Street Epistemology - Practice

[curiosne]

3) From what I've read (wikipeadia, Bart Earlman Blog, Quora, etc), the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John are anonymous writings with the names being given the them as a Christian tradition. The identity of authorship for the Gospel of Mark is though being debated still. Would you agree with this?

4) But again, if your evidence does not speak towards its truth, should it be discussed at all? I can also give several examples where people were influenced by religious leaders drastically changed people's lives. I'm an ex-Buddhist so Buddha comes to mind where he has also influenced several kings and nobles.

5) This point needs more research from my end. I'll get back to you on it.

3.)   No I wouldn't..... and I would ask how they came to the conclusion that they where anonymous.  The only reasons I heard are not very good, while all the information for these books seem to point to the traditional authors without dispute to anyone else.  

4.)  If it gives us reason towards a belief, then doesn't that mean that it speaks towards the truth?  It doesn't have to get you to 100% to your destination, but getting you a little further down the road is still helpful. 

I believe I asked before;   do you think that you need 100% certainty in order to know (or have justified belief)?   Do you believe that others can testify to their knowledge, and thus you gain knowledge that you did not personally experience?

3) The Matthew, Luke and John gospels do not mention names of their authors in the actual writing. I am sure this is actually a fact which is not in dispute by the clergy.

4) Speaking from a completely objective view, no. Reasons could have unfounded claims. The claims here are what should be analysed and any influence the claims have on your belief need to be discarded until the claims are proved true. It is unhelpful that the claims should sway your opinion as then you will most likely become unbiased in your assessment of the truthfulness of the underlying the claim.

I think I've answered this one (not sure) but I don't need 100% certainty to believe in something just sufficient evidence to get me to a high confidence level.

Let's talk about the principle that we agreed earlier:

1. There is a positive correlation between the quantity/quality of evidence for a claim where you have low confidence of it's truth
   
2. All the available evidence I can find will get me towards a certain confidence level on how much I believe the claim in question.
   

Others can testify to their knowledge but again depending on what the context will be depends on how sufficient their testimonies are.

If I have low confidence of the truth of something then just someone's testimony would not get me to a high confidence level, no matter how much that person believes what they are saying is true, Eg I would not accept testimony of truth from an alien abductee as sufficient evidence, would you?.