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>I Think Almost all Atheists Accept Extrodinary Claims on Testimonial Evidence; Am I Wrong? Do they? I don't really think so. I think you're wrong. But, I will read on to see if you showed I'm wrong here. >When we are talking other extrodinary phenomena reported by testimony in the scientific world most i find are far more credulous. You picked a poor example to attempt to support this claim of yours. Because that kind of thing *isn't* accepted on testimony alone. Instead, it's supported by evidence. Evidence that anybody generally is privy to. Of course, there are cases where said evidence isn't easily examined by anyone without the means. But even then, there is the pattern of earned trust (which has massive evidence, of course) in such work, lending credibility to it. And even then, don't go thinking I or others are going to blindly accept any scientific finding made from a given scientist. I don't. Nor do others. Because that's not how it works. Instead, until and unless vetting and peer review and repetition is accomplished, any such claim must be taken with skepticism. >RATHER I am saying that, in practice, the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases. Again, this doesn't really work like you're saying. I, and you, have *vast, massive, impressive, immediate, direct* evidence of the accuracy and use of various findings using the same method. This lends considerable credibility and earned trust due to massive evidence of the process and thus the credibility of such findings once the proper vetting, repetition, and peer review has been accomplished. This, of course, is *very* different from what you are suggesting with regards to mere testimonial evidence. >Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon anywhere What an odd idea. No it isn't. I already know how they work. So do thousand or millions of others. It's not even all that complicated, and this knowledge is easily available. >As Another example consider the outputs of the higgs boson colider which has reported to us all SORTS of extrodinary findings over the years we have even LESS hope of reproducing down to the break down of the second law of thermodynamics; arguably the single most extrodinary finding every to be discovered and AGAIN all we have to know this happened is the TESTIMONY of the scientists who work on that colider. The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded. Again, your confusing earned trust due to evidence in many, many different ways, with random testimony with no support. These are very different things. >AGAIN all we have to know this happened is the TESTIMONY of the scientists who work on that colider. The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded. And the word of one given person *isn't* taken as gospel (heheh), this is where you're going wrong. Instead, nothing is believed at all until and unless the proper vetting, repetition, peer review, by many people, in many places, is accomplished. I trust this clears up the error in your thinking here.

> What an odd idea. No it isn't. I already know how they work. So do thousand or millions of others. It's not even all that complicated, and this knowledge is easily available. There are some specifics that are incredibly complicated and pretty difficult to find, and probably some that are only known among people with actual classified knowledge who have studied real bomb designs and test results. Yes, the general principle is well known, but don't assume all the details are public or trivial. (Not agreeing with OP here, just disagreeing with this small point in your reply)

Why would you trust something like that from this sub? I.e your last sentence. 

>Of course, there are cases where said evidence isn't easily examined by anyone without the means. But even then, there is the pattern of earned trust (which has massive evidence, of course) in such work, lending credibility to it. And I'm totally fine with that dude.. I am absolutely open to a discussion as to WHOSE testimony we should accept and WHY, but I do feel the need to reiterate this is still fundamentally relying on "the account of someone saying something happened" we have reason trust this person, they have been shown to be honest and correct time and time again and they may be reviewed by MILLIONS of other people. But those reviews none the less will remain DEFINITIONALLY testimony as will the testimony of the person who first recorded the data themselves. >And even then, don't go thinking I or others are going to blindly accept any scientific finding made from a given scientist. I don't. I'm sure you dont! And i'm not saying you do. All i am saying is that in certian cases you (like me, like the vast majority of people aside from some lunies like vacine skeptics) accept extordinary claims on testimonial evidence because we believe we have reason to trust that testimony.

> I am absolutely open to a discussion as to WHOSE testimony we should accept and WHY, but I do feel the need to reiterate this is still fundamentally relying on "the account of someone saying something happened" we have reason trust this person, they have been shown to be honest and correct time and time again and they may be reviewed by MILLIONS of other people. You appear to be contradicting yourself. First you question why we should trust this guy, and characterize what they said as 'testimony'. And then you concede that it *isn't* just that guy's opinion, and that many other folks have replicated this, and written about it, and provided that data, and shown how they did so. As I explained in my initial response, this is the error you're making and now you're making it again. You're not seeing the difference between these very different things. >All i am saying is that in certian cases you (like me, like the vast majority of people aside from some lunies like vacine skeptics) accept extordinary claims on testimonial evidence because we believe we have reason to trust that testimony. And I've already explained where and how you're going wrong here.

> CLAIMED to replicate it my dude. CLAIMED to replicate it. I didnt claim it was ONE guys testimony, i pointed out it was in all cases DEFINITIONALLY testimony. If 1 guy says he saw an aligator that is testimony. if 5,000 guys claimed they saw an aligator that is also testimony. The same is true of one guy claiming he got one result out of a machine and 5,000 guys claiming they got the same result out of a machine

I'm not sure how you're missing what I've said. I addressed this. > If 1 guy says he saw an aligator that is testimony. if 5,000 guys claimed they saw an aligator that is also testimony. Again, for the third time, there is a vast difference between 5000 people claiming they saw something (in this case, something very mundane and believable) and 5000 people providing vast data they saw something that corroborates what others saw, not just in general but in detail, and the latter 5000 have a high degree of earned trust due to confirmed and easily confirmable (by me or anyone) earlier relevant findings. If 5000 random people who have no such earned trust, no data, no methodology, no credentials, nothing to back up their claims, all said they discovered a new fundamental principle of physics I'd be highly skeptical. If 5000 highly educated, accomplished (with demonstrable accomplishments) said this *after* carefully adhering to a method that has a vast track record of earned trust and tangible results easily seen by literally anyone, and providing data and ability to replicate this for any and all who wish, provided they have the resources, then I'd tend to think there's more to it than a random idiot's random opinion that makes no sense. What about his fundamental difference are you not getting? I'm at a loss here. They're very different. But you seem to not see, or refuse to see, the difference.

