Extraordinary Claims, Extraordinary Evidence? A Critical Reflection on Modern Epistemology

Baroque depiction of the incredulity of Saint Thomas, touching the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side. A scene imbued with realism and spiritual tension, illustrating the encounter between human doubt and divine revelation

Jesus came, though the doors were locked, and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you!”Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands. Reach out your hand and place it in my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believe.”Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”(John 20:24–29)

At the threshold of modern certainties, one maxim stands tall like a mantra of reason: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Shrouded in a scientific halo, Carl Sagan’s phrase presents itself as a bulwark against the excesses of faith, a selective filter through which only the stamped facts of method and measure may pass. Its rhetorical force is undeniable: it conjures prudence, rigor, and restraint before the temptations of the irrational. Yet, when subjected to more rigorous scrutiny, the maxim conceals a narrow conceptual framework — one rooted not merely in method, but in a particular philosophical vision of reality. It implies an implicit project: to confine the legitimacy of knowledge to the empirico-formal realm alone.

Behind this apparent demand for superior proof lies a silent assumption: that the world is a closed system, impervious to mystery or grace. In demanding an “extraordinary proof,” we do not extend our hand toward the unexpected — we tie it to the scaffold. Science, as a method, has never denied the supernatural; it simply excludes it by principle, not by refutation. Yet this formula bestows upon science a role it does not claim. It establishes a truth by omission: what cannot be demonstrated within its laboratories is declared non-existent. The absence of proof is conflated with proof of absence; skepticism is mistaken for neutrality; and rigor is confused with closure. Sagan’s axiom then ceases to function as critical procedure — it becomes a dogmatic statement, enshrining absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Strong induction here becomes a mechanism of epistemic exclusion.

Is Absence of Evidence Evidence of Absence? Unpacking the Bias Behind a Modern Maxim

More fundamentally, the maxim rests on a tautology — or at least, on a circular logic. To assert that only an “extraordinary proof” can validate an “extraordinary claim,” while defining the extraordinary as that which exceeds the bounds of natural experience, is to assume from the outset that no proof can, by nature, suffice. For what renders the claim “extraordinary” is precisely that it lies beyond the framework in which proof is judged admissible. If the standard of acceptability is grounded in prior allegiance to a naturalistic paradigm, then no manifestation of the supernatural can ever meet it. This is a textbook case of begging the question, disguised as methodological rigor: we refuse the transcendent a hearing because it does not speak the language of immanence. The maxim does not illuminate discernment — it precludes it.

But what is “extraordinary,” after all? Is it not the shifting mask of our own gaze? That which stuns us today was impossible yesterday and may be banal tomorrow. Strangeness is not an essence — it is a perspective. Quantum realities, cosmic singularities, cosmological constants — all were once labeled inconceivable. Yet they were eventually accepted. Not because they made less effort to show themselves, but because they found their place within the permissible frame. Miracles, spiritual experiences, mystical visions — these knock in vain against the same frame, not because they are less attestable, but because they are metaphysically suspect.

This reveals a worrying methodological asymmetry: what belongs to the materialist imagination is often welcomed as fertile hypothesis, even without empirical proof; what arises from spiritual experience or theophany is, conversely, disqualified a priori. Religious or miraculous phenomena are forced to conform to validation protocols that ignore their very nature: uniqueness, irreproducibility, symbolic context. This demand reflects a structural epistemic bias — a reduction of the rational to the measurable. Dark matter, multiverses, string theory: these are scaffolds where direct observation is replaced by modeling. But for a resurrection, a prophetic voice, or an unexplained healing, we demand the impossible: an absolute, public, reproducible, instantly admissible proof. Once again, it is not the absence of evidence that damns the event — it is the failure to conform to an expected horizon. Demanding “extraordinary proof” is like insisting the entire ocean fit into a teaspoon before we admit its existence. The tool — here the spoon, there the experimental method — becomes the sole arbiter of reality. And when the ocean overflows, not because it is illusory but because it exceeds the measure, we conclude it is not. The miracle, like the sea, defies containment in instruments designed for ordinary phenomena. It is not the sea that is to blame, but the pettiness of the measure we impose upon it.

If we accept, in good faith, that some claims are extraordinary — not because they are magical or irrational, but because they transcend the habitual order of natural causes — then the very notion of “extraordinary proof” must be clarified. In classical scientific logic, robust proof implies repeatability: a phenomenon must be observable again, under analogous conditions, by different observers. This is the promise of the experimental protocol. But when applied to miracles or spiritual phenomena, this demand produces a logical absurdity.

Why? Because repeatability requires a phenomenon to be subject to impersonal and invariable laws. A miracle — by definition — escapes such laws. It is not a divine automation, but a free and intentional suspension of natural regularity. It is not a process — it is a gesture. Demanding that a miracle repeat itself on command in order to be believed is to demand that transcendent freedom submit to the laws it transcends — in other words, to cease being free.

It is also a failure to understand the nature of the extraordinary event. A miracle — if it exists — is unique, situated, inscribed within a relationship, within a history. It does not repeat like a chemical formula; it manifests like a word. And a word is not proven by mechanical repetition, but by its coherence, its fruitfulness, its resonance. Demanding that transcendence become subject to protocol is to make of God a machine, or of the spiritual act a reproducible artifact. It is to say: “If the Creator acts, it must be under my control.”

Finally, this demand rests on a category error: it applies to an exceptional event criteria designed for objects. A will is not an object. Experimental proof requires the studied object to remain constant regardless of the observer’s intention. But a will — especially a divine one — eludes such schema: it chooses, it discerns, it responds — or not. What one should seek, then, is not repeatability but intelligibility, meaningful fruitfulness, inner coherence, and the transformation of witnesses.

Should we then abandon critical thinking? Quite the opposite. True criticism begins where the mystery is welcomed. Right reason acknowledges its own limits. It does not forsake its demands, but applies them symmetrically. It does not dismiss a unique event for not returning; it examines signs, contexts, testimonies. It concedes that what does not fit in a test tube might be thought of another way — through history, philosophy, poetry, faith. It opens itself to a spiral approach, not a linear one. It assumes that certain realities — especially singular events, mystical accounts, theological traditions — require their own hermeneutic. The convergence of disciplines — philosophy, comparative religion, anthropology of the sacred, fundamental theology — offers a more adequate pathway than the experimental method alone. Clues, testimonies, symbols, and intertextual coherence may, in this light, constitute valid forms of qualitative “proof.”

Such a posture invites us to reframe Sagan’s maxim: An affirmation that departs from current knowledge requires serious, open, and interdisciplinary investigation — but cannot be dismissed in advance. Far from weakening reason, such openness enriches it. For some truths do not impose themselves like calculations — they strike like living metaphors. They are experienced, narrated, transmitted. They unsettle, and in doing so, they awaken. This semantic shift is not a dilution of reason, but a deepening of its resources. It invites us to regard reality’s complexity not as a threat, but as a summons.

There are flashes of reality that cannot be weighed, yet weigh upon us. There are gleams that defy explanation, yet transfigure. The miracle, if it exists, does not bend to the laws of machines — it bends them, troubles them, summons them to other languages. It does not respond to proof — it evokes presence. It is not an object of laboratory inquiry, but an event of consciousness. It unsettles not so much nature as our closed image of the world. And if it is called “extraordinary,” it is not for its strangeness, but because it calls forth a kind of reason we are not always ready to awaken: a reason hospitable to transcendence. And perhaps that, in the end, is the most extraordinary proof of all — that it births a question where once there was only self-sufficiency.