Testimony is Evidence

[bennyboy]

1. Atheists have decided to be theists.
2. Such decision requires a major change to world view.
3. People don't make decisions that require major changes to world view without a clear metric to evaluate evidence.
3. There's no evidence for religious beliefs other than testimony.
4. Therefore, testimony is evidence which can be evaluated by a clear metric.

I've already answered this, but since you haven't responded to it, let me also try a point-by-point approach:

I'd agree with (1) and (2), and while I think there may be other kinds of religious evidence, let's take only testimonial evidence for now.

(3) is false. People very clearly make major decisions about reality without a clear metric to evaluate evidence (or philosophical arguments, or any other persuasive vehicle). I don't think it's safe to proceed beyond that assertion until it can be demonstrated to be true.

It seems to me that both scientific and just common sense observations will show that people make crazy decisions all the time, even life changing ones-- they clearly do NOT have a sensible metric in place when making decisions affecting the world view. Do we even need to give examples? Cuz I can list about 100 in an hour if you want.