Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Carl Sagan popularized the phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE), in his 1979 book “Broca’s Brain” and the Cosmos television mini-series in 1980.  Sagan was drawing on previous use of the concept by Marcello Truzzi in the 1970s, Thomas Jefferson and Pierre-Simon LaPlace in the early 1800s, and ultimately by philosopher David Hume in his 1748 essay “On Miracles”. 

 

“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”
Carl Sagan, 1979

To make sense of the aphorism, we should first ask what qualifies as an extraordinary claim.  There are three classes of extraordinary claims:

• Statistically improbable claims.
• Claims outside the range of prior experience, with unknown probability.
• Claims contrary to the body of established scientific knowledge or preponderance of existing evidence.

Religious ideas are of the third kind, assertions that are contrary to established scientific knowledge.  (I will discuss other kinds of extraordinary claims and evidence in my science blog.)  Religious or spiritual claims are closer to Hume’s original idea about extraordinary claims in 1748 than the other kinds of extraordinary claims.  

                        “What is a miracle?”
                        “A miracle is something that happens contrawise to the will of nature.”
                                            Source is forgotten, likely to be Robert Heinlein or A.C. Clarke

Social scientist Marcello Truzzi, who founded an organization to investigate paranormal claims, coined a similar wording of the ECREE aphorism that Sagan later used.  In 1978, Truzzi wrote, “extraordinariness must be measured against theoretical expectations provided by the general body of scientific knowledge at the time...claims require extraordinary evidence if they entail the falsehood of established scientific results that are themselves extensively tested and well understood.... A black swan is one thing; a swan that visits you from beyond the grave is something else.”

Religious Claims
Let’s try to summarize religious and spiritual claims.  It won’t be easy.  There are about 3000 distinct religions followed by some group of people, now or in the past.  From this variety, it may be difficult to compile a simple list of religious claims, but I will try, using parallel ideas in a number of religions.  

God and Gods, each having many of the following characteristics:
    Non-corporeal, invisible, silent spirits.
    Immortal.
    Capable of magic or miracles.
    Interested in humanity.
    Intervening in human affairs.
    Responsible for creation of the world, or parts thereof.
    Often engaged in conflict with other gods, spirits, or beings.
    Protecting humans from evil spirits, people or natural disasters, often in exchange for worship.
    All-powerful.
    All-knowing.
    All-good. (In some traditions, not all.)
    
Divine Creation of the World
    Creation of the universe or world by gods or other spiritual beings.
    Creation of the living world.
    Distinct creation of people, separately and above the living world, and endowment of people with sentience, knowledge or wisdom.
    Creation of the spiritual realm, of heaven and hell.

Sacred Gifts
    Gifts of knowledge or other gifts to humanity, including positive and negative gifts.

Immortal Souls
    Spiritual, immortal extension of the human self, capable of existing without the body after death.
    Includes self-awareness, memory, will, thoughts and emotions.
    Generally believed to travel to non-material spiritual places after death -- Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Valhalla, Folkvangr, the seven Samaawat, Alma d-Nhura, Deva Loka, Narka Loka, etc.

Human Spirits
    Ghosts existing after life in the physical world (but not necessarily immortal).  May include malevolent spirits.

Divine Superior Beings
    Demi-gods, including Jesus, Maui, and Heracles, and divine relatives, including the Virgin Mary.  Often considered the offspring of god or gods, sometimes through parthenogenesis, sometimes the offspring of humans and gods.  Often believed to have a previous physical life, but currently are non-corporeal spirits.  Prayer for intercession is often directed toward divine superior beings rather than to God.

Spiritual Superior Beings
    Angels, demons, animal or natural spirits with greater magical power than humans or human spirits.
    May include antagonistic spirits such as Satan.

Afterlife Places
    Heaven, limbo and hell.  Places without a physical presence or contact with the physical world, where one can meet people from one's former life.

Miracles
    Extraordinary events, contrary to expected behavior of natural systems, generally for the benefit of people experiencing difficulty.

Divine Causation
    Routine natural events, seasons, tides, eclipses.
    Routine human events, birth, death.
    Movement of heavenly bodies.
    Extraordinary events as reward or punishment (usually punishment), including natural disasters, virgin birth, ascension to heaven.

Natural Spirits
    Attribution of living identity, will or sentience to animals, plants, places and objects; anthropomorphism of nature.  

Sacred Places
    Attribution of sacred living identity to mountains, rivers, and lands.  Sacred objects and places are believed to enable religious miracles.     

Spiritual Inanimate Objects and Places
    Religious icons, relics of saints, churches, temples, springs and objects or places believed to have magical powers or enable miracles.

