Theists are wrong to criticize the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Extraordinary claim = a claim with a very low probability of being true on background information alone Extraordinary evidence = evidence which raises the probability of an extraordinary claim being true so much that it actually becomes probable As such, it seems blatantly obvious that one does need extraordinary evidence to be justified in believing an extraordinary claim. Theists will often bring up the lottery as a defeater of this principle. Supposedly, we do not require extraordinary evidence to be justified in believing that a specific person (not just someone, somewhere - one person in particular) won the lottery, as the likelihood any one person will win the lottery is so low that there exists no evidence strong enough to qualify as extraordinary in that context. This is false; in the case of the lottery, possession of the winning ticket qualifies as extraordinary evidence, as it raises the probability of the extraordinary claim I won the lottery. being true so much that it actually becomes probable. Frankly, I believe theists who criticize this principle do so as a result of a failure to understand it - they take extraordinary evidence to mean evidence of some overwhelmingly compelling variety, which we never actually encounter, and then reject the principle on that basis. (Thanks to Avi Bitterman for posting about this on this page several months ago.)
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 20:12:23 +0000