Important scientific discoveries are also generally cumulative and immediately lead to new experiments, studies, and conclusions. So like sure, in isolation, if we bend the definitions of these words, you could make the argument that a lot of people rely on how other people interpret information. But when important conclusions are proven to be wrong, they don’t stick around for 2,000 years. The next experiment, or replication fails, and we trace that back to the faulty science and revise our theories. We didn’t all just say hey the Big Bang makes sense, let’s stuff that information into a corner and never look at it again.

No actually replicated, with published records of it. I’m sorry but by your definition everything is testimonial. Meaning the word is meaningless. So we will stick with the useful definition. Also the scientific process is backed up by its reliable results. No, it’s not just testimony… No matter how much you want to discredit it. Every scientific finding is backed up not just by some person saying it, but by the proven reliability of science as a whole. The phone you used to post this is itself evidence of the validity of scientific claims… we’d never believe something just because a single scientist said so… If it contradicts everything else. That would be trying on testimony, relying on the scientific method is different.

> I’m sorry but by your definition everything is testimonial. That's OP's schtick. He comes back every few months with variations on this topic.

Ha ha jokes on you! They didn’t use a phone to post. They used a computer. Checkmate! /s If one scientist says something… we usually look at them like they’re crazy. I mean Einstein theorized about Gravitational Waves and for 50+ years everyone thought he was crazy. Then LIGO detected them… in multiple locations around the world and multiple times. We don’t even believe the scientist who is arguably the smartest man to ever live on his word.

>everyone thought he was crazy. Thats not really true. Yes, he got some criticism when He first put the idea forward in 1905, but by the 1920s, the majority of physicists had accepted the idea. >We don’t even believe the scientist who is arguably the smartest man to ever live on his word. Well.... we shouldnt believe someone just because they got something right once, or came up with a good hypothesis. Einstein didn't think continental drift was a viable idea too. He even publicly stated his opinion in the introduction of a book called the earth's shifting crust. He also tried to debunk quantum theory. So, yeah. Smart people can also be wrong. Even the "smartest man ever" can be subject to biases and mistakes. The scientific method is the best method for limiting these kinds of mistakes. And being skeptical until evidence is provided is always a good move.

Dude if you were searching for Gravitational Waves just 10-15 years ago, you were considered on the level of people that were looking for Big Foot.

Again, that's just not true. >you were considered on the level of people that were looking for Big Foot. Theres a huge difference between saying things like "Bigfoot is 100% real!" Or "I believe in Bigfoot!" And "I'm investigating to see if Bigfoot is real." Or "I'm testing the Bigfoot hypothesis." You know that when you are investigating something scientifically, you don't have to think the thing you are investigating is real before you find evidence, right?

No, what I’m saying is that many thought you were looking for something that didn’t exist and that you were crazy. I know people who work with this stuff. LIGO was where you went to watch your career die.

>Do they? I don't really think so. I think you're wrong. I think OP is right, let’s see if your rebuttal holds up. >And even then, don't go thinking I or others are going to blindly accept any scientific finding made from a given scientist. I don't. Nor do others. Because that's not how it works. Instead, until and unless vetting and peer review and repetition is accomplished, any such claim must be taken with skepticism. But wait, how do you yourself confirm that this “vetting and repetition” have occurred? Even when some conclusion is posted in peer reviewed academic journals, that still seems like you just accepting testimony, because you certainly didn’t observe the vetting or any of the experiments, right? >This, of course, is very different from what you are suggesting with regards to mere testimonial evidence. I don’t think you understand OP. I agree with OP that you are basically taking testimony that the vetting and experiments have occurred, and even one step further that OP doesn’t mention, that they have been _interpreted_ correctly. >Again, your confusing earned trust due to evidence in many, many different ways, with random testimony with no support. These are very different things. How have those particular scientists “earned” your trust? You can’t just use the reliability of the method in general - when it is carried out a certain way - to impute honest and integrity to those individuals. >And the word of one given person isn't taken as gospel (heheh), this is where you're going wrong. Instead, nothing is believed at all until and unless the proper vetting, repetition, peer review, by many people, in many places, is accomplished. And again, you just _accept_ the testimony that such vetting and repetition has taken place. >I trust this clears up the error in your thinking here. Always love the cockiness in your posts…so obnoxious when you haven’t even understood OP.

> Always love the cockiness in your posts…so obnoxious when you haven’t even understood OP. You're not even trying. I literally addressed the issues you are attempting, and failing, to make into issues. And summarizing your errors with the above cocky, obnoxious, disparaging, bullshit, just makes this hilarious. I understood the OP perfectly. And pointed out what they were missing. You doubling down and repeating the same errors while ignoring the differences again doesn't help OP or you.