Reincarnation
    The belief that souls are recycled into new people or animals.  Some religions attribute a “leveling-up” process of attaining higher or lower status according to moral behavior during life.

Divination and Prophecy
    Belief that the future can be determined by religious ritual or by religiously endowed individuals. 

Saints and Spiritual Intermediaries
    Belief that the spirits of sacred humans can intervene and influence God’s actions, or parallel beliefs in non-Christian religions.

Sacred Texts
    Belief that the Bible, Devi Bhagavatam, Quran, Book of Mormon or other sacred texts are divinely inspired, contain divine revelation, are literally true, and have an absolute obligation to be obeyed.
    
Prayer
    The belief that humans can communicate with gods and higher beings, to give thanks and ask for divine help.

Ancestor Worship
    Belief that deceased ancestors actively intervene and protect their descendants.

Human Religious Intermediaries Priests, Pastors, Popes, and Shamen
    Belief that special humans possess magical powers or can intervene to influence divine action.

Divine Humans
    Egyptian, Roman and Japanese societies held that their leaders were gods, or became gods when assuming office as emperor or pharaoh.  Chinese and other cultures believed that their leaders were semi-divine descendants of gods.

Belief in Transcendent Reality, and/or denial of physical reality.
    Belief that physical reality is corrupt and is superseded by a transcendent reality.

Karma
    Belief that good or bad actions have real-world consequences in luck or future events.

Ordinary Scientific Evidence

The scientific method systemized the search for truth and standardized the criteria for truth, beginning in the 17th century.  Scientific evidence involves the following elements.

• Empirical observation.
• Identification of processes and developing hypotheses about processes.
• Experiments designed to fulfill predictions or invalidate the hypotheses.
• Clarity of data from experiment.
• Repeatability.
• Relevance of evidence, often measured by statistical tests.
• Peer review and publication.

In general, religious claims fail most or all of the standards for scientific truth (or as it is otherwise known, truth).  Stories of 14th century BCE conversations with a burning bush or visions by a 15th-century French girl do not qualify as evidence.

 
Moses and the Burning Bush, Holman Bible, 1890

Vision of Joan of Arc (1428), artist and date unknown to me.

With religious claims, there are few repeatable observations with objective observers.  There are no identified processes.  There are no experiments to invalidate the claims.  There is little clarity of the data.  There is often little relevance of the evidence, and little critique of the claims.  We see that religious claims fail to meet standards for ordinary evidence before even considering the need for extraordinary evidence,

Why Are Religious Claims Extraordinary Claims?
Religious claims are extraordinary claims because they violate known scientific knowledge about processes.  The list of religious claims is too long for a complete rebuttal, but fall into four general categories.  First are claims involving spirits, second are claims involving higher classes of beings, third are claims involving miracles and fourth are claims of future knowledge or predestination.

Spirits represent disembodied beings, with self-awareness, memory, will, ability to communicate and other powers.  But scientific knowledge places the seat of sentience in the brain.  Through observation of patients with brain injuries (as described well in the books by Oliver Sachs) we know which parts of the brain enable these aspects of sentience.  We can observe patients in which memory, will and communication are gone, and have established that the brain performs those functions of humanity.  Without a physical brain, spirits cannot have sentience; souls cannot persist after death.  To claim otherwise is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.  

The same reasoning applies to the existence of higher beings, gods, demi-gods, angels and demons that are believed to exist in the spiritual world.  Without a brain, how do they think?  How do they persist as self-aware entities?  To claim that an angel or demon possesses sentience without a brain violates our scientific understanding of sentience.

Religious claims of miracles and magic are also extraordinary claims.  We know how physics, chemistry, and life sciences work.  A miraculous event, by definition, is contrary to the expectations from those natural processes.  As such, every miracle or magical claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Claims of prophecy and predestination violate the scientific understanding of time.  In all well-documented experience, information can not flow backwards through time.  Future events are fundamentally uncertain, despite high precision in prior conditions and known processes.

Extraordinary Evidence
What is extraordinary evidence, as compared to the normal scientific evidence described above?  

I return to David Hume, who first established the ECREE standard in 1748.  “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish”.  

In essence evidence of a miraculous event must be strong enough to invalidate the scientific knowledge precluding that event.  To be considered true, a miracle involving levitation must be supported by evidence sufficient to invalidate our well-established notions about gravity.  To be considered true, the claim of a soul, ghost or spirit must demonstrate disembodied sentience in some unquestionable, observable, repeatable form.  The claim that God exists needs to be demonstrated by apparently unlimited power – perhaps by moving thousands of galaxies overnight to spell out, “I am God” in every language on earth.  Of course, none of those things have ever happened or ever will happen.

