Witness Evidence

[bennyboy]

Where it can reasonably be shown, this may be valid.  However the question occurs to me, how often do you do this?  I also think that if you did this often without reason to your professor he may take it as questioning his integrity; and tell you where you can go fly your kite.

He can do that, and risk me not listening to him anymore.  In a university classroom, where he distributes grades and I'm just the paying pleb, that's fine.  If he's trying to convince other scientists (or even students) of a surprising new theory, then if he says, "Trust me or piss off!" he will lose his audience very quickly.

 
As said before, I do believe in verifying with others, and a single claim is not very strong.  Similar to in science, where they do not make hasty generalizations based on a single test.  In your example, I would say the response is reason for suspicion (there is no way to falsify the claim).  When I hear a claim that I am skeptical about, one of the first things I do is look to see if others validate (or invalidate) the claims.

The problem is that in the case of religion, there is a common element-- the willingness to believe in fairy tales-- which renders their credibility with regard to the existence of fairy tales in question for non-religious people.

Here's the thing-- you are confused about the difference between observations and conclusions.  If someone said, "I had an overwhelming peaceful feeling," I'd accept that as evidence.  If they said, "The spirit of Jesus descending onto my spirit, and I had an overwhelming peaceful feeling," I'd immediately disregard their "testimony" as being speculative wishy-thinking.

And this is why religious testimony fails as evidence-- it involves multiple people presenting non-sequitur conclusions rather than just stating observable fact.