'Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence' | Trent Horn | Catholic Answers Live

Atheists sometimes dispute miracles, the Resurrection of Jesus, and even the existence of God on the grounds that these "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." But do they understand the implications and assumptions of this catchphrase? Trent Horn gives his thoughts on Catholic Answers Live.

After his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn earned master’s degrees in the fields of theology, philosophy, and bioethics. He serves as a staff apologist for Catholic Answers, where he specializes in teaching Catholics to graciously and persuasively engage those who disagree with them.

Trent models that approach each week on the radio program Catholic Answers Live and on his own podcast, The Counsel of Trent. He has also been invited to debate at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and Stanford University.

Trent is an adjunct professor of apologetics at Holy Apostles College, has written for The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, and is the author of nine books, including Answering Atheism, The Case for Catholicism, and Why We’re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love.

"Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence"

[Super-chad]

This guy makes you question the laws of logic from different dimensions....He is an avid and critical thinker

[glof]

"Extraordinary" in this context usually has a solely emotional connotation.

I also find atheists generally misunderstand the nature of evidence as such.

[Kleezeno]

I recall Matt Dillihunty saying that "claims do not count as historical accounts, " He is wrong about this of course. Testimony of witnesses is always used in court and at other kinds of inquiries and judicial hearings.

[mlkbnz]

"Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence" is just an intellectual swindle. If there's some phenomenon you don't wish to accept, all you have to do is label it "extraordinary". Then, when evidence _is_ presented in support of the phenomenon, you can reject it because it isn't "extraordinary enough". No matter how much evidence in support of the phenomenon is presented or how high the quality, you can simply keep rejecting it as insufficiently "extraordinary", until the defender realizes he's stepped into an impossible situation and gives up. So, it's a technique for "winning" arguments, but it's useless in actually finding out what's true and what isn't. When put in this position, the defender's best move is not to play that game.

[GreyRock]

"You can't prove miracles don't happen"

🥱

[bngr_bngr]

What evidence do we have in the New Testament of the Trinity?

[Anastaecia]

Pretty simple concept. If I claim I have a dog, that's pretty normal, you prob don't need proof. If I say I have a komodo dragon...a little more unlikely, but you'd prob want to see it to believe me. If I said I have a real dragon. You wouldn't believe me without being shown.

Why is this so hard?

[NoahWillCrow]

This felt like a straw man argument. Another definition of "extraordinary" could have been "without understood possible cause." The Wrights flying a plane? Yeah, I'd need either incredible evidence (e.g. see it for myself) or an explanation of cause (e.g. be taught the principles behind the aerodynamics). The elephant march? Cause is somebody had an army of trained elephants, nothing difficult to understand there. A crucified person resurrecting days after death? That's a tough one to explain, I think it is reasonable to need some incredibly strong, out-of-the-ordinary evidence for that.

[afabout]

*BOOM* GREAT EXPLANATION ABOUT HOW EXTRAORDINARY TO AN ATHEIST MAY BE JUST AN AVERAGE EVENT FOR A TRUE BELIEVER!
simple as that.

[stephenmerritt]

Atheists replace the notion of God with 'random'. The lack of discernment with regard to evidence is the real culprit. There are no such things as random, random causality, or random processes. Nevertheless, 'random' is the foundation of the modern scientific paradigm.

[LuzMaria]

EDIT: I stick with what I said and I’m not answering any comments. My faith and my religion (Catholic) will NOT be shaken or changed.

(Haven’t watched the whole video yet) Miracles are real and do happen. It’s best not to try to explain them with science. It’s a faith thing. 🙏🏽

[R_o_o_k_i_n_g_t_o_n]

I find it telling the first thing you recommend is basically to try to shift the burden of proof and well I will admit extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is a poorly phrased version of that even if it is the original we might have heard far better ways of explaining it although to be fair to Carl Sagan who I think was the originator of it anyways was he was kind of just saying a quick little thing if I'm not mistaken as like a documentary

[kristincalvarese]

So is the satanist going to die and rapture out a soul alive and just live on earth?