Testimony is Evidence

[Thumpalumpacus]

Repeatability is not necessary for scientific evidence -- take paleontology, or astronomy, for instance.

[Astonished]

Repeatability is not necessary for scientific evidence -- take paleontology, or astronomy, for instance.

Right. All that's required is that the predictions made about it are consistently accurate. THOSE kind of things are what's repeatable. You don't solve a murder by doing it over again but the evidence should be consistent with pointing to cause and culprit.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Repeatability is not necessary for scientific evidence -- take paleontology, or astronomy, for instance.

Right. All that's required is that the predictions made about it are consistently accurate. THOSE kind of things are what's repeatable. You don't solve a murder by doing it over again but the evidence should be consistent with pointing to cause and culprit.

I know, just wanted to forestall the evolution-deniers sure to grasp that straw.

[Minimalist]

It cannot even be demonstrated that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts.  The authorship is unknown;  the earliest plausible time of composition is circa 70 CE, decades after the alleged events; and regardless of who they were, all the authors are dead and cannot be cross-examined to validate or discredit their testimony.  At this point they're no better than hearsay.

The most important fact is that they do not even make such a claim.  That is left to desperate believers to invent long after.

[Astonished]

It cannot even be demonstrated that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts.  The authorship is unknown;  the earliest plausible time of composition is circa 70 CE, decades after the alleged events; and regardless of who they were, all the authors are dead and cannot be cross-examined to validate or discredit their testimony.  At this point they're no better than hearsay.

The most important fact is that they do not even make such a claim.  That is left to desperate believers to invent long after.

Among so, SO many other things.

[vorlon13]

It cannot even be demonstrated that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts.  The authorship is unknown;  the earliest plausible time of composition is circa 70 CE, decades after the alleged events; and regardless of who they were, all the authors are dead and cannot be cross-examined to validate or discredit their testimony.  At this point they're no better than hearsay.

The most important fact is that they do not even make such a claim.  That is left to desperate believers to invent long after.

and not too many years after the disciple era, His message is already so mangled by multiple chains of oral transmission that Apostle Paul can traipse in and preach pretty much anything he wants whether it contradicts Jesus or not and he rapidly mutates a lucrative coffer filling version and yet not be burned for heresy because there is no way to tell.

[Minimalist]

OR, jesusism was a lower class phenomenon with no central core of beliefs which led to an astounding fracturing among the various independent sects which identified with this christ phantom.  The upper classes paid no attention to it at all.  Later on, one such group had the idea to euhemerize their godboy with the claim that he had lived on earth in fucking Palestine FFS and invented a whole story about how he was crucified by the Romans later on.  Then they went about stomping out the rival cliques which thought they were full of shit.

[vorlon13]

follow the money, min, follow the money . . .

[SteveII]

I will spell it out more fully:

Take your claim "Witness testimony is demonstrably unreliable as a form of evidence". That is simply not true. We rely on it to some degree millions of times a minute all over the world: In court cases of all types (criminal, civil, family), the running of governments of all levels, the running of corporations, the reporting of news, writing of articles/books, etc. These are all defeaters to your premise A. 

Perhaps you will backpedal and say "some witness testimony is demonstrably unreliable as a form of evidence". I would agree with this premise. But there are ramifications of this backpedaling: The converse is also true: some witness testimony is reliable as a form of evidence. If that is true, your conclusion is no longer a conclusion that follows from the premises--but a statement of opinion. Now you have:

    1. Some witness testimony is demonstrably unreliable as a form of evidence
    2. Some witness testimony is demonstrably reliable as a form of evidence
    3. Therefore the evidence is reliable on a case by case basis. 

Wait! that looks familiar.

For the third time, tell me why this is not more accurate:

     1 A witness's recollection could be wrong
     2 The witness's character, cognitive ability, subject knowledge, experiences, and track record serve can minimize the possibility of error
     3 The context of the event can minimize the possibility of error
     4 Therefore the reliability of testimony varies depending on the witness and the context

Since you've omitted a critical piece of my position twice now in order to bolster your own, I will phrase my response such that you cannot ignore it again.  

Just because we are forced to trust (or 'rely on', if it pleases you) for practicality purposes, the most mundane and inconsequential testimony in order to be functional living beings, the fact that we do so does not change the inherently unreliable nature of witness testimony as a form evidence.

It just means that in order to function from day to day, we must make choices about about which types of claims are worth accepting solely on an extremely fallible form of evidence, and which ones aren't.  We do this by evaluating the risk; the consequences of the testimony being wrong.  More serious claims beyond the mundane, (religious ones, for example), carry far-reaching consequences that effect our world views, and the ways in which we value our lives, and the lives of others.

Example 1.   My husband testifies to me that he fed our son Macaroni and cheese for lunch.  Maybe he did.  Or maybe, due to sleep deprivation, he forgot that he actually fed him French toast, and was remembering mac and cheese from the day before.  What do I do?  Dig further?  Pull the garbage can apart in search of the empty mac and cheese container?  Interrogate my three year old?  Smell his breath?  Assess the color and consistency of the food stains on his shirt?  Of course not.  I'm going to go ahead and accept his testimony alone, despite the fact that I know it could be wrong. Why?  Because, there are literally ZERO negative consequences to my son having French toast instead of mac and cheese.  Any further investigation for corroborating evidence is simply not worth the trouble.

Example 2.   On the other hand, if my husband tells me god came to him in a dream and said our son has been chosen to be an angel, so we must toss him into the Grand Canyon, well...lol.  Needless to say, I'm not going to accept on his testimony alone, that he's having conversations with God about our son's divine future.

In both examples, my husband's testimony could be erroneous.  This is why testimony, as a form of evidence, sucks.  It's been demonstrated to suck over and over.  It's is just a matter of which claims we're willing to risk being wrong about, and what the implications of being wrong about them are.

You continue to just restate your position over and over and NEVER addressed any of my points--which if you did, it would long ago have illustrated your position is easily undermined simply by answering my questions. You are basing your whole position on witness testimony being "inherently unreliable" in the face of the fact that we use this form of evidence in even the most serious circumstances millions of time per day.  It is not the case that once a matter gets to some subjective threshold of consequential, we discard witness testimony. As your examples point out, the distinction between mundane and consequential claims is handled with MORE evidence--not a discarding of one type of evidence in favor of a different kind of evidence. 

Why do you cling to this unsupported assertion? Your reason has been obvious since the beginning: you want to preserve your objection to the evidence for Christianity. 

For the fourth (and last) time, tell me why this is not more accurate:

     1 A witness's recollection could be wrong
     2 The witness's character, cognitive ability, subject knowledge, experiences, and track record serve can minimize the possibility of error
     3 The context of the event can minimize the possibility of error
     4 Therefore the reliability of testimony varies depending on the witness and the context

[Minimalist]

you want to preserve your objection to the evidence for Christianity.

There is no evidence for xtianity.... merely the pious bleating of later believers, heavily edited and error-ridden gibberish which supposedly fully grown adults still think is real.