Testimony is Evidence

[Ravenshire]

You know, I've grown tired of arguing with our resident brick wall. It's become painfully obvious that his emotional investment in the worth of testimony has overridden common sense. Even the courts are starting to instruct juries in the (un)reliability of testimony evidence, yet RR staunchly defends it as being at least as worthy as physical evidence, citing that that physical evidence can be corrupted, misleading, etc... while ignoring the arguments that physical evidence can be retested with little if any degradation yet testimony only gets less reliable the further you get from the actual events.p

We've had an expert in testimony explain the problems, supported by physical evidence and unwittingly demonstrating exactly what he was explaining. RR dismissed the physical evidence and, ironically, questioned the reliability of the testimony. My own case of conflating the 1998 Goodwill Games with Olympic games, similarly dismissed.

RR, it's obvious you want testimony to be as reliable (or more) as physical evidence. The problem, for you, is that the evidence doesn't bear your wishes out. I can only be left with the belief that your emotional investment in testimony springs from your belief in the unsupported, second-hand (at best) testimonies that inform your faith.

It's actually kinda funny that someone who claims to be skeptical can be so credulous of ancient, unsupported claims yet so disbelieving of the evidence laid out under his nose.