“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” You have heard it. I have heard it, usually aimed at me, usually with a note of finality, as though the sentence settles the question of God all by itself.
I want to say something that may surprise you. I agree with the rule. I think it is a good rule. A claim that stretches far beyond ordinary experience should have to carry evidence proportionate to the stretch.
So let us apply it. Not only to the resurrection, which I am happy to defend, but to the other side of the table. Here is what atheism asks you to believe.
Four Extraordinary Claims
A universe popped into existence without a cause. Everything in our experience that begins has a cause. Atheism asks you to make exactly one exception, and to make it for the largest thing there is.
Dead chemicals organized themselves into a self-copying machine. Not a simple one, either. That machine is more complex than any factory on earth, and we are told it assembled itself with no engineer, no blueprint, and no purpose.
Blind mutations wrote the code in your DNA. That code runs to roughly four billion letters. Atheism asks you to believe that unguided copying errors wrote every one of them.
Chemistry in your skull found the truth of atheism. On the atheist’s own account, the brain was never designed to find truth. It was shaped by a blind process to survive. Yet we are asked to trust that this undesigned organ, by sheer luck, arrived at the correct answer about ultimate reality.
Those are extraordinary claims. Every single one of them. So I ask the question the rule demands: where is the extraordinary evidence?
A Rule Aimed in One Direction
Here is what I have noticed in these conversations. The rule itself is fine. The problem is that atheists aim it only at other people. The believer is required to produce extraordinary evidence for a Creator, while the skeptic’s own account of a causeless universe, self-assembling life, and self-authoring code is waved through as the default position that needs no defense.
That is not skepticism. That is a double standard wearing skepticism’s clothes.
Not Enough Faith
I spent twelve years trying to disprove God, and this is one of the places where I ran aground. The more carefully I examined what I was being asked to accept in God’s place, the more it looked like a leap in the dark. I do not have enough faith to be an atheist.
So keep the rule. I mean that sincerely. Extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. Just be honest enough to apply it to your own.
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