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warpspeedpetey
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I just don’t know how he is intending the word in that post. That said, The nature of a claim gives zero information about its veracity or probability.
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warpspeedpetey
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What does the frequency of the evidence have to do with the veracity of the claim?
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warpspeedpetey
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That would be evidence to the contrary of a claim, in this case evolution. We are talking about evidence in favor of a claim…
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kaid100
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Well, if instead of selecting part of my post and replacing the rest with ellipses you had quoted the whole thing, you would have seen that I did give an example of evidence in favor of a claim.
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kaid100
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James Randi doesn’t dismiss things out of hand, instead he investigates and puts the claims to the test. He agrees an experiment with the claimants that would prove the claim and then performs it. So far, no claim with a supernatural explanation has been proven in one of his experiments, but many have been tested. Of course, if something supernatural actually happened we would no longer consider it supernatural, we would consider it natural.I have a question related to this-----
What happens when there is “adequate” extraordinay evidence but certain professional skeptics and debunkers reject it out of hand simply because it does not stand to THEIR self-appointed standards of “proof?”
James Randi and the former CSICOP (now CSI----) come to mind. You can come at them with whatever proof----even if it stands up to other scientific standards of proof by independent, respected researchers----and it is still not enough for them. It is not good for them either that most of them are raving atheists.
If it matters, I dislike the above-mentioned intensely. Particulalrly Randi.
May God forgive me for that.
NOT saying everything they investigate is for real-------just that they seem to come with a preconceived “Bias” that presupposes anything that they do investigate is a fraud----and their findings are labeled accordingly no matter what.
Just throwing that out.
Back to your regualrly schedulae programming.
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warpspeedpetey
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OK, what are you referring to as an example of evidence in favor of a claim? Can you bold the part you are talking about?
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kaid100
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Well I thought it was self-explanatory, but if someone wanted to make the Extraordinary Claim they were carrying a potential Virgin Birth, the bolded text above describes what might constitute the Extraordinary Evidence.
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honestquestions
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I thought the lottery was a pretty poor example. Of course, if 100,000 powerball tickets are sold daily, you would expect that you would get a winning match within a week or two. With 100 billion deaths, how many are expected to come back alive after three days?
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warpspeedpetey
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Oh…I see what you mean.
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AntiTheist
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Possessing a one-in-a-million winning lottery ticket is pretty extraordinary evidence. It sufficiently supports the extraordinary claim, “I just won the one-in-a-million lottery.”
“Extraordinary” is a desgination of what the speaker considers – as the word implies – “out of the ordinary.” It simply means that if I hear a claim that sounds to me as if it’s outside of my everyday, ordinary understanding of the way the world works, then I’m going to need evidence that confirms it before I accept it. I won’t just accept it or grant it like I would would ordinary claims.
If you told me, “I own a cat,” I would probably accept it just on your say so because in that situation, it’s a completely normal and ordinary claim and it doesn’t really matter much to me at all if you’re lying about it. If, however, you told me, “I own a cat that can transform into a dragon when I play Yankee Doodle on the bagpipes,” I wouldn’t accept that claim until you show me.
That someone else might be enough of a doofus not to think that the latter claim is “extraordinary” has nothing to do with the fact that I think it’s extraordinary and I won’t be believing you until you demonstrate it to me.
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danserr
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Ah, but this was Hume’s thought and was easily disproved by the idea that if it were true, then we should require extrodinary evidence to believe anything not in our experience, which is obviously absurd. A man who always lived in a hot climate, for example, could never believe that a cold climate existed, unless he had extraordinary evidence for it.
If this interests you, I’ll start a thread on evidence for the Ress. next weekend (can’t follow threads as much during the week), but no, 3 three points are not in doubt. Habermas found that 75% off scholars admit the empty tomb, while even the skeptic Luddeman admits the post-mortem appearances; he just tries to explain them away as the result of hallucination (you must distinguish between the fact and the best explanation of the fact).
But humor me and for the sake of argument, discuss this from the point of view of if those facts are true, then we are justified in believing the Resurrection on the basis of the evidence and to claim “extorodinary events req. extrordinary evidence” fails for the reasons I give above. Namely, you need not only establish the probability of the event, but the probability that the evidence would be what it is if the event did not occurr.
