Who gets to decide what's an extraordinary claim?

Question

If extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, who gets to decide which claims are ordinary and which are extraordinary?

dezmortes: Gee, thanks. But I doubt that any of the hard core atheists here will agree to whatever crazy scheme I come up with for classifying claims.

Morgan: Given that no atheist has ever polled every person on earth, wouldn't your definition imply that the motto "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is essentially a meaningless statement?

Answer 1

Well. pretty much as a rule, the whole of humanity decides what's ordinary and what isn't. Technically if you want it written in stone you'll have to do a world-wide poll, including every living person. That's not really feasible, though.

Edit: I disagree. You have to be reasonable, you can't expect everything to be perfect, you really can't. You have to declare something sensibly "ordinary" or "extraordinary" and realise that no matter what there's always going to be those few who are going to disagree, no matter what. By the standard of perfect, everything is "meaningless" because nothing is perfect.

Answer 2

I think the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a little overused. The requirements for deeming something an extraordinary claim would be a claim of something which does not ordinarily occur. An example: god healing amputees. It can also be applied to someone who claims god A is the correct god and all other gods are false. I think the phrase is overused in relation to a god in general, simply because god is an ordinary claim. However, the phrase used in that context is basically saying "wow, claiming that god created everything is a mighty big claim if you don't have any evidence to back it." So it still applies but doesn't really get the point across properly.

Answer 3

YOU DO!!! THATS RIGHT!!! YOU!!!!!!!!