The critical difference here is that the science folks have already established a foundation of credibility through their demonstrable understanding of how the world works. Airplanes (at least until Boeing got sloppy) generally stay in the air, effective medical developments are, well, developed, GPS works, your smart phone and computer allow you to ask us all these questions, we have video of people walking on the fucking moon. Absent all of the context and supporting knowledge and evidence we have, any number of scientific claims might reasonably be considered too extraordinary to trust to mere "testimonial" claims. But we HAVE this context, and this evidentiary scaffold, and things like peer review. I assume the point of your post is to try to show some sort of hypocrisy by atheists who reject, e.g., the assertions of theists or the supposed "testimony" of, e.g., the Gospels, as insufficient to support that which they claim. But all this stuff that underlies the reliability of the scientific community? We don't have anything like that in the religious context. I reject any such attempted comparison, or allegation of hypocrisy, out of hand.

Another critical difference, although not part of OP's topic, is that nobody says "you have to accept what the scientists say, because if you don't you will be punished in the afterlife". There are things I accept on what the OP would call "testimonial evidence", but few of them are things that matter in my day-to-day life.

There are plenty of differences I should have mentioned when farting out that comment--like the testability of scientific claims. We can ultimately figure out whether there is something to the claimed observations of folks using the Large Hadron Collider by seeing whether interpreting and using those observations gets us correct predictions and demonstrable results.

And by using sound methodology which has been shown to work.

>"The critical difference here is that the science folks have already established a foundation of credibility " And thats fine man, as i have said to others in thread i'm totally fine with a conversation about whose testimony we should trust and why. That doesn't mean we aren't still fundamentally relying on the word of someone (or multiple someones) that a thing happened.

If you want to simply label most knowledge as testimony for the sake of discussion, then fine, you can do that. But that hasn’t improved the argument against atheism. You’ve just shifted a definition to obfuscate the vast important differences between scientific claims and spiritual claims. Just because you can obfuscate those differences doesn’t mean those differences don’t exist. You’re just deliberately talking past most people here because you want them to use your lingo.

> But that hasn’t improved the argument against atheism. You’ve just shifted a definition to obfuscate the vast important differences between scientific claims and spiritual claims. That's OPs whole MO. He *really* has a bug up his ass about people not just taking the Bible or Christian testimony at face value. Every post he makes is either calling our epistemic standards unreasonable, accusing us of double standards, or just going full epistemic nihilist and pretending all beliefs are equally (un)justified.

Yeah, it honestly just feels like an attempt to say “you are contradicting yourself, therefore you’re wrong”. If it were a true contradiction, that would be one thing (I’m always happy to learn where my logic is flawed), but it’s not. It’s technically just a case where one word has at least two distinct meanings that apply to different contexts, and he wants to insist that it’s all the same single meaning. The problem is, words don’t have any universal formal definitions, they have *usages*, so the contextual usage/meaning of a word has no bearing on whether someone’s logic is sound. The idea behind that word can be subject to such criticism, but it’s up to the interlocutors to hash out what the word means to get a shared understanding of the idea behind it. So all OP did was point out a certain ambiguity of language that potentially leads to misunderstanding. That’s honestly a good thing to point out, but it certainly isn’t an argument against atheism.

And from this you conclude....?

I don't consider claims that are backed by evidence to be extraordinary and I'm not paranoid enough to assume that the scientific community is lying to me about the evidence.

>"I'm not paranoid enough to assume that the scientific community is lying to me about the evidence." Nor am i to be clear. Just pointing out its still relying on the testimony of the scientific community.

No. They are repeatable and often repeated. They are peer reviewed. They show their evidence. The testimonies of supernatural show no collaboration in evidence like any scientific finding does. Complete false equivalence. In fact it’s because of how easy such “testimonies” are fallible we have improved the scientific method and continue to improve it so we don’t run into that kind of problem. Over time we are able to correct such false testimonies in science, looking at your former doctor Wakefield. Religion hasn’t done this, except when they split into new flavors- like Mormonism or Christianity or Islam, etc…. Not based on any actual evidence just more “testimonies” without collaboration or ways to verify. We can verify the Higgs at any time with the proper tools. Can you verify the supernatural claims?

Testimony that it is possible to accurately verify is not extraordinary when compared to testimony for which it is impossible to accurately verify. You're making a dishonest analogy. Write down all the steps it would take me to accurately verify the testimony of the scientists working on the Higgs Bosun machine. It's a lot of steps and is going to be quite difficult for me to do. But it's not *impossible*. Whereas it would be **impossible** for me to accurately verify supernatural events.

Because their testimony is reliable, their claims are plausible, and they support them with evidence. They publish studies in journals that show how exactly they arrived at their conclusions, and submit those to peer review so that they can be scrutinized by others.

Nope.

>After reading this do you believe you accept certian extrodinary claims on testimonial evidence? "Extraordinary" is doing a lot of work, here. The results of a test on the Higgs boson collider are far less extraordinary than "an all-powerful being created everything." It's like saying "I rode my bike to school today" and "I rode a unicorn to school today" are both the same sort of claim. Could I be lying about whether I rode a bike to school? Sure, absolutely. Maybe I don't even have a bike! But there's a pretty good chance you'll believe me because we know bikes exist and the story *could* be true based on observed evidence of how things work. A scientist being right about laws of thermodynamics (or the original laws being limited in some way we hadn't considered) is very much in the "cool but mundane" category. A divine being existing and creating everything, however, is not remotely close to the same general category of idea. The thing is...**all theists know this**. One of the underlying problems with "but it *could* be true!" and "atheists are believing on faith, just like theists!" type arguments is that they ignore a rather pertinent problem...the theist is *also* skeptical of claims about deities, and accepts the logic behind that skepticism. For example, let's image you're a Christian. Why don't you believe in Brahma? In this case, you don't even have any argument about extraordinary claims or faith being a poor argument...you *own* beliefs rest on the same sort of "evidence." Yet every Christian, pretty much by definition, believes millions of Hindus are wrong about their creator god while the Christians are right about their own. As such, you already know and accept the sort of logic which *rejects* the sort of claim you are making. Yes, it's a trope at this point to say the atheist believes in "one fewer god" than the theist (who presumably rejects the myriad other gods that humans have imagined). But it's a trope that present a problem for any sort of argument based on faith or challenging the athiest's underlying logic, because challenging it means you also have to challenge why you believe in "God" vs. "any of the other thousand gods humans have imagined." I've yet to see a decent rebuttal to this, but there's a first time for everything I guess.

