What gives? — TheMadFool

These refer to different kinds of inquiry. Tertuillian was a theologian, and his position is essentially preaching.

Aristotle is more referring to an ontological idea, that even fantastic claims must be in some way real, because the human mind cannot fabricate something from nothing.

Sagan, on the other hand, is referring to empirical enquiry specifically.

Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned
until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned
is not the same as not to be burned. — Ibn Sina

:fire:

Which will you follow?

I'll get the matches...

I've got my slapjack. :smirk:

I think a lot of popular atheism has made mileage out of that Tertullian quote along the lines of 'look, see how Christians cling to absurdities! They even brag about it!'. Just the kind of thing you'd read on the long defunct Dawkins forum.

I read a recent analysis of this passage on Aeon by Peter Harrison, who is 'an Australian Laureate Fellow and director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland' according to the byline. I won't try and summarise it, as it is already pretty terse, but it can be found here. However, Harrison does point out:

Elsewhere, [Tertullian] insists that Christians ‘should believe nothing but that nothing should be rashly believed’. For Tertullian, God is ‘author of Reason’, the natural order of the world is ‘ordained by reason’, and everything is to be ‘understood by reason’.

I will juxtapose that against another, slightly less often quoted passage from Augustine, which illustrates well, I think, that even the ancients would have been favourably inclined to new discoveries in science, rather than clinging to literal interpretation of scripture as do modern fundamentalists:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? — The Literal Meaning of Genesis

//edit//

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — Carl Sagan

It depends on what is considered 'extraordinary'. This is often deployed in respect of the evidence required for paranormal psychological phenomena, such as remote viewing, past-life recall and so on. I remember reading somewhere a well-known PSI sceptic saying of some data sets from remote-viewing experiments that, had the data concerned some more mundane phenomenon, then they would be accepted as evidence, but that in such cases, a much higher bar should be set.

These refer to different kinds of inquiry. Tertuillian was a theologian, and his position is essentially preaching.

Aristotle is more referring to an ontological idea, that even fantastic claims must be in some way real, because the human mind cannot fabricate something from nothing.

Sagan, on the other hand, is referring to empirical enquiry specifically. — Echarmion

Somehow, I'm unable to differentiate between these various interpretations of what each - Tertullian, Aristotle, and Sagan - meant.

To me, all are essentially claims to truth/fact. Tertullian, drawing from Aristotle, believes that more impossible/absurd an assertion, the more likely it's true.

Sagan, on the other hand, thinks the exact opposite - more impossible/absurd what is being said, the more unlikely it's to be true.

Perhaps we need to take a close look at the arguments involved in each case.

Aristotle's & Tertullian's take on the issue are as following:

1. Aristotle: If x is truly incredible, no one would assert x. Ergo, the contrapositive, if someone does assert x, x isn't truly incredible.

My own interpretation of Aristotle's position is that it's very unlikely that someone would invent an impossible story precisely because it's impossible. It's impossible and so no one would believe it to be true i.e. impossible stories are useless to a deceiver/liar - the lie is too obvious to be missed. Ergo, if someone asserts an impossibility has occurred, its unlikely that this someone is a liar/deceiver and so, likely too that this someone has good evidence to support faer assertion. i.e. (warning! paradox) "...something is more credibly true if it is an incredible claim..."

2. Tertullian frames Aristotle's position on incredible claims in a theological context, specifically Jesus' as the son of god and some of the miracles attributed to Jesus. Tertullian states, 1. The son of God died (absurd), 2. Christ rose from the dead (impossible) and then he declares, from the absurdity and the impossibility therein, that he believes these to be true. The reason for this is, according to him, let's just say, the infinite wisdom of god that to mere mortals like us appear as absurd and impossible. Theodicy might find Tertullian helpful but that's another story.


Let's now look at the Sagan standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Surely, if a certain claim is out of the ordinary, its evidence is unlikely to be found in the ordinary. Thus, the Sagan standard. That's that!

The first question to ask is whether there's a conflict between Tertullian-Aristotle and Sagan that needs to be resolved?

Tertullian and Aristotle are saying that incredible claims are to be believed precisely because they're incredible. The reasons offered are different though. Tertullian takes a theological route. Aristotle's is hard to describe with onex word but if I were to hazard a guess it involves the psychology of a liar (see vide supra).

Sagan is saying withhold belief of incredible claims unless evidence, itself incredible, is offered.

Ergo, there seems to be palpable tension between the two - one (Tertullian & Aristotle) recommends belief when faced with incredible statements, the other (Sagan) counsels against taking such a step.

One way of looking at the issue is Tertullian & Aristotle are making their inferences, "credo quia absurdum" and "certum est, quia impossibile" based on the nature of incredible statements themselves - incredible statements are unlikely to be made unless there are good reasons to make them - while Sagan's position has to do with the quality of the evidence, stressing that, "extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary evidence". What this boils down to is, in my humble opinion, Sagan is right in saying, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" but Tertullian and Aristotle are of the view that "extraordinary claims are never made without extraordinary evidence." We've achieved conflict resolution.

P.S. Sorry for the disorganized writing. I was thinking and writing at the same time - a bad idea if the aim is to make reading and comprehension of the text easier.

Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned
until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned
is not the same as not to be burned. — Ibn Sina

:fire: but I don't see the relevance. Do you mind going through my reply to Echarmion above?

Which will you follow? — Banno

See my reply to Echarmion above.

@Wayfarer, kindly go through my reply to Echarmion

Tertullian states, 1. God killed his son — TheMadFool

No Christian would say that.

No Christian would say that. — Wayfarer

Sorry, my bad. It should've been, "the son of God died." Thanks for pointing that out.

It’s a discussion about philosophy, epistemology and religious faith. If you read the article I linked to, Tertullian’s alleged saying ‘I believe because it is absurd’ was taken out of context, or rather, cherry-picked to make a polemical point, although the drift of it is as you say it is, and it does converge with the Aristotelian quote - that nobody would believe in something so outlandish if it were merely a lie.

Carl Sagan is, of course, assuming the attitude of scientific empiricism - that no hypothesis should be accepted without evidence. In addition to that, however, Carl Sagan was also an anti-religious polemicist, as per his last book, This Demon-Haunted World.

There is a huge mass of argumentation (and confusion) around the question of what counts for evidence in respect to the claims of religious faith. Suffice to say that whether or not Jesus Christ was as he is portrayed in the Biblical accounts, is a question of a different order to (say) what causes planetary motion or continental drift. Also the content of Jesus’ ethical commandments (love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek) are not remotely in scope for empirical science as such. They concern existential, first-person matters, how to live, how to treat others, and so on. What empirical evidence can be adduced in favour of one or another of those kinds of commands? What science demonstrates that it is, in fact, better to give than to receive?

Sagan is famous for his saying ‘Cosmos is all there is’. By this, I think Sagan means or at least implies that ‘what can be known by the natural sciences is all there is’. There are many who believe that, it’s the fundamental attitude of what is broadly known as positivism. And positivism tends to argue that whatever can’t be validated in respect to sense-data ought not to be given the benefit of the doubt, so to speak.

There are quite elaborate counter-arguments to that view, although I don’t know if I would be able to present them here.

Indeed there's a possibility that Tertullian, Aristotle was quoted out of context but the statements that he makes, "credo quia absurdum" and "certum est, quia impossibile" are statements on claims in general i.e. they're so broad in scope that taking them out of context isn't possible. To ilustrate, if I say assertions are to be believed when evidence for them exists, I'm referring to all assertions and there's no context that would make that apply to only some statements and not to others. I hope this is clear.

Secondly, the domain for Sagan standard is, for certain, universal i.e. it applies to all claims; therefore, it also applies to Tellurian's and Aristotle's belief that more incredible the things that are said, the more credible those things said. So, even if what Tellurian said may have been interpreted against a backdrop inappropriate for it, the Sagan standard still has a hold over it in a manner of speaking.

If you'd like a succinct formulation of my views, it's this: True, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" but the catch is "extraordinary claims are only made when there is extraordinary evidence." The whole notion of miracles rests on two statements: 1. It is impossible and 2. It is true. The usual response from skeptics is to label those who believe in miracles as - Laurence Krauss once said - "iron age peasants" and that "they didn't know better". This immediately stacks the deck against the faithful as if they were simpletons who swallowed every line thrown in their direction hook, line, and sinker. Incorrect! Look at the definition of miracle vide supra: 1. It is impossible and 2. It is true - they knew miracles were/are impossible/incredible/extraordinary.

Secondly, the domain for Sagan standard is, for certain, universal i.e. it applies to all claims; — TheMadFool

To all empirical claims. I asked, what could be the empirical evidence for the claim that 'it is better to give than to receive?' How you could test that empirically?

If you'd like a succinct formulation of my views, it's this: True, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" but the catch is "extraordinary claims are only made when there is extraordinary evidence." — TheMadFool

The problem with this is that it begs the question - you're assuming that there is 'extraordinary evidence'. Otherwise, no catch? Right?

To all empirical claims. I asked, what could be the empirical evidence for the claim that 'it is better to give than to receive?' How you could test that empirically? — Wayfarer

I'll agree to that although non-empirical claims too can be extraordinary e.g. "I don't exist", pace Descartes.

The problem with this is that it begs the question - you're assuming that there is 'extraordinary evidence'. Otherwise, no catch? Right? — Wayfarer

No, not begging the question. Take a look at my argument below.

1. Someone making an incredible claim is either telling the truth or lying.

2. There is no point lying using an incredible claim because everyone knows it can't be true.

Ergo,

3. Someone making an incredible claim is telling the truth. [it can't be a lie, so it has to be the truth. from 1, 2A]

4. If an incredible claim is true then necessarily there's evidence for it (how else can it be true?)

Ergo,

5. Incredible claims are only made when they have evidence to back them up and demonstrates they're truths.

No, I think that argument fails. People might believe all kinds of nonsensical claims with complete conviction. Trump has been making incredible claims for months and millions of people believe them.

No, I think that argument fails. People might believe all kinds of nonsensical claims with complete conviction. Trump has been making incredible claims for months and millions of people believe them. — Wayfarer

All that I can say is that I must, sadly, disagree with you. Compare Trumps statements to those of the "witnesses" of Christ's resurrection, the former can't hold a candle to the latter in terms incredibility.