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danserr
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You still miss the point of the argument, as is nearly every skeptic posting so far. The point is, if you watch the video and read my initial post, is that it is not enough to claim that the Resurrection is extraordinarily improbable. You must also consider the probability that the evidence (empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, origin of Christian belief) would be what it is, if the event/resurrection did not occur.
As for the Ress. contravening laws of nature and being disproven by science, this is utter nonsense, since the claim is not that Jesus rose naturally from the dead, but that God raised Jesus from the dead. At most science could show that dead bodies don’t naturally rise, which is fine with me. But this does not proclude God raising Jesus from the dead.
It not being documented as happening any other time is irrelevant, otherwise you would require extraordinary evidence to believe anything that happened only once so far (Such as me winning the lottery).
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danserr
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This is a sensible reply, but mistaken, because we are discussing the specific principle “do extraordinarily improbable events require extraordinary evidence.” My point is not in this thread to argue for the Resurrection, I only gave that as an example (but think I will start a thread on it next weekend, so stay-tuned). The lottery example suffices to disprove the claim because it remains true, even if the lottery is chosen every day (and what if it were not?) the number selected 10, 12, 35, 22, 45, 33 would be an extraordinary event, yet I do not require extraordinary evidence to believe it. Yet I do believe it because I also know that it is highly unlikely that number would be reported as the winning number unless it actually were the winning number.
ps. I would expect to get a match after a week or two? Maybe you were exaggerating, but you know that people have gone broke on this idea, thinking they were “due.” I think it’s called the “gambler’s fallacy.”
But then you believe that the lottery number called really was the winning number, even though the evidence is not particularly extraordinary. I mean, a news report hardly counts as extraordinary evidence.
But this is perfectly reasonable of you. I am not saying that one should accept a claim without evidence, I am that the claim that one should not believe an extraordinarily improbable event without extraordinary evidence is flawed. This is because in addition to considering the probability of the claim, you must also consider the probability that the evidence (whether extraordinary or not) would be what it is if the event did not occurr.
A general comment: Be careful, some people on this thread are equivocating over use of the word “extraordinary.” Skeptics typically use it to mean extraordinarily improbable, but some people are switching and using it to mean "amazing
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honestquestions
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Correct, he couldn’t make the claim until he had reason to do so, but that reason isn’t limited to just his experience, but the properly documented experience of mankind (I’m not talking about only anecdotes), because we are only as progressed as we are because of our collective nature. We cannot all be oceanographers but that doesn’t mean that I would dismiss their claims of the depths and marine life on the deep ocean floor - they can present empirical evidence based on an “objectionable” method that I would also agree to. This is an easy jab for you because we know that a cold climate does exist. Your idea of god could also be true, but it’s not reasonable to believe so at this time. Though I will wait for your resurrection evidence, I have a feeling it will follow along the lines of what Lee Strobel presented…
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danserr
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But I am not suggesting the man in the hot climate should believe in the cold climate without evidence; I am suggesting that he does not require extraordinary evidence to do so. You seem to agree with your example of the oceanographer. We believe the word of reliable people without extraordinary evidence, even if the event is extraordinarily improbable or out of our present experience.
I guess there is enough interest to talk about the resurrection. I’ll post a thread on it next weekend. I can’t follow threads too closely during the week. This seems like a good discussion to have first though. I haven’t read Strobel, I largely follow NT Wright and William Lane Craig, though I understand Strobel popularizes their and others’ work.
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honestquestions
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That’s because they air it every Saturday, so it’s not extraordinary to have six numbers being shown on tv lol. It would be extraordinary to you from your perception if you matched them all correctly, because you were one of millions of others playing the game, and only you got lucky. At the very same time, it would not be extraordinary to outsiders because out of hundreds of thousands of tickets, it’s highly expected that no matter what six numbers come up, there is a decent chance that one of the tickets will match - and no matter who won, it was expected that someone might. Back to your perception - your extraordinary evidence would be your documented paper that does indeed list the correct six numbers with a date and time stamp and probably video surveillance of you filling it out, and date and time stamps of all of the other hundreds of thousands of sequences that did not match.
Correct, there is some good documented evidence that the losers actually did lose money while the winners actually did get a check. Not too extraordinary huh?
No lol, see again this proves my point that you think it’s extraordinary because it’s from your subjective view of winning. In terms of the entire powerball game for example, they could receive a few hundred thousand number combination entries for each drawing, so it is very likely and not extraordinary that one of the combinations will be a match. From your perspective, buying one ticket only for each drawing would make it highly unlikely that you get a match.