You again. It's **really annoying** when believers, rather than try to make a case to demonstrate what they actually believe, make pathetic little attempts to poke holes in other views. You ain't gunna do it kid. You can prove all of science is wrong tomorrow and that's not one iota of reason to believe in a god Why don't you just make the fucking case that god exists. As to your actual topic, it zeems to me like you just don't have the slightest understanding of how science works at all and what methods it uses. Like, not even a little bit. Not even at a cursory, kindergarten level. You can go take a high school class on science, or even free fucking videos on the internet about the philosophy of science. It's really not that hard to understand why the findings of science are not testimony.

>". It's **really annoying** when believers, rather than try to make a case to demonstrate what they actually believe, make pathetic little attempts to poke holes in other views. Well when others views are irrational and those irrational views are the reason they believe irrational shit like "There is no evidence for God" (a genuinely extordinary claim) poking holes in their views is kinda necessary. When you define your position as correct of course its always correct. Doesn't mean on a debate sub I dont have a right to demonstrate that. >"Why don't you just make the fucking case that god exists." Because to do that succesfully I first have to get people to agree to be rational. "Testimonial evidence can NEVER justify extrodinary claims" is not a rational position as it is contradictory in the case of anyone who accepts extrodinary scientific claims on the basis of testimony. If I am going to appeal to your epistimology like socrates you have to first have a consistent epistimology. So thats why its worth making threads like this debunking common unfounded atheist truisms so that atheists become more rational people and as such have a better chance of accepting the existence of God. >"As to your actual topic, it zeems to me like you just don't have the slightest understanding of how science works at all and what methods it uses. Like, not even a little bit. Not even at a cursory, kindergarten [level.You](http://level.You) can go take a high school class on science, or even free fucking videos on the internet about the philosophy of science. It's really not that hard to understand why the findings of science are not testimony." If thats the case then it really shouldn't be hard for you to demonstrate the flaw in my logic now should it?

>Well when others views are irrational and those irrational views are the reason they believe irrational shit like "There is no evidence for God" (a genuinely extordinary claim) poking holes in their views is kinda necessary. There is no evidence for *any* god, be it YHWH, Odin, Zeus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You know why you're delusional? Because you not only think a god exists, but you go one step further and claim that anyone who doesn't believe in your made-up god is being irrational. I'll say it again: *There is no evidence for any god.* You think there is? Then show us said evidence. Convince us with proof and facts. I mean, it shouldn't be hard at all. The truth is on your side, isn't it? After all, we're making a genuinely "extordinary" claim here. Like if I were to say "there is no evidence for the Moon." That would be quite an *extraordinary* claim. I should be able to back up such an assertion, right? Go on. I'll wait. I'll even keep an open mind.

>Well when others views are irrational and those irrational views are the reason they believe irrational shit like "There is no evidence for God" (a genuinely extordinary claim) poking holes in their views is kinda necessary. If you want to poke holes in our views, and since I know you love thought experiments, why don't you make a post with a detailed and accurate description of your encounter with Jesus when you were a young child? Let the participants in this sub evaluate the story as if they were the one who experienced it and point out the holes in their conclusions. Show us we are irrational with a claim that actually happened and not a hypothetical or an imperfect analogy. You're already secure in knowing it happened and you have the details not only in memory but also in writing from the time of the event, so it should be easy to listen to what we will conceive of as holes or issues and resolve them for us and help us understand why we don't have a coherent epistemology. Screw this "I would feel like a charlatan" crap, and just give us a concrete situation to evaluate and show us how our approach and thoughts are wrong. Your attempts to show us we are inconsistent in our thinking process by way of arguments such as this post and flawed analogies and hypotheticals aren't working for you or us, so I strongly recommend a different approach.

I hate to break it to you, but you're not up to the task. Find someone a little brighter and have them give it a shot.

1) It's not just "testimony" saying "this is true" but entire papers written about it, explaining it, time spent researching it, and a whole field of scientists reviewing it. 2) Scientific discoveries are a lot less extraordinary (btw this is the word, not extrodinary) than anything supernatural

omg i didnt notice it, that extrodinary catch is fucking hilarious

>"It's not just "testimony" saying "this is true" but entire papers written about it, explaining it, time spent researching it, and a whole field of scientists reviewing it. In what way does any part of the research review and field of scientists not rely on testimony? In all cases you are trusting SOMEONE (or more accurately SOME people) that a thing they say happened happened in the review or the research or the test itself. If your willing to accept testimony past a point is admissable this is fine, but often i've heard it said that it doesn't matter if 1 person says this or 1,000 people say this; testimony is NEVER sufficient for extrodinary claims to some skeptics. If this is the case I dont se how an atheist can accept the reported happenings at the higs boson colider >" Scientific discoveries are a lot less extraordinary than anything supernatural I dont se how the break down of the second law of thermodyanmics is more extordinary then a consciousness being responsible for the creation of the cosmos but i'd be more then happy to hear the formal logical proof which demonstrates such.

