On eye witnesses testimony as evidence

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http://www.atheismresource.com/2010/on- ... s-evidence

Christians, your thoughts on the article.

Thanks.

Asking questions with a full stop is never a good sign.

As to the article, I suggest you read something on the resurrection by NT Wright. His work on the subject is quite good. The article is also putting forward a sort of verificationalism, which has been discredited within epistemology for decades.

I don't actually see the verificationism at all. In fact, the author's point could probably be rephrased in a Bayesian format, and Bayesian reasoning is not verification.

In any case, I am not sure why reading a person's favorite apologist, or a favorite counter-apologist is going to be that much of an issue. The author, in this case, actually makes a sweeping criticism of all attempts at taking spiritual claims seriously. This means that any case against that author will tend to require a sweeping rebuttal, one addressing all of the criticisms of miracles to show that one (or a few more) is acceptable.

All that said, I am not sure that I agree with his example of the worm in depth, but I don't think that this disagreement with his conception really deeply impacts his case.

I believe he made it clear that he would automatically believe in God and his miracles if God did as requested near the end of his article.

Right, but he also made is clear that historical miracle claims were almost universally based upon bad evidence. This is rather sweeping as he is not just criticizing the resurrection but lots and lots of other things as well.

What do you believe is a more reasonable approach? I'm curious.

What evidence exactly WOULD support a resurrection?

What evidence supports a kidney transplant? Well, maybe you can used DNA to say this is not - PROBABLY not - the subject's original kidney. But was DNA testing available in the days of the original Barnard work?

Even in these days of great technical advances, there is not all that much for which there is evidence other than eyewitness. Can I PROVE I finished my PhD?

A person alive and functioning on kidneys he was not born with. That is proof.

ruveyn

He was asking for proof that those kindeys weren't the ones he was born with.

Easy. A person who completely dies in front of us and then is supernaturally resurrected in front of us would be extremely good evidence. It'll mean that we should strongly reconsider what we initially thought about the Biblical account of Jesus' resurrection as skeptics.



But it's not something that's not possible. You could watch a doctor do a kidney transplant for someone else and that would be a good enough evidence for you.



No, you can't prove anything outside of mathematics and logic. You can only show why you believe something is true or not. That's what evidence is for.

No proofs ... just evidence.

In the Bible, Jesus did appear to many people after he was ressurected. You deem the second-hand testimony of those people invalid. So what, do you want Jesus to appear to everyone on the planet every generation and say "Hey, just letting you know, I rose from the dead. Later."?

As convienent as that would be, I think it kind of defeats the point. I mean, God already has legions of angels who worship him because they know he exists.

Note the key phrase "In the Bible". That's not enough.

Second-hand details of third-hand witness accounts are very unreliable.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

what is something extrodanary happens but leaves no evidence? If a tree ascends to a higher plane of existence and nobody is around to vdeotape it, then what?

Simple. Even if it did happen, we have no good reason to believe it did.

Nope. I read it again. Pretty much the entire discussion under 'part 2' is verificationism combined with a presumption of naturalism.

I don't understand those big words like verificationism and Bayesian, but it'd be cool if you could specify to me some of the errors (if not all of them) in his article.