(May 14, 2016 at 10:45 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: Oh, and by the way I wasn't indicating a "conspiracy theory"... I'm not even sure how such a thing would work.
It's not exactly a surprise that people who are driven by the motive (indeed, the mandate) to attain convictions as a prerequisite to their continued advancement in their career would attain a bias that often blinded them to the unsound practices they were employing to do so.
Again, read the Innocence Project's stories, and see how often the police misled the defendants into false confessions, or manipulated witnesses directly (or accidentally), and how many times the DA resisted overturning the convictions despite the scientific information showing the person they put in prison could not be guilty. It's not a conspiracy, it's human weakness... the very thing the scientific method was invented to counter, but which has been slow to enter the justice system.
I'd say the problem, then, is that they rely too much on the human element (such as eyewitness testimony, despite its now-well-understood flaws) and not enough on "scientism", just as religious people tend to do. And that was my whole point.
Look up the definition of conspiracy theory.... that is exactly what you are describing in regards to Church History. I'm skeptical without further evidence, and find what you implying to be largely untenable and unsupported.
I would guess, that if the scientific evidence pointed to you for a crime, and yet witness testimony describes someone completely different, that you wouldn't be singing the same tune. Or would you confess based on the scientific evidence, not trusting your own memory?