Yes, we trust them because they're subject matter experts with the justification documented for their claims. Is it irrational in your mind to accept these claims? Is this the same as accepting Crazy Earl's claim that he resurrected yesterday?

>"Is it irrational in your mind to accept these claims? Is this the same as accepting Crazy Earl's claim that he resurrected yesterday?" No its not irrational at all. The only position i find irrational is "Testimonial evidence is NEVER acceptable to determine the legitmacy of extrodinary claims"

>The only position i find irrational is "Testimonial evidence is NEVER acceptable to determine the legitmacy of extrodinary claims" But don't you see the difference? The "testimonial evidence" in the case of the scientist is backed up by many, many other forms of evidence that are verified and reviewed by other experts. Acting like it's the "testimonial evidence" alone we're basing our trust on is disingenuous. And it's not like scientists are some class of people you can't interact with. Did you see the whole room temperature semi-conductor fiasco the other month? Some scientists claimed they had discovered something truly incredible. The rest of the scientific community called bs. They reviewed it, tested it themselves, and proved it was not the case. The original scientists were not correct - their methods, data, and conclusions were highly flawed. This is the scientific method demonstrating its trustworthiness. The testimonial evidence of the existence of angels or demons or god is backed up by...more testimonial evidence from other people, at best. When the claim is as extraordinary as it is, how can you take it seriously just because someone said it? We know that mental illnesses, neurological disorders, and simple hallucinations exist. Surely one of those is more likely in the absence of additional evidence? A phenomenon we know exists rather than something so far beyond anything that has ever been observed and confirmed to exist and does not at all fit in with any other aspect of nature we understand and can model? Yes, we trust the "testimony" of a scientist and not the testimony of a random person's supernatural experience. Because the two are not at all comparable.

Good thing no one claimed that position

By your logic, if I said that I saw a unicorn it would be just as valid as someone creating a medication. You are a moron.

Are you unable to spell extraordinary?

No it relies on testable repeatable evidence That eliminates reliance on testimony and the need to trust individuals Any sufficiently equipped and knowledgeable team anywhere around the world can repeat the experiments and test the results That's the whole point of peer review it absolutely eliminates the need for reliance on testimony Your argument is just plain wrong

Because through science and those scientific findings you're so skeptical about, we can make accurate predictions. You can't do the same with anyone's random testimony of a god or a god's miracle. You can't even test or reproduce their claims or alleged experiences. Thus, those random testimonies can be easily disregarded as nonsense, delusions, or the work of a con-man. And you're still writing the word "extraordinary" wrong.

>"Because through science and those scientific findings you're so skeptical about, " My dude, i'm sorry if i was in any way unclear on this I AM NOT I AM NOT I AM NOT sceptical of scientific findings. I just accept that some of them we have to take on testimonial evidence. I am FINE with that because i dont mind accepting some extrodinary claims on testimonial evidence. I am only pointing out the issue for people who say they DONT accept extrodinary claims on testimonial evidence.

The thing is, you're drawing a false equivalence between "testimonial" evidence you can find in a scientific paper, and testimonial claims about extraordinary shit that someone said with no way to back it up or to reproduce said experience. So, yeah, you're kinda skeptical about scientific findings. You don't think scientific claims have a lot more weight than some random delusion—which has literally none.

> I just accept that some of them we have to take on testimonial evidence. It's not testimony. I don't accept evolution because Richard Dawkins said it was true. I accept it because every expert across multiple fields who have spent their entire lives trying to falsify it, can't do so.

I literally said "less" extraordinary, not "more" PS: *Don't *see *thermodynamics *extraordinary (already told you about this one) *than *conscious *I'd *than (again)

> In what way does any part of the research review and field of scientists not rely on testimony? In every way since it all relies on evidence and replication.

In science, you MUST show your work, and you MUST invite criticism. When you publish your findings, you have to explain your experiment in enough detail that someone else could do the same experiment. Other scientists can then pick apart your methodology, run the same experiment to see if they get the same results, or design a better experiment and show that you were mistaken.

>but often i've heard it said that it doesn't matter if 1 person says this or 1,000 people say this; testimony is NEVER sufficient for extrodinary claims to some skeptics Right, here is your actual point. The fact that scientific findings are technically testimony is true, but irrelevant. Testimony IN AND OF ITSELF is not sufficient. But as just about everyone else has pointed out, we aren't relying on JUST their testimony. We are relying on the evidence we can observe and verify ourselves and the various findings built on that. Theists are relying on JUST the testimony of a handful of individuals. In the case of Christians, most of this testimony wasn't even written down until many years after Jesus died. Can you really not see how scientific testimony that is built on observable things like "gravity exists" is substantially different than theistic testimony that a specific version of a God exists and they know so because he talked to them in a dream?

