Why is faith important?

[jstrodel]

Did I miss something here or are you saying that you take the testimonies of other people from other religions with a different god than yours.......as real?

Their testimonies are real. They are experiencing something, whether it is some sort of psychological trick or a real spiritual force. That does not validate their theology though.

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Argumentum ad populum


Argumentum ad populum
Unsupported assertion (that people believe something occurred, is not evidence that something did in fact occur, or that it was a non-natural event).

By now, you've no doubt seen a few of these, where I break down the fallacies you've employed. Are you going to continue with the insistence that you've brought reason to the table?

Your claim is different than actually showing this. A testimony is a historical document. People would not reduce what the majority of ancient people believed and recorded to be an argument ad populum. You are just using certain categories, you are not actually making an argument. You did not even respond to what I wrote about that earlier.

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There is no human activity in which science is the only means of validating truth claims.

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I fail to see how having a knowledge of science invalidates their testimony.

Because when they are asked to prove that they really can use psychihc powers/summon spirits, etc. they either refuse or fail to do so.

By that standard human lack of understanding of the processes that existed before the big bang would invalidate our entire worldview and everything that we know today.

Lack of understanding? No. The problem is not that we don't know how people consort with demons (or whatever you mean to say), but that we can't find any evidence that they do at all in the first place. We cannot establish how it is done if it cannot be established that it is even done (by the person claiming they can do it, no less).

What you dismiss as superstition with no evidence

If it has no evidence, it is superstition.
...okay, here's the rest of that sentence:

other people have held to with the much stronger form of evidence of their testimony.

Actually, personal trstimony is one of the weakest forms of evidence there is. I could testify to literally anything right now, but I cannot prove my testimony is possibly true with science if it is impossible.

One asks for proof, they refuse. Another asks, and they try, but fail to give it. What is someone supposed to make of this? The stars were out of alignment, that's why my dowsing rod didn't work, right...
(By the way, do you believe dowsing rods work, and why do you believe the way you do?)

There is tons of evidence for the supernatural, but typically it is not in the form that science can study in the same way that physics is in a form that history cannot study.

Your basic assumption is that if something is not knowable using scientific methods, it is someone that you can safely ignore. Do you have any evidence for this?