Street Epistemology - Practice

[curiosne]

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.
   

3.)  Yes, I would agree.   However it doesn't follow that because an author doesn't mention himself in the body of the text, that it is anonymous.   I am currently reading a biography, and the author doesn't speak about himself much at all.  

4.)  This doesn't make sense to me.   It seems to me, that you are saying that evidence which points me towards a particular direction, but doesn't count, until it is proven to be true, because that may bias me... .is this correct?  I thought that evidence was suppose to bias you!

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

This I wanted to separate out.  What do you mean, about what the context is and testimonies being less sufficient.  

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?.

It sounds like you are starting out with bias, and the previous concept of not allowing evidence, until it's proven.   Forgive me, but this seems like a good way to ignore what you do not want to hear rather than critical thinking.  For aliens, I think that you can make some arguments against them, which give it a little to overcome.  However while I'm skeptical about aliens I don't' how you would justify a need to provide more reason to believe in them other than sufficient evidence or that they should need to overcome me stacking the deck against them.  You talk about being objective and unbiased.... I think that you may want to do some self examination, as you appear to be inserting bias and subjectivity quite a bit.

3) The biography should have an inner cover or pages at the end of it explaining who the person in the biography is. Is there something similar for the Gospels?

4) Yeah, that was confusing and a hasty answer on my part. Let me restate it. I won't write their reasons off completely but I would need to know their reasons for their drastic life change. Is it due to Jesus's magic? Charisma? A cult following? If it's just because Jesus was like a life coach and positively impacted someone, then it doesn't give me any confidence that the Gospels are true. Look at what L. Ron Hubbard did with Scientology where he's had a positive impact of many people, it doesn't give me any confidence that Scientology is true.

The context is whether the claim is something that has occurred in reality and we have evidence for it. The less frequent the occurrence the more evidence that I'd need.

Yes, I'm biased. But biased towards what has occurred in reality and has been proven to be true.

Can you explain to me though why you're skeptical about aliens? How do you assign the confidence levels of a particular claim? I still do not have an understanding of your logic?