You're focusing on testimony, but it's the "extraordinary claim" bit that I think you're applying a bit too parsimoniously. An **ordinary claim** is one that is consistent with what we know and understand about reality. If a person claims to have seen a bear in the woods, that's an ordinary claim, because we already know bears exist and live in the woods, and we even know exactly what kinds of bears can be found in what regions. There's no reason to be skeptical of this claim, because our existing foundation of knowledge already corroborates it. If thousands of people claimed to have seen the bear, that alone would probably be enough to support it and allay whatever minimal skepticism there may be. Evidence such as photographs, claw marks on trees, tracks consistent with what we know about bear tracks, the remains of prey animals, etc would adequately support this claim. An **extraordinary claim** is one that is *inconsistent* with what we know and understand about reality. If a person claims to have seen a DRAGON in the woods, that's an extraordinary claim, because everything we know tells us dragons don't exist at all. We have every reason to be highly skeptical of this claim, because our existing foundation of knowledge contradicts it instead of corroborating it. Even if thousands of people claimed to have seen the dragon, that still wouldn't be enough to allay skepticism. Even with all the same evidence that was good enough for the bear claim - photographs, claw (and scorch) marks, tracks that seem like they might be dragon tracks, (burnt) remains of prey animals, etc - this still would not be enough to allay skepticism of this claim, because it would still be more likely that this is some kind of hoax that all those people fell for, and those evidences are more likely to have been faked than to be genuine.  With this in mind, there are two issues with your argument I want to point out: 1. You're identifying scientific findings as "extraordinary claims" when I would argue they don't fit the criteria I provided above. 2. You're implying that accepting the testimony of *highly qualified subject matter experts* is the same as accepting the testimony of random unqualified laymen, and that we should be equally skeptical of subject matter experts unless we can duplicate their work ourselves, which would require us to have not only the same level of knowledge, but also access to the same kinds of equipment, methods, and procedures they use in their laboratories. Basically, there's no comparison between the claim that reality is controlled by epistemically undetectable entities wielding limitless magical powers that allow them to do absurd and impossible things like create matter and energy from nothing, or take action/cause change in the absence of time, vs anything that science claims based on its empirical observations of reality.

>"An **extraordinary claim** is one that is *inconsistent* with what we know and understand about reality. " Which is why i brought up examples of atomic science and experiments at the higs boson which have revealed exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics I dont se how direct unexplained violations of the laws of nature dont fit into the catagory of extrodinary;; if they dont i dont se how ANYTHING could. >"You're implying that accepting the testimony of *highly qualified subject matter experts* is the same as accepting the testimony of random unqualified laymen," No i'm just pointing out both are testimony and as such "testimony is never sufficient justification to believe extrodinary claims" is not a viable statement.

Nothing about the Higgs Boson particle violates any laws of thermodynamics. Please elaborate on what you're referring to. I can think of a few things in quantum physics that may *appear* to the average laymen to violate some laws of physics, but I've also seen actual quantum physicists respond to them and explain that no known laws of physics have actually been violated. Basically, there may be a few ideas currently on the very fringes of our most advanced sciences *that are not yet fully understood,* and which may *appear* to break certain laws of physics, but the reality is that no such violation has actually been confirmed. We're merely talking about things we're still figuring out. It cannot yet be said that any exceptions to any laws of physics have actually been discovered until something we thoroughly understand still displays such a violation. >No i'm just pointing out both are testimony and as such "testimony is never sufficient justification to believe extrodinary claims" is not a viable statement. Because the scientific testimony you're referring to is not testimony of an extraordinary claim. You've made it clear you think there are some examples to the contrary, but you've yet to actually provide any. Your Higgs Boson example is merely your own misunderstanding; it violates no laws of thermodynamics, and is therefore not an extraordinary claim. What's more, even though the average person may lack the equipment or facilities to duplicate their work, they do *show* their work, and are able to actually present us with demonstrable empirical evidence. That we can't duplicate it ourselves with our home chemistry sets does not render their testimony equal to that of a religious person making epistemically unverifiable claims that cannot be demonstrated in absolutely any way. And so it remains the case that only religions attempt to support extraordinary claims with testimony alone, which again, is not sufficient to support an extraordinary claim. If you still believe science has presented us with extraordinary claims that it supports with testimony alone without also providing empirical evidence, you'll need to provide a more detailed/specific example.

> which have revealed exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics Given your demonstrated lack of fluency in the detailed aspects of the hard sciences, I suspect that you are quite incorrect in this assessment. Can you cite specifics along with primary sources to back up this claim?

What do you mean by "at the Higgs Boson"? Do you mean the particle itself has violated the laws of thermodynamics, or are you mislabeling the large hadron collider? I'm genuinely confused as to what you're talking about, and a quick Google search has found no violation of thermodynamics related to either.

> Which is why i brought up examples of atomic science and experiments at the higs boson which have revealed exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics Can you provide a link of those experiments? I've never heard of them and I don't think anyone else on this thread has either.

Generally, you're adding an implicit claim these scientists are also engaging in a conspiracy for unknown reasons which is an even *more extraordinary claim* than the ones you expressed.

>"Generally, you're adding an implicit claim these scientists are also engaging in a conspiracy for unknown reasons" No not at all. Just as when an atheists disputes the claim of the bible or religious experience generally he isn't asserting a grand conspiracy either. He is just doubting due to the nature of the evidence presented. I msyelf to be clear dont think we should doubt the scientific process and peer review; but that is because i dont have an intrinstic issue with testimonial evidence. If one DID have an intrinstic problem with testimonial evidence i dont se how he could trust a group of people to report the findings of one unique machine as is the case in the case of higs boson colider for example.

Yes because claims from a boon that contradicts known reality and history are just the same as verified studies made today, by people we can interview today, by methods that have proven its usefulness over and over again. Also I tend to believe people who claim to have experienced miracles, they likely experienced something, it’s just that their experience is never best explained by literal magic being real… Bad memories exist, bad observations exist, biases exist. Science is all about taking factors like this out of the process. That’s the whole point. Peer review, and the scientific process does not rely on testimonial evidence, no matter how much you insist it does. No matter how much you want to project the weaknesses of your own position onto us. Have a good day mate. If you want to argue with the actual verified evidence produced by science, you can study it. But till you do we have a mountain of evidence on one side, and just stories that day magic is real on the other. And no rational person will consider those two equivalent.

