Pints With Aquinas - Do You Need Extraordinary Evidence to Believe in the Resurrection?

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Starting point is 00:00:30 your impact today. During the era of the new atheism, one phrase occurred so often, it began to sound like a new law of logic as certain as the law of non-contradiction of the law of the excluded middle, namely, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I can recall watching more than one atheist-theist debate on YouTube where that line, I mean, it landed like a mic-drop moment. The audience cheered, the atheist looked smugged, and the Christian suddenly appeared unsure of himself. Now, I would say on the surface, the line sounds clever, it sounds principled, it sounds like it couldn't possibly be disputed. So, in this video, I'm going to do just that, I'm going to dispute it. I want to slow things down and take a closer look at this popular, somewhat new notion.

Starting point is 00:01:22 Doing so will show that despite its dogmatic appearance, the dictum is far less decisive than it first appears. All right, so for one thing, the statement hinges on the word extraordinary. If the idea was simply that claims require evidence, there would be nothing especially controversial about it. That's a basic principle of rational inquiry. We don't accept claims arbitrarily, we ask for reasons. In fact, stripped of the word extraordinary, the slogan falls back into something nearly

Starting point is 00:01:59 everyone already agrees with. I think this is precisely why it sounds so reasonable at first glance. But once the word extraordinary is introduced, the statement changes. The issue is no longer simply whether evidence is required, but whether certain claims demand a categorically different or heightened kind of evidence. At this point, the phrase relies on an ambiguity that often goes unnoticed, namely that the word extraordinary applies differently to claims or events than to the evidence supporting them. To understand this, we need to ask what the word extraordinary means. It seems to me

Starting point is 00:02:39 that it has at least two different senses, a descriptive sense and a psychological sense. Now, in the descriptive sense, extraordinary simply means outside the ordinary. It refers to things that unusual because they're not part of our everyday experience. Use this way, the word tells us something objective about the event or claim itself, not about how anyone happens to feel about it when they hear it. In the psychological sense, however, extraordinary means something different. It means something like startling, overwhelming or awe-inspiring. Here the word no longer describes how rare an event is, but rather how it affects the person

Starting point is 00:03:18 considering it. Use this way, the standard of evidence begins to track subjective reactions rather than the objective features of the claim. Now, here's the key. When I hear this slogan used by atheists, I take extraordinary in the descriptive sense. The claim is called extraordinary because it involves something rare or outside the ordinary course of events. But the second use of extraordinary, the psychological sense, functions in a different way because it's applied to the evidence. What's being demanded is not merely proof that a rare event occurred, but proof that is itself striking or overwhelming. If I were to translate this slogan into simple terms, it would come out something like this. Rare events require evidence that is remarkable or psychologically

Starting point is 00:04:09 compelling. But this notion is far from obvious. In essence, it shifts the discussion from what the evidence shows to how impressed someone happens to be by it. Now once I noticed this sleight of hand with the word extraordinary, the slogan lost much of its apparent force for me. If extraordinary is taken in the first sense, then the demand for evidence is perfectly reasonable. Rare events require evidence that they occurred. If it's taken in the second sense, however, the standard of evidence becomes dependent on how impressed someone happens to be, which actually tells us very little. little about what's true. Now, of course, someone might respond that what is really meant by the

Starting point is 00:04:52 slogan is a Bayesian principle. Propositions with very low prior probabilities require strong confirming evidence before they become rationally acceptable. It's like, fair enough. But low relative to what? Relative to atheism? Sure, okay, relative to atheism, a resurrection will look, I grant you wildly improbable. Relative to theism, however, and especially within the concrete historical context of Jesus' life, teachings and reported signs, it doesn't look unlikely at all. If one is even moderately open to theism, then Jesus' predictions of his own death and resurrection becomes a claim to be weighed on historical grounds rather than dismissed in advance as virtually impossible.

Starting point is 00:05:41 And this helps clarify the larger issue. In every domain of inquiry, what ultimately matters is whether the available evidence sufficiently supports the claim in question. Modern science, for example, is perfectly comfortable affirming rare or even unique events in the history of the universe. Think of the Big Bang, it's an obvious example. As far as we can tell, it happened once. In that sense, it's certainly extraordinary. But notice what kind of evidence scientists actually require. They don't demand. evidence that is emotionally overwhelming or psychologically stunning. They demand evidence that the event happened. From a scientific point of view, that's enough. No one thinks

Starting point is 00:06:25 the Big Bang needs to feel awe-inspiring in order to be rationally affirmed. It needs to be supported by the best available evidence. And once that evidence is in place, belief is warranted whether or not it produces a sense of amazement. The same point applies more generally. If an event is rare, then what we need is evidence that the rare event occurred. If extraordinary is taken in the psychological sense, then the evidential bar shifts. What is now being required is not simply evidence, but evidence that overwhelms a particular person or audience. At that point, the question is no longer really about truth.

Starting point is 00:07:03 It's about persuasion. And while emotionally overwhelming evidence might convince someone, its absence tells us very little about what an objective, dispassionate observer ought to conclude. So, what does all of this mean when it comes to Christianity? Well, take the resurrection of Jesus. Christians freely admit that this is an extraordinary event in the descriptive sense. That is to say, it's outside the ordinary course of human affairs. Dead men don't usually come back to life.

Starting point is 00:07:33 That much is obvious. The question then is not whether the resurrection is unusual, but what kind of evidence would warrant belief that it occurred? And here, Christianity has never lacked an answer. The case rests on familiar historical considerations. Early eyewitness testimony. The willingness of those witnesses to suffer and even die for their claims. The empty tomb.

Starting point is 00:07:56 The failure of alternative explanations and the explosive growth of the early Christian movement centered on the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead. Now, look, none of this guarantees belief. But it does amount to evidence that demands to be taken seriously. And this brings us back to the new atheist slogan. You don't need to find this evidence emotionally riveting in order for it to provide rational warrant. You don't need to feel stunned or awestruck for belief to be reasonable.

Starting point is 00:08:27 What matters is whether the resurrection offers the best explanation of the available evidence. So do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I want to say no, they don't. Rather, they require sufficient evidence, just like every other claim. The slogan suggests that rare events belong to a different epistemic category, but they don't. The standard has always been the same. Is there good reason to think it happened? Once that question is answered, how impressed we feel is beside the point.

Pints With Aquinas - Do You Need Extraordinary Evidence to Believe in the Resurrection?

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