Conclusion
Religious claims are extraordinary claims, defying our existing body of scientific knowledge.  Religious claims fail to meet even the lowest standards of scientific evidence, much less the extraordinary evidence required for such claims to be regarded as truth.  
----
Afterword
Non-Religious Paranormal Beliefs
There are also a substantial number of non-religious paranormal beliefs, some of which overlap with religious beliefs.  Some (telekinesis, telepathy, extraterrestrial visitors) do not involve spiritual elements, while others (ghosts) do not involve higher spiritual powers.  These also require extraordinary evidence, but are irrelevant to the discussion of atheism.

Non-Interventionist God
Albert Einstein said, "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”  The Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) framed a special case of the non-interventionist God.  Spinoza held to a physical sense of reality, but viewed all of creation as a sub-set of God.  According to commentator Paul So, Spinoza “rejected the existence of Soul, Angels, Demons, Miracles, Divine Creationism, the possibility of Afterlife, Divine Revelation, validity of Prophecy, Biblical literalism, Tradition, Scriptural authority, and last but not least the existence of a personal God.”

Giordano Bruno in the 16th century rejected many of these same religious claims, while introducing revolutionary speculative cosmological ideas that are today held as true.  He speculated that stars were far-away suns, that planets might orbit those suns, and that intelligent beings might live there.  He also made contributions to the study of memory, mathematics, geometry and language.  Bruno may have been approaching the rationalist’s idea of a non-interventionist God, but was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600.

Giardano Bruno, 1548-1600, portrait from 1830 biography.

Execution of Giardano Bruno, source unknown to me.

Spinoza’s non-interventionist God eliminates most, but not all, of the unsupported religious claims.  Spinoza’s God presumes that God is the creator; that God is reality, and that God is greater than reality.  These claims are also unsupported by evidence. 

Baruch Spinoza, 1632 - 1677.

Spinoza tried to rationalize religion by removing the most fantastic claims, and altering the definition of God to equate God with our observed reality.  But God is unnecessary to explain our observations, and equating God with reality brings no additional understanding.  There’s also no evidence, extraordinary or otherwise, that God is greater than our reality.  The central claim that God exists is completely unsupported.  According to Occam’s razor, the best explanation of our reality is that God does not exist.

Regarding the Power of Prayer, or Did the People on the Titanic Forget to Pray?

"Oh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue,
And they thought they had a ship that the water couldn't go through,
But the good Lord raised his hand, and said that ship would never land.
It was sad when the great ship went down."
                                                Children's song "Titanic"

“Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
                                                Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Prayer is an important facet of belief in God, particularly from the interventionist view of God.  Personal testimony regarding the power of prayer is quite common.  Many people deeply believe in the power of prayer, and believe that they have observed response to prayers in their own lives.  Occasionally, a post circulates on Facebook like a chain letter, urging friends to type “Amen!” if they believe in the power of prayer.  And thousands of “Amen” responses follow.  Guideposts and other religious writings are full of stories of prayers answered – a recovery from illness, a lost relative found.  A quick Google search lists stories of answered prayers: “Money Owed”, “Lost in the Mountains”, “Locked Out”, “My Broken Foot”, “Glasses in the Ocean”, “Class Ring”, and so on.  There are many stories of prayers answered, for life problems, large and small.

But what about the converse?  What about prayers that are not answered, especially in circumstances more dire than a lost pair of glasses?  Why would God choose to answer a prayer to find a pair of glasses, but neglect to save people from natural or man-made disasters?

In essence, does anyone suppose that the people on the Titanic forgot to pray?  

When Jews fleeing the destruction of Jerusalem were besieged by the Romans at Masada in 74 AD, and ended the siege with a mass suicide, does anyone think they didn’t pray? 

When Mongols attacked the religious center of Vladimir, Russia in the 1300s, about three thousand Orthodox Christians took shelter in the cathedral and were killed there, in front of the icons.  The cathedral still stands, and you can walk on the same floor where they were slaughtered. Does anyone think that they forgot to pray? 

Does anyone believe that Jews ordered into gas chambers during the Holocaust didn’t pray? 

When Nazis systematically lined up and shot 120,000 Ukrainian Jews, Roma, Russians and families of resistance fighters at the ravine called Babyn Yar in Kyiv, does anyone think they didn’t pray? 

When 150 newly elected black legislators were besieged in a Louisiana courthouse by a white militia in 1873, the courthouse was set on fire.  The legislators were massacred as they fled the building.  Does anyone think that they didn’t pray?  

