DAY 337
CHALLENGE
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Religion makes extraordinary claims, therefore we must have extraordinary evidence for them.”
DEFENSE
This depends on what you mean by “extraordinary.”
In its original sense, extraordinary refers to things outside of or different from the ordinary. It thus refers to anything uncommon. However, the term has acquired an additional sense, according to which extraordinary refers to things that are startling, overwhelming, or awe-inspiring. Used this way, the term becomes subjective, because different people find different things startling, overwhelming, or awe-inspiring. These distinctions must be kept in mind when evaluating the claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
For example, if the statement is taken to mean that religion makes claims about things that are outside of the ordinary then this is true, taking the word “ordinary” to refer to the ordinary course of nature. Religion holds that, in addition to the natural world, there is a supernatural realm that sometimes interacts with it, producing non-ordinary events like miracles. To validate these claims, one would need “extraordinary evidence” in the sense of evidence concerning the extraordinary—i.e., evidence that non-ordinary (uncommon, rare) things have happened.
To give a parallel, modern science holds that there are uncommon or rare events in cosmic history—like the Big Bang, which is a unique event so far as we can presently tell. To validate these claims one needs to produce “extraordinary evidence” in the sense of evidence about the extraordinary or evidence that such events have happened.
From a scientific point of view, however, one would not need to produce subjectively startling, overwhelming, or awe-inspiring evidence to validate the Big Bang—merely evidence that the unique event happened. In the same way, to validate the occurrence of a miracle, such as the Resurrection of Jesus, one would not need to produce subjectively overwhelming evidence, but merely evidence that such a rare or unique event occurred.
On the other hand, if the term “extraordinary” is taken in the subjective sense, then it is true that an extraordinary event (a startling, overwhelming one) could require startling, overwhelming evidence to convince a person it happened. However, this only reveals something about the subjective psychological state of the person considering the claim, not what an objective, dispassionate person would conclude.