Satan Disproves Christianity

[Esquilax]

It can to most people. You don't get to decide what constitutes valid evidence for anyone but yourself.

Okay, I agree with you in part. Testimony counts as evidence. However, things are more complicated than that...

Ever wonder why we have perjury laws? Because people can lie during testimony; we don't assume that what everyone says is truthful just because they swore or affirmed it, after all.

Also, what about competing testimony? Religions do this a lot; there's 30,000 denominations of your religion, and many of them have directly contradictory claims in terms of their rules, and individual adherents often exhibit contradictory revelations. Isaac Newton's personal experience with god, for example, told him that considering Jesus to be god was idolatry, and that they were separate people. How do we decide which testimony is the correct one?

What about all the religions you don't believe in? Alien abduction stories? Every weird claim that happens to have testimony attached? How do we tell which is true and which is not?

Oh, right. Evidence.

Testimony might be fine to you, but if it is evidence, it's weak evidence, especially with regards to fantastical claims. That's the crux of the thought experiment we're trying to do with you here; we're trying to show you that unverifiable testimony isn't a reliable way to get to the truth.