The Problem with “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”

During the era of the “New Atheism,” one phrase occurred so often it began to sound like a new law of logic, as certain as the law of non-contradiction or the law of the excluded middle: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

I can recall watching more than one atheist–theist debate on YouTube where that line landed like a mic-drop moment. The crowd cheered. The atheist looked smug. The Christian suddenly appeared unsure of himself. On the surface, the line sounds clever. It sounds principled. It sounds like it could not possibly be disputed.

So, in this short post, I want to slow things down and take a closer look at this popular new notion. Doing so will show that, despite its dogmatic appearance, the dictum is far less decisive than it first appears.

What Does “Extraordinary” Actually Mean?

For one thing, the statement hinges on the word extraordinary. If the idea were simply that claims require evidence, there would be nothing especially controversial about it. That is a basic principle of rational inquiry. We do not accept claims arbitrarily; we ask for reasons. In fact, stripped of the word extraordinary, the slogan falls back into something nearly everyone already agrees with. I think, this is precisely why it sounds so reasonable at first glance.

But once the word extraordinary is introduced, the statement changes. The issue is no longer simply whether evidence is required, but whether certain claims demand a categorically different or heightened kind of evidence. At this point, the phrase relies on an ambiguity that often goes unnoticed, namely, that the word extraordinary applies differently to claims or events than to the evidence supporting them.

To understand this, we need to ask what the word extraordinary means. It seems to me it has at least two different senses: a descriptive sense and a psychological sense.

In the descriptive sense, extraordinary simply means outside the ordinary. It refers to things that are unusual because they are not part of our everyday experience. Used this way, the word tells us something objective about the event or claim itself, not about how anyone happens to feel when they hear about it.

In the psychological sense, however, extraordinary means something more like “startling,” “overwhelming,” or “awe-inspiring.” Here the word no longer describes how rare an event is, but rather, how it affects the person considering it. Used this way, the standard of evidence begins to track subjective reactions rather than objective features of the claim.

The Problem of Equivocation

Now here’s the key: When I hear this slogan used by atheists, I take extraordinary in the descriptive sense. The claim is called extraordinary because it involves something rare or outside the ordinary course of events. But the second use of extraordinary, the psychological sense, functions in a different way because it is applied to the evidence. What is being demanded is not merely proof that a rare event occurred, but proof that is itself striking or overwhelming. If I were to translate this slogan into simple terms, it would come out something like this: Rare events require evidence that is remarkable or psychologically compelling. But this notion is far from obvious. In essence, it shifts the discussion from what the evidence shows to how impressed someone happens to be by it.

Once I noticed this “sleight of hand” with the word extraordinary, the slogan lost much of its apparent force for me. If extraordinary is taken in the first sense, then the demand for evidence is perfectly reasonable. Rare events require evidence that they occurred. If it is taken in the second sense, however, the standard of evidence becomes dependent on how impressed someone happens to be, which tells us very little about what is actually true.

Of course, someone might respond that what is really meant by the slogan is a Bayesian principle: propositions with very low prior probabilities require strong confirming evidence before they become rationally acceptable. Fair enough. But low relative to what? Relative to atheism, a resurrection will look wildly improbable. Relative to theism, however, and especially within the concrete historical context of Jesus’ life, teachings, and reported signs, it does not look abysmally unlikely at all. If one is even moderately open to theism, then Jesus’ prediction of his own death and resurrection becomes a claim to be weighed on historical grounds rather than dismissed in advance as virtually impossible.

And this helps clarify the larger issue. In every domain of inquiry, what ultimately matters is whether the available evidence sufficiently supports the claim in question.

Modern science, for example, is perfectly comfortable affirming rare or even unique events in the history of the universe. The Big Bang is an obvious example. As far as we can tell, it happened once. In that sense, it is certainly extraordinary. But notice what kind of evidence scientists actually require. They don’t demand evidence that is emotionally overwhelming or psychologically stunning. They demand evidence that the event happened. From a scientific point of view, that is enough. No one thinks the Big Bang needs to feel awe-inspiring in order to be rationally affirmed. It needs to be supported by the best available evidence. And once that evidence is in place, belief is warranted, whether or not it produces a sense of amazement.

The same point applies more generally. If an event is rare, then what we need is evidence that the rare event occurred. But if extraordinary is taken in the psychological sense, then the evidential bar shifts. What is now being required is not simply evidence, but evidence that overwhelms a particular person or audience.

At that point, the question is no longer really about truth. It’s about persuasion. And while emotionally overwhelming evidence might convince someone, its absence tells us very little about what an objective, dispassionate observer ought to conclude.

The Resurrection and the Standard of Evidence

So, what does all of this mean when it comes to Christianity? Take the Resurrection of Jesus. Christians freely admit that this is an extraordinary event in the descriptive sense. It is outside the ordinary course of human affairs. Dead men do not usually come back to life. That much is obvious.

The question, then, is not whether the Resurrection is unusual, but what kind of evidence would warrant belief that it occurred. And here Christianity has never lacked an answer. The case rests on familiar historical considerations: early eyewitness testimony, the willingness of those witnesses to suffer and die for their claims, the empty tomb, the failure of alternative explanations, and the explosive growth of the early Christian movement centered on the claim that Jesus had risen from the dead. None of this guarantees belief. But it does amount to evidence that demands to be taken seriously.

And this brings us back to the New Atheism slogan. You do not need to find this evidence emotionally riveting in order for it to provide rational warrant. You do not need to feel stunned or awestruck for belief to be reasonable. What matters is whether the Resurrection offers the best explanation of the available evidence.

So, do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? No. They require sufficient evidence—just like every other claim. The slogan suggests that rare events belong to a different epistemic category, but they do not. The standard has always been the same: Is there good reason to think it happened? Once that question is answered, how impressed we feel is beside the point