I agree that having a lottery number called on tv to millions of people every weekend is not extraordinary - it happens every few days.
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honestquestions
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In the way that you asked that question where if something is simply unknown (and the details of the claim also do not directly interfere with any aspect of what we do already know such as interfering with physics, etc), you are correct, the man should simply ask for evidence if someone claimed to him there was a cold climate.
This is a good attempt to make the point you are trying to make, but this is why it fails:
Claiming resurrection of life after being dead for three days does directly clash with what is known to be true throughout all of recorded history.
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danserr
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But I don’t require such evidence to believe that that number was really the number drawn. (And at any rate, I am not sure that the evidence you present as extraordinary really is extraordinary. A lottery ticket doesn’t seem like extraordinary evidence.) The issue is that the number called on the evening news was extraordinarily improbable. Yet, I believe it, not because I have extraordinary evidence for it, but because I know that it is very improbable that that number would be reported as on the evening news as the winning number, if it were not actually the winning number.
The point is that you cannot proportion your belief in terms of the probability of the evidence. Why? Because that number being called is incredibly improbable; now, even if the news media is 99.99%% reliable, this probability is still dwarfed by the extraordinary improbability that that number should be called. So, if I am to proportion my belief according to the probabilities of the number itself being called and the probability of the trustworthiness of the witnesses or evidence, then nothing should be able to convince me that that number was the correct one. Which is clearly ridiculous.
I see your point, but this is actually what I have complained about a couple times on this thread, people equivocating over the meaning of the word “extraordinary.” By “extraordinary” I mean it as it is generally used by proponents of “ext events req. ext. evidence” like Hume, Ehrman, and others, namely “extraordinarily improbable.” Don’t think I am trying to do more than I am. I’m just saying (as above) that it is very problematic to proportion one’s belief based on the probability of the event and the probability of the evidence.
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danserr
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Good response, but I think my point still works.
But consider that man in the hot climate who was told by travelers that water can exist in a solid state. For the entire history that he knew of, this is demonstrably false. It contradicts all his past experience and was in direct clash with everything he knew. So by the principle of “extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence,” he would have to disbelieve the travelers, even if they were reliable, informed people, unless he had extraordinary evidence. But this seems unreasonable.
Testimony to an event cannot be refuted by prior experiences, or else we could never believe anything outside of our present experience.
And how can we call the Resurrection contrary to our experience? Less said that miracles are different events from experience in general, but not *contradictory *events. For example, the contradiction to “Jesus rose from the dead” is “Jesus did not rise from the dead.” For past experience to contradict the miracle of the resurrection then “Jesus did not rise” would have to be shown to be true. But"Jesus rose from the dead," is not contradicted by experience in general that dead men do not rise because Christianity agrees with this.
-Similarly, Paley said that an narrative of fact can only be found contradictory to experience “if we, being at the time and place in question, observe that the alleged event did not in fact take place.”
This is essentially the article I am working from if you are curious. It’s a bit long, but an interesting read.
reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5212
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kaid100
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Okay, here is the evidence that would prove that cold climates can exist: Place our hypothetical man in a cold climate. Then he would know that cold climates exist.
Saying that a some skeptics have accepted an event as happening does not constitute evidence that all skeptics should accept it. I hadn’t heard of Habermas or Luddeman, but a Google Search got me to Gerd Luddeman’s website where the first article is “A criticism of my church” (emphasis mine) implying that he’s a Christian who disagrees with some teaching rather than someone who applies skepticism to the whole of Christian teaching. Gary Habermas is apparently a Christian Apologist who discusses the Resurrection, the opposite of a skeptic. Either way, saying that “such-and-such” a person has accepted X does not mean that X is true. Lots of people are Hindus, does that make Hinduism true?
OK, so you are asking me to assume we have evidence that the tomb was found empty and that the apostles saw the risen Jesus. The only reports we have of these are the documents written decades later, plenty of time for a story to grow in the telling especially since the documents were written for the express purpose of gaining adherents, but I’ll move on. An empty tomb could have any number of explanations including graverobbers, acolytes of Jesus rescuing his body to bury him elsewhere, or a rock not placed particularly well and rolling down a slope. A vision of Jesus could be explained by wishful thinking, dreaming or that his followers claimed they saw him in order to gain followers.
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