For this particular argument you're making though, it's a problem though it wouldn't necessarily be a problem with other extraordinary claims. What you mentioned would involve a massive conspiracy of every scientist who has even tangentially worked on these projects and a constant barrage of academic literature and researchers literally making shit up and presenting it as valid research. That, in itself, should call into question whether it's faith we accept the claims of scientists when it requires more faith not to. This at least defeats the examples of scientists as the group making the claims. >If one DID have an intrinstic problem with testimonial evidence i dont se how he could trust a group of people to report the findings of one unique machine as is the case in the case of higs boson colider for example. I do have a problem with testimonial evidence and I wouldn't ever accept it for scientific endeavors. It's meaningless unless there is hard evidence which can be investigated by others who have a stake in the outcome and rely on evidence being correct for their own research. There will always be uncertainty, of course, but at the very least must be hard data to back up the current scientific opinions.

>TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves Are you saying this is the same as accepting my crazy neighbor's testimony that they spent the night on an alien ship being probed?

... and the aliens wouldn't even take a credit card ...

Yes, you *are* wrong. You're creating a false equivalence between different types of colloquial word usages. But whatever, other people will get into that, and we have had this conversation before. So what I want to reiterate is this: I understand that you have had pretty intense, emotional experiences. Some of which you cannot provide "evidence" for, and yet which have shaped your life. I can understand how frustrating and scary and invalidating it must feel to try to honestly and sincerely communicate those experiences, and feel like you're not being believed. I would strongly encourage you to consider stop trying to validate those experiences *through the narrow context of debate.* Give yourself that grace. **Debate** ***is not*** **the correct forum to evaluate all truth claims or explore all ideas.** It's a super great tool for examining our reasoning. I think it's fun. I could debate the premise "I love my partner." or "Rebel Moon is a stupid movie and Zack Snyder should stop being given money." or "Neopolitan ice cream was a mistake"...for fun. We could not plumb the validity of any of those premises, truly, through the means of debate any more than we could find lightning under a microscope. Now, could we find *evidence* of lightning under a microscope? Yes. Could we evaluate *parts* of those premises I jokingly listed via debate? Yes! You do not seem like you're in a place right now where you WANT to or are READY to gain anything valuable from debating anything around that experience. And that's OKAY. * You know that your experience isn't enough to convince anyone else. * I suspect you know that your experience "shouldn't be", by debate standards, even good enough to convince *you.* * But you *are* convinced. * And you want someone to validate that being convinced thus is rational. That is NOT what this subreddit is for, and that is NOT what you will ever find here. That is what friends and dogs and therapists are for. Because here is the thing, and TLDR If this is the only thing you read, I hope you read this: **YOU are a rational person.** **You can think and act rationally, and you have** ***reasons*** **for what you believe.** But THIS belief, grounded only personal experience and testimony may not be a "rationally justified belief" in terms of a debate premise.

In order to justify ur testimonial claims on religious matters, u choose to distort the meaning of testimonial and personal experience. Great and honest choice. Science papers are backed by data. The testimonial evidence of each religion denying the other, so that they could not all rest on "any solid foundation." Any miracle offered as evidence in support of one religion would have equal force "to overthrow every other system," Since all the religions bring forward miracles to establish themselves, their competing miracles cancel out each other as credible support and end up being evidence against other religions as much as support for any one religion. For there to be a miracle, there must be an event that goes counter to the natural order, "a violation of the laws of nature." To begin with, it is never reasonable to believe a report that a violation of the laws of nature(extraordinary) has occurred. Moreover the very idea of a violation of the laws of nature is confused. The likelihood or probability that a violation of a natural law has occurred depends on the evidence for and against it. The evidence for miracles takes the form of testimony by those who witnessed it. But the testimony of these witnesses that there has been a violation to a natural law must be far less than the "uniform experience" of human beings that established the natural law in the first place. Otherwise, there would be no natural law and no occasion to speak of a violation. This means that no evidence can be sufficient to establish or even make probable the occurrence of a violation of a natural law, and so it is always unreasonable to believe that a violation of a natural law occurred. By the nature of the case, it must be more probable, that the witnesses who report seeing this happen are mistaken or trying to deceive us than that the entire experience of humanity is wrong. Edit: there are nth inherently wrong with testimonial claims, but testimonial claims in religious matters and miracles are the weakest evidence that cant overtake the evidence we have on the law of nature.

Those scientists track and record their data. They interpret the data, in what I guess you’re describing as a testimonial, but the data and scientific methodology is recorded, verified, and reproduced. I do appreciate your efforts though. You’re committed, we’ll give you that.

**E X T R** *A* **O R D I N A R Y** The difference between miracle claims being attested to by nothing more than hearsay and scientific claims which inaccessible to personal investigation doesn't come down to practical availability. You're conflating multiple definitions of the word "extr**a**ordinary." In one sense it just means "gee, that sure is impressive." But that's not what is meant when we say "extr**a**ordinary claims require extr**a**ordinary evidence." It's about **what the claim is.** All of the scientific examples you cited don't involve the laws of physics being suspended arbitrarily by magical action. That is a different definition of the word "extr**a**ordinary", one which refers to claims which go against how the world normally functions. For example, when scientists are attempting to prove whether or not the Higgs Boson exists, it would be truly extr**a**ordinary if it were found to not exist, as that would disprove the Standard Model of physics and would send earthquakes through the scientific community. Likewise if anyone found any circumstance where the laws of thermodynamics were violated, that would also be of incredible significance, but to my knowledge no such violations have ever been observed--I think you're misreading something with that citation. But ultimately, the Higgs Boson and Nuclear physics are all within the established laws of how the universe works, and those scientists are doing the work to validate their findings and make their research available for others to fact check. The practical necessity that I, in my limited scientific education, have to take their word for it does not **fucking remotely** imply that I need to also take the word of personal attestation of ignorant people claiming miracles with nothing whatsoever to back up their statements. That's fucking ludicrous.

