RE: A simple challenge for atheists
January 30, 2015 at 12:32 pm
(This post was last modified: January 30, 2015 at 12:39 pm by SteelCurtain.)
(January 30, 2015 at 12:20 pm)SteveII Wrote: The problem with that statement is that can be applied to eyewitness testimony too. So by your reasoning, eyewitness testimony would not be evidence.
So what you are proving here is that you are incapable of thinking critically about literally anything. If it makes sense to you at first glance, you're going to roll with it.
If you were to present evidence of an eyewitness, that is still hearsay. The reason an ACTUAL eyewitness testimony is not hearsay is that the eyewitness is available for cross-examination. We have the person there to tease out all the contradictions and inaccuracies in their statement. Their claims can be tested and researched and fleshed out for accuracy.
Incidentally, the reliability of eyewitness testimony is something of interest to psychiatry of late.
(January 30, 2015 at 12:23 pm)SteveII Wrote: You realize that it is not allowed in court because it cannot be cross examined. The fact that there are exceptions proves the point. Hearsay evidence is indeed evidence.
Are you 14 years old? Why do you insist on being petulant? You realize that you are doing absolutely nothing to advance your position with this. You are merely trying to win a petty word game. We are not claiming that hearsay is not something that could be true. We are claiming that it does nothing to prove the validity of the claim.
It doesn't count as evidence because it is notoriously unreliable and untestable. It doesn't prove anything. It, again, is the claim which needs to be tested.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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