Testimony is Evidence

[The Grand Nudger]

Now if you think my reasons are faulty or that I still don't know how logic works, please be specific, in what you feel I'm doing wrong.

LOL, not like it would be the first time....but here goes.

You;re doing it wrong in that you are searching for a semantic equivalence between testimony and evidence, not a qualitative equivalence.  Whatever truth you could extract from such a process would be trivial.  Further, your prime example of testimony as evidence is not an example of testimony as evidence..or, again, of any qualitative equivalence, but an issue of when people will -accept- it as evidence.  

Regardless of any trivial semantic equivalence you might draw, or how many people would accept testimony as evidence, the issue of a disparity between testimony and evidence still exists.  Cheifly, in that testimony not only does not make it's contents evident, it cannot.  The simplest and most uncontroversial claim, referred to as testimony, does not advance or indicate the accuracy of it;s contents in the least.  To do that, we (and this means you...as well) must refer to other articles external to the claim, external to the testimony..and these things are the evidence upon which the simple value of the testimony -as- testimony are assessed by.  This is what makes it -evident- that a persons testimony is or is not accurate.  

It should be very clear, in all of this, that when discussing evidence and testimony...one of these things is not like the other.

Continuing...you could, if you wanted to, choose to -accept- testimony as evidence but you will run into a whole host of problems that simply do not exist with evidence. DNA does not have a faulty memory. It does not lie. It is not subject o the whole host of bias -inherent- in even the most reliable human witness. The notion that testimony has x y ans z and so is not evidence and dna has x y and z and so is not evidence, I'mm willing to bet actual money, will rely on the same sort of sloppy thought expressed in the primary assertion that testimony is evidence. Trivial equivalences, semantics, and the accidental, incidental, or intentional ignorance of irreconcilable and irrefutable qualitative differences.

Thoughts>?