Extraordinary Claims
Let’s take a break from our broccoli scriptures for a moment and go back to regular apologetics. I want to pick on another silly Meta-debate that occurs regularly in circles where people attempt to speak rationally about Jesus. The claim that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
This idea came from Carl Sagan who, I have to say I am an enormous fan of. He is a brilliant man and a passionate and patient teacher of science, so much so that I am willing to completely and totally ignore the fact that he sounds like Kermit the Frog.
His series Cosmos dropped this line, along with other all time showstoppers like “We are made of star stuff” and “If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe”
And like most of the things he says, he is right. Extraordinary do indeed require extraordinary evidence. Specifically, the context in which he spoke about this was with regard to tales of alien encounters. Certainly an interesting claim, and one which would be very significant if true, but with what evidence?
Sagan of course is no friend of religion. (a point of some irony considering his famous series is taken from a common biblical word meaning an ordered and structured world. So it’s hard to accuse his quote from being taken out of context when it is applied to God…. But it totally is.
I mean listen. I haven’t read every Sagan book or watched every Sagan interview, and maybe he did attempt to apply the so called “Sagan Standard” to the question of God personally. I have seen him do similarly irrational things when the topic turned to religion. But to do so would be to cheapen the actual meaning of the phrase enormously.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is the lesson of a spectacular teacher exploring his students to think! and to never stop thinking. It is the word of a man fascinated by UFOs but disciplined enough in his thinking to model for us an approach to that idea which asks more, and searches more.
When it is used in Christian contexts it is used to shut down conversation.
To end thinking.
To insist that the reality I prefer (that God would not exist) is the true and final reality unless you my rhetorical opponent can provide evidence which I consider “extraordinary” because that is what I have decided that your claim is. It’s intellectual laziness, is what it is.
Sagan investigated UFOs he investigated horoscopes, he was familiar with all the evidence that was presented, and he rightfully, sadly, found it lacking. He didn’t conclude that aliens do not exist or that they have not visited. Quite the opposite, he remained “agnostic” on the subject, but fairly weighed the evidence before him and found it light.
So few of us do the same thing for our metaphysical assumptions. So few of us take time to regard and to analyze the cosmological, axiological, historical and philosophical arguments for theism and it’s related ideas.
To illustrate this. Consider the opposite claim. Setting aside any unjustified gag reflexes you hay have taught yourself regarding the burden of proof consider the claim (and yes, is it a claim) that every religion of the world is essentially wrong. That the supernatural itself, does not exist. That there is no mountain all faiths are climbing differently, nor is there one that is climbing the right mountain, but that mountains do not exist.
That’s pretty extraordinary.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Actually i think the claims that atheism makes are really advanced in terms of anthropology and culture in a lot of interesting ways. But it runs counter to everything everyone has believed for pretty well always. So where is the extraordinary evidence of that wonderful idea?
I
That’s a shame
Because a really good teacher taught us an important phrase about a standard of thinking, which reminds us all to be disciplined in not jumping to easy assumptions or preferred answers, and instead to keep on thinking and streaking and looking for answers to difficult questions and I think it deserves more respect than that. Because it’s true.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”