About the "Sagan Standard"
Introduction Atheists can be like a dog with a bone when they find some witty one-liner or superficially clever aphorism. More often though they betray a tremendous amount of thoughtlessness when it comes to their worldview and its extended application. Perhaps you’ve never heard of the “ Sagan standard ”, which is something like “ Hitchen’s Razor ”, when it comes to examining claims or, more properly, assertions. The “Sagan standard”, so named after astrophysicist and science popularizer Carl Sagan, is derived from his 1979 book Broca’s Brain , and is most often presented, sans context, as “ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence ”. The issue is, of course, what do the terms “extraordinary claim” and “extraordinary evidence” actually mean when they’re used? Defining Terms Indeed the issue is, as David Deming points out, that Sagan never bothered to define his terms.[ 1 ] As a result, no one else seems to bother to define their terms, though some have