Anecdotal Evidence

[bennyboy]

I would agree that we may be willing to make more assumptions or concessions, for a number of reasons.  However, I don't think that others are required or expected to make the same allowances, for lack of reasonable evidence. I believe that what is reasonable in one case, is reasonable in a similar case.  I am also open to new ideas, and believe that we should look at the evidence.  Perhaps it is just me, but I think that sticking your head in the sand, and ignoring evidence that doesn't conform to your a priori beliefs is a good epistemology.

Do you think that the reason I'm not Christian is that I ignore evidence?

The fact is that very many people here were once Christian. In my case, I lived in poverty, read the Bible several hours each day, had Revelations-type dreams, and made inquiries into joining a monastery. But in the end, I looked around at the world, and then at the world as described by the Christian dogma, and I decided that the religion was severely at odds with reality.

Well your results seem to be better than the results of the poll of Scientists who responded  in the Journal Nature I cited. But it probably depends on what you are doing.  And I do think that the method of science has produced a number of great things.  

It depends what kind of science you're doing. You are thinking of science as a coherent institution. You say "Scientists" but I think you are really thinking of "Scientism"-ists. Let's make this clear-- Science is NOT a world view, and has no dogma, other than a refined method of inquiry investigation. Though not all would agree, I think I can make a strong claim that science is not at odds with religion at all, and does not even require a material world view.

You'll have to describe exactly what science the pollsters are talking about, or your citation doesn't really shed much light on your position. I can think of one branch of science which very clearly is NOT reproducible and cannot be experimented on: the idea of the multiverse.

My experience differs, and I find that if I take a presuppositional approach, that a large number of things are better explained through theism.   However I fail to see, what this has to do with testimony.   In fact this seems to be one of a number of things, which you offer through testimony in this post, which you seem to be giving as justification or reason for your beliefs (evidence).  I find this somewhat self defeating.

Really? You are unconvinced by what you see as my own testimony, and so you find this self-defeating of the idea that testimony is a poor source of evidence?

If you want to claim hypocrisy, then you've completely accepted my position: one man's "testimony" is another man's BS.