Thursday, December 23, 2010

ECREE.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence or ECREE is nothing but an illogical catch phrase used by skeptics devoid of logic to judge religious claims. What constitutes an extraordinary claim is entirely subjective and relative to the person, for example; a man living his entire life in the amazon jungle might find the entire concept of an airplane to be an extraordinary claim, whereas you or I will find the concept of an airplane to be a mundane claim. Which leads me to my next point, there is no such thing as extraordinary evidence.

Evidence is either personal experience/anecdotal, historical, documentary or scientific. How would you go about providing extraordinary evidence of an airplane to the man living in the amazon? you could provide a picture right? but is a picture extraordinary evidence? yes or no? if yes than you've conceded that pictures are extraordinary evidence and thus you must accept pictures of the supernatural as extraordinary evidence! if not than a picture is documentary evidence and thus does not suffice as extraordinary evidence to back your extraordinary claim that airplanes exist. If you accept them as extraordinary evidence in one case and not the other you're simply picking and choosing based upon your own subjective reasons. What about a video? same thing applies, its either extraordinary evidence or it isn't. How does this relate to supernatural claims?

You might think certain claims from a Christian are extraordinary claims, but to the Christian they might not be, just like how an the guy living in the amazon might find the existence of airplanes an extraordinary planes, but to you they might not be. If it is an extraordinary claim, what constitutes extraordinary evidence? pictures? how many pictures? videos? how many videos? scientific evidence? and does that suffice as extraordinary evidence for an airplane? The point is, an extraordinary claim is entirely dependent upon ones own experience and thus differs in regards to each individual. The second point is, 'extraordinary claims' do not require any more proof than ordinary ones.