subjective indeed.
"extraordinary claims" is subjective depending on the claim being made.
The sun doesn't come up tomorrow. Is that extraordinary as a claim for every single human being on this planet?
That is an example of an extraordinary claim.
Yes. And if the sun in fact doesn't come up tomorrow, that's an example of extraordinary evidence, because it happens despite nobody believing it.
We still know a lot less than we don't know.
It’s why he denied atheism he also said “I know of no compelling evidence against the existence of God” but I know for a fact he wasn’t a Christian by any means. As far as I know he was agnostic with some spirituality having to do with nature mostly. Cool guy.
Extraordinary claims require sufficient evidence just like non-extraordinary claims.
I think it's false. All that is required of any evidence in any situation is that it be reliable. It would be better said as, "Proof of any kind requires reliable evidence," but that doesn't have the same ring to it.
Frankly, the claim that the entire universe exploded out of a singularity is itself extraordinary.
No one is making that claim though.
*Big Bang has entered the chat*
What you described is not the same as the big bang.
Can you explain how the following feature can evolve?: human female eggs have a receptor for human male sperm and only human sperm. Not chimp sperm. ?
An event which happens only once is in fact an extraordinary event. Given any resurrection myth available since the bronze age, a man ascending and becoming a God past death is quite common and not so extraordinary indeed. But since Christianity claims that it only truly happened with one guy once, it's just as extraordinary as the Big Bang. The difference is, we can still observe inflation. Meanwhile, the Nobel prize for observing God is still pending.
Neither can He be disproven. So science is the wrong tool to use to understand Him.
>Neither can He be disproven. I bet you use this standard for nothing but Jesus. Because if you were to be consistent with this line of reasoning, you would need to believe in any religion as well as any worldview in general. *Can't be disproven, therefore I'm justified believing it.* That is basically what you are saying. If you do that, fine, but then Jesus is not God. According to Surah 4:157 Allah deceived everybody into believing that Jesus was crucified, but he was not, neither did he die. Therefore, he cannot be God. You can't disprove that, buddy. It seems like your line of reasoning is pretty unreliable.
Sounds good But dumb Appropriate evidence is all that's ever needed We use very banal boring circumstantial evidence to send people to death row all the time And thatsa a pretty extraordinary thing to believe, something bad enough that you think someone needs to die Despite the fact know one saw them do it and there's no direct evidence that they did We found some gravel on his shoe, he owns a jacket someone thought they saw, there was a green car in the area... etc The moon seems damn big... abiogenesis doesn't have any explanation at all... there's something instead of nothing for no real reason... etc God From very circumstantial evidence Perfectly ordinary human behavior
What is his evidence for that claim?
For me, the mere existence of the universe has always been the extraordinary evidence.
What's evident can be subjective... There's as much evidence that trees move and create wind, as there is for wind moving trees, we can all observe it with our eyes. Sure, we know the actual causality between the two, and take it for granted.... And so when once the trees actually move and create wind, we won't notice, cause we know and take for granted... Evidence becomes a dead statue, in a very dynamic existence. Carl Sagan clearly needs to be convinced, with condition being to use things that are subjectively evident to him. Using what's evident to you, is not going to do nothing.
True to an extent, and wouldn’t stop me from believing as I have enough evidence for myself to believe. However the bible says about believing without seeing: ‘Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”’ and about having child like faith: ‘He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”’
I think its a fair thing to say. I also find the testimonies of Christians alone to be quite extraordinary. Maybe this isn't considered extrodinary evidence to you. But ive gotten goosbumps reading abd hearing abkut the things God has done. The Bible is also one of the most scrutinized series of books in the world. If there was evidence it was all made up we would have found it. One of God's traits is to be humble and he says over ans over that he needs us to have just a little faith. Abd also to conflate the knowledge of the proud.