Testimony is Evidence

[bennyboy]

It's worthless because it is contradictory among faiths, and there's no clear metric by which to evaluate the testimony of various traditions.

We make decisions all the time without a clear metric to evaluate evidence.

Not decisions that require major changes to our world views, we don't. You are arguing testimony is evidence. The testimony of people of different backgrounds is at odds. Therefore, you must either discard the whole ball of yarn, or demonstrate a good metric by which to establish that the Christian dogma consists of testimony superior to the other religious traditions.

You can speculate about your Biblical characters all you want, but that's not going to get you very far with non-Christians.

When I say "my satisfaction," I speak as an unconvinced non-Christian, under the assumption that your testimony has as its goal convincing non-Christians that the Christian represents existential truth.

No, I'm not trying to convince you of that..

Sure. So. . . giving testimony and arguing for its validity is a hobby, something to do just for hoots, I suppose?

Any growing religion stands to benefit by increasing its membership-- the benefits of increased community, increased income, increased credibility by appeal to numbers, and so on.  This should be obvious, I would think.

Go read Acts and the epistles. Growth tended to cause Paul serious trouble - yet he persisted. Mohammed by contrast used an army for growth and benefited personally from it.

Paul (a) was motivated to tell the world about Jesus; (b) wasn't motivated to tell the world about Jesus. If he was motivated, there was a reason for his motivation. The satisfaction of a motivation is seen as a benefit by a motivated part.

And then a Muslim will come in and say the exact same thing.

On what basis will they claim that Mohammed suffered as Jesus or Paul did?

On what basis will you claim that Jesus suffered as Cinderella did? Or the Buddha? Or my beagle? I mean, if there's ANYONE I know who isn't going to try to persuade me to change my world view, it's him.

Although, on second thought. . . he does wag his tail in pretty meaningful ways when I say the word "cheese." Can I take this as testimonial evidence for God?

You need a lot more than a relative weight of suspected motivations to establish credibility.

First, that's just one factor.

Second...who are you to decide what I need to find credibility? A big part of your argument is basically, I personally don't find such testimony convincing in the slightest - so no one should. I'm kind of surprised by that as you're generally one of the more reasonable posters here.

The point of evidence is to add weight to a statement about truth. I don't much care how YOU form your own beliefs, but if you want any non-Christians to change their ideas about the world, you'll have to have something compelling enough to motivate them to do so.