I was hanging out on a christian facebook group last night, as you do. The discussion got round to standards of evidence, and "how come you demand strong evidence for the existence of a god when one of your mates could just tell you something and you'd accept it".
The accepted course of action at this point is to raise "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence", or ECREE, and I usually do this along the following lines, though this time, I added a flourish I hadn't added before (in italics):
Look, if a friend called me and said he'd seen a three legged dog walking past, I'd probably accept it with no further questioning. After all, it's a relatively innoccuous claim. It's neither important or unusual. If, however, he told me he'd seen a Tyrannosaurus rex walk past listening to a CD Walkman, I'd want stronger evidence.
Shortly after wards I realised I should have added:
Because who the fuck has a CD Walkman these days?
*sigh*
posted @ Monday, March 8, 2010 11:19 PM