Extraordinary Evidence
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Christopher Hitchens asked for extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims of the Bible. The philosopher Hume posed this question in his essay "On Miracles" in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hitchens is very well read so I wouldn't be surprised if he drew this from Hume.
The request actually has an equivocation and can be responded to in two ways. I remembered Dr. Garry DeWeese of Talbot School of Theology answered this in a philosophy class I took from him, so I contacted him to refresh my memory.
"Extraordinary evidence" can be understood in two ways: extraordinary with respect to quality, or quantity.
If the former, then our evidence E is extraordinary, and the obtaining of E itself is an extraordinary event which demands extraordinary evidence, and a vicious regress ensues. But then the condition can never be met, and begs the question against extraordinary events in an unfair manner.
But if the latter, then the question is, how much ordinary evidence is necessary for the total to be considered extraordinary? This is perhaps a sorites problem, where there is no determinate solution (at least epistemically, if not metaphysically determinate).
A second alternative would be to allow that there is some multiple n of the amount of evidence needed for establishing the probability of an ordinary event. But then, the fact that we find n times the ordinary amount of evidence is either a case of evidential over-determination or is itself an extraordinary event.
A third alternative recognizes that very extraordinary events happen all the time, if the co-occurrence of several features in a state of affairs is evaluated probabilistically. (That an American high school kid from Seattle would be at a Halloween party in Tel Aviv and there met an American high school girl from Pensacola and later marry her is highly improbable; in fact, Barb [Mrs. DeWeese] and I might be the only two people in the whole history of the human race who fulfill that description!) So no matter how extraordinary the event, no explanation is needed. (In philosophy of science it has long been recognized that given a relevant law and certain initial conditions gives a high probability to the occurrence of some event is really no explanation; even small probabilities can have explanatory value.)
And I would challenge Hitchens on meeting his own demand because he makes some extraordinary claims of his own.
Non-material properties, such as morality and rationality, which he values, have apparently derived from purely material causes. He's a materialist. He believes something (the physical universe) came from nothing - with no viable scientific explanation. He also believes in evolution, and even committed evolutionists admit to the high odds, the extraordinary nature, of the appearance of biological life. These are extraordinary claims Hitchens himself believes happened I would ask him to offer the extraordinary evidence within his view of reality, materialism and evolution, that can account for them.
I'd say that Christianity has better explanatory resources for his demand than his own view does.
And Amy weighed in on this same challenge at the A-Team blog. Sometimes it becomes evident that there is no evidence, quality or quantity, that can satisfy the challenge because the objection is a guise for a presupposition against such claims.
by Amy @http://ateam.blogware.com
http://ateam.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/6/6/3001363.html
In yesterday's debate, Hitchens brought up an oft-cited argument against Christianity, saying that we would need an extraordinary amount of evidence before we could believe that an event as exceedingly improbable as the resurrection actually occurred.
I did a quick search on the internet and brought up a short debate (only 38 pages) between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman titled Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus? that addresses this very issue.
Craig first presents four uncontested facts and clarifies the issue:
For now, I want to sketch briefly how a historical case for Jesus' resurrection might look. In constructing a case for Jesus' resurrection, it's important to distinguish between the evidence and the best explanation of that evidence. This distinction is important because in this case the evidence is relatively uncontroversial. As we'll see, it's agreed to by most scholars. On the other hand, the explanation of that evidence is controversial. That the resurrection is the best explanation is a matter of controversy. Now although Dr. Ehrman says that there cannot be any historical evidence for the resurrection, we'll see that what he really means is that the resurrection cannot be the best explanation of that evidence, not that there is no evidence. (pp. 3-4, emphasis mine)
Ehrman dismisses the facts presented by Craig as irrelevant since he has already ruled out the possibility of interpreting them as describing a miracle:
[M]iracles are so highly improbable that they're the least possible occurrence in any given instance.... I wish we could establish miracles, but we can't. It's no one's fault. It's simply that the cannons of historical research do not allow for the possibility of establishing as probable the least probable of all occurrences. For that reason, Bill's four pieces of evidence are completely irrelevant. There cannot be historical probability for an event that defies probability, even if the event did happen. (p. 12)
Therefore, in this debate, Ehrman's position that there is no historical evidence for the resurrection is based on a philosophical objection, not on a lack of available facts.
Since the objection prevents Ehrman (and many people) from ever considering the actual evidence, Craig then confronts the charge that a miracle, by definition, will always defy probability despite any and all evidence. He argues that we must take into account not only the intrinsic probability of the resurrection in light of our general knowledge about the natural world, but also in light of the specific evidence for the resurrection (I would argue that this should also include our evidence for the existence of God as well as any other background factors that make the resurrection more probable). One also has to place the explanatory power of the counter-hypothesis that there was no resurrection into the equation. He then proceeds to give a mathematical formula that will statistically account for all these factors, explaining where Ehrman's mistake lies:
Specifically, Dr. Ehrman just ignores the crucial factors of the probability of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection.... If these are sufficiently low, they outbalance any intrinsic improbability of the resurrection hypothesis." (p. 16)
I won't recreate the formula here since it would probably cause many of us to run screaming from our computers. But if you're mathematically or statistically minded, take a look. I heard Richard Swinburne speak about this formula once, and he came up with a probability of .97 for the resurrection (Craig notes this in the Q&A section at the end of the debate).
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