Witness Evidence

[robvalue]

Indeed. There are plenty of very good explanations for why a group of people may report some seemingly impossible event. They are all vastly more likely than the event having actually occured as described.

Could they sometimes be true? Of course. But we need a method of determining which are true. The alternative is to believe all of them, and unless you're prepared to believe any bullshit me and my friends come up with, you're being a massive hypocrite.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, everyone has conceded that any particular anecdote might be true. But what use is that statement if you have no way of deciding which are true?

I suspect that what is really going on is RR is trying to reassure himself that believing extraordinary claims written in an ancient book is an intellectually respectable thing to do. Not even this explains why he only believes one ancient book though. The difference between a religious person and a sceptic is that the sceptic consistently applies the exact same criteria to every religion, while the religious person applies them to every religion except their own.

And as I've often said, I don't give a monkeys if the whole bible happened as written. What difference should it make to me? If people want to believe it, they needn't justify it to me or to any sceptic.