(September 16, 2015 at 1:55 am)robvalue Wrote: One way I try and get people to reflect upon the standard of evidence they are using is to pose this question:
If you were on trial for murder, and the prosecution presented evidence like this against you, would you accept being found guilty as reasonable (whether or not you did the crime)?
No, rob. No one would.
But then, what can we really know of ancient history if we reject all evidence about it? Not much.
J. Warner Wallace explains:
Quote:There’s a big difference between evaluating witnesses for the purpose of a criminal trial and evaluating witnesses for the purpose of establishing a chronological truth:
Eyewitness Reliability Related to Criminal Trials
The standard for criminal trials is exceptionally high related to eyewitnesses and there’s a good reason for this. We would rather release one hundred guilty people than wrongly convict one innocent person. For this reason, we give the defendant the benefit of the doubt, assume his innocence, and give his defense team every possible opportunity to confront and examine accusers and witnesses. That’s appropriate in criminal trials, even though it often limits the ability of the prosecution to establish the truth.
Eyewitness Reliability Related to Chronological Truths
The standard for establishing historical truths must, by necessity, be very different than the standard for criminal trials, unless, of course, we are willing to reject any claim of history for which we don’t have a living eyewitness (to cross-examine). History is established on the written testimony of eyewitnesses or the research of historians who have access to such testimony. If we rejected every claim about the past that couldn’t be supported by living testimony, we’d be forced to live in the present, unsure of anything that precedes us by more than two generations.
Wallace concludes:
Quote:It’s reasonable to examine the Gospel authors and ask (1) if they were present during Jesus’ ministry, (2) if they can be corroborated in some way, (3) if their testimony has been altered over time, or (4) if they possessed a bias that should exclude their testimony altogether. But it is unreasonable to reject the apostolic accounts simply because they are dead. If we took that approach with everything from the past, we couldn’t even be certain of our own personal family histories. That’s an unreasonable (an impractical) standard to embrace.
Source.