When the Allies fire-bombed Dresden, killing 150,000 German civilians, does anyone believe that the victims didn’t pray? 

During the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centers, dozens of people were trapped on the roofs of the buildings, and suffered from blistering heat rising from the fires below.  There were helicopters within sight, unable or unwilling to land because of the updraft from the fires.  One by one, the people gave up hope of rescue and jumped to escape the heat, falling 1300' to their deaths.  Does anyone believe that they forgot to pray?

The endless horrors of history continue today, both of man’s making and by natural disaster.  And at no point is there systematic evidence of physical rescue beyond what we might expect from random events.

So it goes (with a nod to Kurt Vonnegut) for every disaster or massacre of religious people in history.  For certainly, among the thousands of victims, there must have been many innocent, faithful and devout followers of God, who prayed with all diligence for mercy and protection which never came.  From this, can we conclude that God will ease our suffering, cure an ailment, help us find our car keys, score a touchdown or be on time to an appointment?

Communal Prayer

Another important aspect of Christianity is common prayer.  We pray in church, and we pray at meals.  Prayer brings us together in a meditative moment, and we communicate to each other our gratitude at the good things in life and our joy in each other’s presence.  It can be a good thing.

A common practice in modern American Christian churches is to join together in prayer for members of the congregation and their loved ones who are sick, or in some life crisis, or recently deceased.  I don’t mean to disparage communal prayer.  It is a way of communicating to each other our care, to provide comfort to friends during loss and to build a sense of community.  But I find it odd as a way of communicating with God.  I especially find it odd when people solicit prayer for someone through social media, as though gathering more prayers will somehow prod God into action.   Is that how people think prayer works?  Does God tote up the number of people praying for someone, and answer those prayers ahead of someone alone, without friends, and desperately praying for themselves? 

Is prayer like “Horton Hears a Who” by Dr. Suess, where it is necessary for every Who in Whoville to plead for a response, until the smallest Who’s loud “Yop!”  is sufficient to attract the attention of God?  I don’t think that’s how prayer should work.  If God is all-knowing, all-loving, and all powerful, the smallest prayer should be equal to a million prayers.  And in any case, prayer itself should be unnecessary – God should already know.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the power of prayer is literally survivorship bias, writ large.  Those who survive speak about the power of prayer, and those who do not survive are not heard.   It seems to me that either God’s answers to prayer are incredibly capricious, without regard for devotion, merit, evil or innocence, or they do not exist.  I do not choose to believe in a capricious God.   

There is little consistent evidence for answers to prayer by a merciful, interventionist God.  

Introduction

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”   I Corinthians 13:11

Introduction

It seems that I grew up in church.  In my childhood, three generations of my family attended church together every week.  I attended Sunday School in the morning, and youth fellowship and choir practice Sunday evening, and sang for services at least once a month.  Sometimes I sang with the adult choir, which met on Wednesday nights.  My grandparents were missionaries and my great-grandparents were missionaries; my uncles and cousins were ministers.  I worked on a Boy Scout religious award for a year, including service hours at the church every week.  I was an altar boy.  I read the bible cover-to-cover by age fourteen. I performed in church music productions and knew every nook and cranny of our old, cathedral-like church.

Here is a photo I called "Empty Church", taken decades later.  This was my usual view, from the altar boy's chair.  

But questions nagged at me for my entire life.  Sometime in my late 40s, I stopped going to church.  At age 60, when I described myself as an atheist to a friend, he asked me to write down my reasons.  This blog is the result.  I will consider various aspects of religion and Christianity, such as the soul, prayer, the Bible, God as Creator, Sustainer, and Judge, heaven and hell, and Satan.   I have a few thoughts about the politicization of Christianity.  Through all of this, I will be considering how religious beliefs align with other things we know about the world from science, experience, and observation.  I will ask some peculiar questions, such as whether a virus has a soul, and whether the people on the Titanic forgot to pray.  I’ll consider the problem posed by Steve Martin: “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”.  I’ll be asking whether religion is good according to my standards of right and wrong.  And most of all, I will ask whether religious belief makes any sense.

I know that religious people are often the happiest people I know.  They often have the clearest sense of family and enjoy the fellowship and affirmation of belonging to a church.  They are able to disregard worries, because they believe that no matter what happens, it will be as God decided.  They have faith that God exists, and that God is good.  So if you choose to read these posts, understand that I will be challenging that belief and that comfortable happiness.

To live in happiness under a falsehood seems wrong to me.   My worldview is now less settled, with the realization that the future of mankind does not depend on an invisible power, but depends on us. 

I have no interest in debate.  I am simply sharing my thoughts, as my friend asked.  I will not read nor respond to comments.