Anecdotal Evidence

[LadyForCamus]

RR, you're being stupid, is the point.  Cops exist.  Guns exist.  Cops shoot people sometimes.  How do I know these things are facts?  Because I wake up every day, leave my house, and interact with the physical world around me.

So, you know these things via anecdotal evidence:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/anecdotal?s=t

based on personal observation, case study reports, or random investigations rather than systematic scientific evaluation:
anecdotal evidence.

I mean...the fact you even asked such an assanine question in the first place; that someone should have to explain to you the difference between a claim that police offers exist versus a claim that a human being came back from the dead after three days, completely exposes how dishonest you are being.

Of course there's a difference. Anecdotal evidence isn't automatically accepted. There are different criteria we use to evaluate it, and different people weight those criteria differently.  

So...why do some people argue that anecdotal evidence is useless?

Anecdote - a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.

Whether or not an anecdote should be accepted as evidence, especially evidence for supernatural claims, is the issue here. Of course, the answer is unequivocally, "No." Anecdotes alone should never be accepted as definitive evidence for a claim that defies what science has established about the nature of our reality.

The problem for RR is that he doesn't want to admit that his religious beliefs require a much stronger evidential case than other, more mundane claims, in order to be accepted as likely to be true. This is a problem for him because such a case does not exist.