Stephen Law reports on a radio encounter between a skeptic and a vocal advocate in angels, in which the skeptic proposed that we would have objective evidence of angels if we found under controlled conditions that those who claimed to communicate with angels had gotten information they could not have gotten in any other way. But how would we ever know that? Once we’re letting angels into the pool of hypotheses, why not allow ESP, direct revelation from the one true God, telepathic projection from another human being, and information transmitted via a high-tech implant created by extraterrestrials? This is a good example of how, even when you know something extraordinary is going on, you have to be careful about making assumptions about the extraordinary thing.

When you really think about what it would take to verify the existence of angels, though, you have to start wondering what it would take for something to count as an angel. Do we have to verify that angels are, as Aquinas thought, Aristotelian forms detached from any matter? Or maybe just that they’re powerful beings directly created by a monotheistic deity? What are the criteria here?