Article by Greg Koukl, Stand to Reason, "Rapid Fire pt. 5," 1 May 2026
This guideline was popularized by the late astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan. A version of this view was also shared by empiricist philosopher David Hume. The dictum is repeated frequently by skeptics to summarily disqualify foundational claims of Christianity—specifically, belief in the God of the Bible and the miracles recorded in the text, especially Jesus’ miraculous resurrection.
The chief flaw here is that no clarity is given to what “extraordinary” in either sense—claims or evidence—actually means.
Sagan was a naturalist whose self-professed agnosticism bordered on functional atheism. For him, empirical science was the final measure of truth, and the question of God was the kind of question naturalistic methods couldn’t directly assess, ergo his intractable skepticism on the issue.
I don’t mention Sagan’s de facto atheism to discredit his opinion, but rather to give you a piece of information that’s relevant to his challenge. What any given person considers an “extraordinary” claim is going to be dictated by background assumptions.
Given Sagan’s naturalistic convictions, the idea that God exists and was responsible for the kind of miracles recorded in Scripture would have been extraordinary to him, requiring extraordinary evidence to justify belief. What, though, is extraordinary about belief in God or miracles performed at his hand?
The answer depends entirely upon one’s starting point. Where one begins in his understanding of the nature of reality will determine what kinds of options are plausible and what kinds are outlandish on their face.
Sagan starts with naturalism—the world governed by natural law moving physical things about in a particular fashion, all quantified by the science that measures such things. If one is a priori committed to natural causes to explain everything, then nothing other than natural explanations will suffice. Yet, theistic claims are only extraordinary in light of the unyielding assumptions skeptics characteristically bring to the discussion.
Here is the irony. Scientific naturalists believe a host of things that are patently extraordinary to any fair-minded observer.
What of the assertions that the universe popped into existence with no cause, for no reason, without any meaning? Or the claim that conscious minds emerged from unconscious matter? Or the presumption that dead stuff must have spontaneously given rise to living stuff? Yet naturalistic scientists cling to each of these ideas without blushing. Why? Because they comport perfectly with the philosophic assumptions of their metaphysical naturalism.
Where is the extraordinary evidence justifying these claims? These assertions rise to no bar of verification at all—certainly not the bar of “extraordinary evidence.” They are simply dictated by the philosophy that scientists impose on the question. Curiously, their philosophic naturalism itself rises to no such standard of justification.
The simple rejoinder to the so-called “Sagan standard” is that with any kind of claim, all that’s required for justification is evidence adequate to the claim. The “extraordinary” adjective is not helpful—for the reasons I mentioned above—and simply muddies the waters.
If, for example, credible witnesses testify to a bodily resurrection and then put their lives on the line for the claim, that seems to be prima facie compelling evidence that the claim has merit.
For Christianity, evidence like this abounds, including certain types of scientific evidence. Forensic pathology uses science to determine whether the cause of an individual’s death is a result of accident or intelligent agency (“foul play”). In the same way, scientific assessment using the principle of inference to the best explanation can determine if an intelligent agent better accounts for unique features of the universe—like those mentioned above—than a purely naturalistic explanation.
Any attempt to dismiss such evidence as not “extraordinary” enough is simply self-serving. It’s also circular since the skeptic’s starting point has guaranteed his conclusion.
[1] These words are not exact synonyms, strictly speaking, but I’m treating them as such for our purposes.
[2] Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Steven Soter, “The Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” PBS, 1980.
[3] Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc., 1983), 12.
[4] For a thorough treatment of this concern, see “God, Evolution, and Morality,” parts 1 and 2 at str.org. See also “Good without God?” in Gregory Koukl, Street Smarts (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023).
