Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
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"Mommie Dearest", Slate, 20 October 2003, ISSN 1091-2339 , quoted in Michael Shermer, "The Skeptic's Skeptic," Scientific American, November 2010, p. 86.
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Variant: "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof." in "Less than Miraculous", Free Inquiry 24, February/March 2004, ISSN 0272-0701
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"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." appears by itself in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007).
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Translation of the Latin phrase "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur."Christopher Hitchens
» Christopher Hitchens - all quotes »
What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Carl Sagan
For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this appealing idea. The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence.
Carl Sagan
The mountains of evidence are already there. The problem is that evidence is itself inherently hermeneutical, influenced by cognitive predispositions to interpret certain types of data as supporting/confirming certain types of conclusions. If one wears materialistic blinders, there can be no evidence for ID hence the constant refrain by people like Barbara Forrest and Eugenie Scott that there is no evidence for ID. There is none for them because they have shut their eyes to it.
William A. Dembski
Yes, it takes a brave man to randomly accuse someone of something horrible based on no evidence and then demand they refute the evidence you don't have. So tonight, I am accusing Newt Gingrich of being a baby-eating werewolf. There it is. It's out there now. Do I have evidence? No. But someone has to stand up to him. Where do I find the courage?
Newt Gingrich
If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
Sam Harris
Hitchens, Christopher
Hitchens, Peter
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