Quotes about Plausibility

I do not think that people have religion because they relax their usually strict criteria for evidence and accept extraordinary claims; I think they are led to relax these criteria because some extraordinary claims have become quite plausible to them.

Among this pool are these: (a) explanatory power, (b) explanatory scope, (c) plausibility, (d) degree of ad hoc-ness and (e) conformity with other beliefs. The more explanatory power and scope and the more plausibility and conformity with other beliefs an explanation has, the better it is. The less ad hoc (adjusted, contrived, artificial) the explanation, the better as well. The trick is to subject all explanation options to these criteria.

No cardinal or essential doctrine is altered by any textual variant that has plausibility of going back to the original. The evidence for that has not changed to this day.