(August 23, 2017 at 10:15 am)Anomalocaris Wrote:(August 23, 2017 at 9:41 am)SteveII Wrote: Read more carefully. I said "lasting or meaningful effect on the physical world that could be examined at a later time". Each of these phrases carry meaning. What they clearly do not mean is:
1. that the actions, interactions, and conversions were not meaningful--they could could be very meaningful and could contain very important truth of a matter.
2. that the actions, interactions, and conversations did not have an effect on the physical world--only that they "could not be examined at a later time"
Regarding the first half of your post, this is a general discussion on testimony as evidence and not on a particular body of evidence--that would be a whole different topic in a different sub-forum.
Again, In principle, nothing happens, no action, interaction, or conversation could have effects that could not be examined at a later time. Effects that could not be examined at later time is information lost. Physics says no information once created is ever lost. Now it might be very difficult and costly to interpret the information, but it is there. Your speech is sound that propagate as pressure waves in the air, and by examining the current movement of every air molecule, and all the ways energy is added to and removed from the air, you can in principle trace backwards the movement of air in minute granularity until you've reconstructed the past pressure pulses that was your speech. Your past speech is in principle examinable in the form of the current behavior of all the Molecules that once carried the pressure pulses that carried your speech.
Yes, it is difficult. That's why we have tape recorders to record the sound and not mega-ultra computers to reconstruct the sound. But it is in principle possible.
I don't believe you are capable of saying anything important, so I won;t even bother with a tape recorder. And I think even you agree that you have nothing worthy of time on a supercomputer to recover the information to verify or reconstruct.
But if you think you have information on something so heavenshaking, so to speak, as indications of an entity so kind as to create you and threaten you with eternal torment, you ought to want to welcome as much effort and time and resource as it takes to confirm or deny whether it was real, or it was a lie. Don't you?
Why are you so afraid it is a lie that you would not even discuss the possibility of how to verify it?
Your talk of physics has nothing at all to do with my point. We are discussing testimony--which to use the OP definition: "is the transfer of knowledge from one person to another with the assertion that this information is true (this may be written or spoken). If one is testifying of an event, this testimony very well might be the only evidence you will ever be able to examine. For example:
1. Actions witnessed: someone running, weaving in and out of traffic, aimed his gun at the clerk.
2. Conditions witnessed through the five senses like at 8am I was sleeping, smelling gasoline, hearing an argument in the next apartment, the light was off.
3. Interactions like the man shoved me out of the way, the stranger gave me a dollar for a coffee, I gave my bus seat to the old lady.
4. Conversations like Fred said he would shoot my dog if it shit on his lawn again or that Mary said she is having a bad day.
Tell me, a week following any of these events, what physical evidence would be readily available to examine if the event really happened? A month? A year? There are billions of such things every minute of every day happening in the world.
The rest of your post does not apply since you missed the point and are veering off topic.