Testimony is Evidence

[bennyboy]

Of course testimony, as defined in the OP, is evidence. It isn't conclusive evidence. There are many factors we use to assess the strength of testimony as evidence. But to say it isn't evidence at all is ridiculous. Most of what we think we know we learned through testimony.

I think, as often happens in these threads, that we're down to semantics.  What you are talking about is the communication of ideas.  Technically, you guys (by which I mean the Christians arguing in favor of testimony as evidence) are right: almost everything we "know" is testimony-- a scientific journal with all its data is in some sense just some guy saying he saw some stuff, took some measurements, and got particular results.

I think almost everyone here would take a collection of scientific papers as evidence.  In fact, if I were trying to prove a scientific point, I'd like half a dozen papers and just link them here, especially where I wouldn't have the resources to perform certain experiments on my own.  So if papers are testimony, then I'm relying almost exclusively on testimony.

Nevertheless, I'd say that for most of us, there's a belief that testimony is shorthand.  I believe that I at least COULD corroborate almost all science with my own direct observations.  I could study enough about electronics and physics to make my own detectors.  I could go get degrees in math and physics.  I could worm my way into scientific communities such that I might have access to things like the LHC, or at least ask for guest status.

With religious testimonial, things are different.  I do not expect God to speak to me in the form of a burning bush, no matter what I do-- I can only, ever, take somebody's word for it that 1) that happened; and 2) the person isn't misinterpreting a different experience (lysergic mold on his rye bread causing him to hallucinate, light or chemical effects which being uneducated he might not understand, etc.)

So yeah, testimony can be evidence, depending on your semantics for those words.  But in terms of being evidence with the power to persuade, it's of pretty poor quality.  I'm perfectly capable of believing that the 3 billion or so Christians throughout history were ALL deluded, ALL misinterpreting their experiences, and that NONE could have got direct corroboration of observations that I would value enough to decide to accept the God idea in general, or the Christian Jesus-as-God idea in specific.  And that's just if I'm going Jesus-vs-not-Jesus.  What if I take the "testimony" of a billion hindus and as many muslims?

The latter, in science, would be the nail in the coffin-- it would be obvious that scientific conclusions would be invalidated by so much contrary evidence.  And so is the Christian position-- just the fact that there are so many religious views which contradict Christianity is a sufficient challenge to demonstrate that testimonial evidence alone cannot be considered sufficient (or even, in my opinion, of any value at all).

In short, there are two views we can take, neither of which helps us with the God idea:
1)  Testimony is NOT taken as evidence.  Christians, having no other kind of evidence, therefore have no basis on which to base their beliefs (or to transmit them)
2)  Testimony IS taken as evidence.  The Christian narrative, being in conflict with billions of other people's "evidence," has in this sense as much evidence against it as for it, and the Christian case simply isn't compelling enough for anyone to bother with it.