Testimony is Evidence

[John V]

It's worthless because it is contradictory among faiths, and there's no clear metric by which to evaluate the testimony of various traditions.

We make decisions all the time without a clear metric to evaluate evidence.

When I say "my satisfaction," I speak as an unconvinced non-Christian, under the assumption that your testimony has as its goal convincing non-Christians that the Christian represents existential truth.

No, I'm not trying to convince you of that..

Any growing religion stands to benefit by increasing its membership-- the benefits of increased community, increased income, increased credibility by appeal to numbers, and so on.  This should be obvious, I would think.

Go read Acts and the epistles. Growth tended to cause Paul serious trouble - yet he persisted. Mohammed by contrast used an army for growth and benefited personally from it.

And then a Muslim will come in and say the exact same thing.

On what basis will they claim that Mohammed suffered as Jesus or Paul did?

You need a lot more than a relative weight of suspected motivations to establish credibility.

First, that's just one factor.

Second...who are you to decide what I need to find credibility? A big part of your argument is basically, I personally don't find such testimony convincing in the slightest - so no one should. I'm kind of surprised by that as you're generally one of the more reasonable posters here.

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So a xtian propagandist trying to spread his delusions would or would not qualify as having something to gain in your scenario?

Some do, some don't. I'm don't get why you guys have such difficulty working outside a black/white framework.

Jesus ended up crucified. Paul rotted away in prison. Muhammed ended up powerful and possibly wealthy. That doesn't prove that any of them were correct, but it's a factor for consideration.

The pastors of my church had outside jobs all their lives as we're a very small congregation. I trust them more than a televangelist asking people to send him large checks.

I don't see the difficulty in this concept. I've given the secular example of a scientist funded by a tobacco company. I would think everyone understands that.