I Got Your "Extraordinary Evidence" Right Here, Pal!
While listening to the August 12, 2012 podcast of " Stand to Reason " with Greg Koukl, I heard something that I could not only use, but fit in quite will with my intellectual and spiritual development. I was pounding the desk and shouting out, "Yeah!". Then I realized that all my co-workers were staring at me. Then I further realized that my outburst only happened in my mind, so everything was fine. Anyway. Greg was going on about the withered old canard, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (popularized by Carl Sagan, a variation on a quote from Laplace, also a variation on a similar quote from Hume). There was something about that saying that struck me about its wrongness, but I did not know why. All I knew was that it was rubbish. Then Greg pointed out that there is substantial arbitrariness to that remark. The speaker demands that you please him or her with the evidence. You can listen to the part of the show that got me all agitat