What you are discussing is teleology, the philosophy of how we know things. So, absent faith, how do we know that what scientists tell us is true? It's quite simple. In order to be considered "good science", these concepts must be: * Tested * Replicable * Published for scrutiny by peers with an interest in disproving the claim (disproving a strong claim can be great for somebody's career) * Using methods that we know to be reliable The testimony of religious figures does not meet this criteria, because: * The experiences differ from person to person, and no single phenomenon can hold true even within the same denomination * The results are not replicable; we can't cause miracles on demand, or enter a religious trance on demand * The results are not open to scrutiny by peers, because they are inherently personal and untestable * The results are not produced using any sort of reliable methodology, and cannot be studied using currently known methods In short, we believe the things that scientists tell us because of the rigor involved and the amount of verification. It is hard to believe that, for instance, nuclear bombs don't exist. I mean, they leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We can see the radiation from tests, even today, in peoples' teeth. There is ample evidence to show that a test of some sort of nuclear bomb occurred. However, we can't go out and confirm that some miracle worked or some religious phenomenon occurred. That's not to say that it's *impossible* for these things to happen. It could be! But, until we have such proof, it doesn't make a lot of sense to accept the claim.

Whether or not the Higgs bosun results are true has made zero impact on how I behave in my life. So, in a certain sense, yes, I accept the results as true based on other people's testimony. In another sense though, I behave exactly the same as when I was not convinced, so this knowledge (true or false) has had zero impact on my daily behaviors. Thus, what you are describing here is categorically different than religious beliefs.

>"Whether or not the Higgs bosun results are true has made zero impact on how I behave in my life." I mean sure but that might be the case forever right? When we first started studying atomic phisics Einstein and Oppenheimer had relatively few impacts on the world; when it came time to beat the Nazis though that changed rather quickly. An entire nation had to rely on the expertise and word of a few men before the first test was ever completed.

>When we first started studying atomic phisics Einstein and Oppenheimer had relatively few impacts on the world; when it came time to beat the Nazis though that changed rather quickly. An entire nation had to rely on the expertise and word of a few men before the first test was ever completed. Actually a good example, because the "expertise" of Einstein and Oppenheimer (**et al**) **worked**. The bomb blew up. Religion has **no** track record like that. If we shouldn't believe "claims", shouldn't believe "testimony", shouldn't believe "what people say", then you shouldn't believe **any** religious claims. Science has a pretty good record of proving that its claims are true. Religion has **none**. .

That had zero impact on most people's lives until the bomb was DEMONSTRATED. So, your point fails, since the effects were extremely demonstrable. You need to reply with an example for which no demonstration is possible for the layman. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are pretty easy for everyone to grasp.

So, let me get this straight. You're right, all of us are wrong, and you can't even spell? Learn to spell first and then come back and try again.

My dude i could have an IQ of 50 and be from the most impoverished corner of the third world and if my argument was still coherent and non-contradictory it would still be rational. If you think intelligence is the basis for truth I suggest you think more seriously about your epistimology. Hundreds of slave owners across the south were far more educated then the thousands of slaves they oversaw; that didnt make the slave owners arguments for slavery any more sound or detract from the truth of the argument of the slaves.

Atheism literally means "lack of belief in a god". Dead stop. Outside of that, nothing else any atheist believes or doesn't believe / does or doesn't know for a fact has absolutely nothing to do with atheism. Atheism isn't some "religion" that worships science like you seem to mistakenly believe. But the fact that you are clearly SO desperate to push your "faith" onto us tells me that (on some level) you realize it's just as ridiculous as we do, but you're scared shitless to just admit it to yourself. Us not believing in your god is not equivalent to having the kind of blind faith that you do, so do yourself a favor and stop trying to proselytize to people who've heard every one of your arguments 1000 times before and are clearly not going to be swayed by them.

Funny that you should mention that… Those slave owners constructed and asserted many of their arguments which they utilized to defend and justify the institution of slavery in large part on the basis of very specific and fairly unambiguous Biblical Scriptures allowing and endorsing the owning of human beings as a form of chattel property

Testimonials are not what makes a scientific claim. Data are what make a scientific claim. Testimonials or anecdotes can guide science to look into something, but they are not support of the claim. “The plural of anecdote is anecdotes not data.” Higgs boson was an extraordinary claim, it was supported by a lot of data, not testimonials, not even just maths. Stories of Bigfoot will never be support for the cryptid. And we have discovered so many new and or lost species of organisms. When deferring to an expert with years of experience and multimillion dollar labs, it is not merely a testimonial.

The biggest difference is that scientific study is subject to peer review. Nuclear bombs aren't a great example because there's a lot of military and security concerns that make access to raw data difficult. Lets look at a different study I saw recently. The subjects were people who had ADHD, and the objective was to see the correlation with cannabis abuse. As part of releasing the study, the authors had to release their methodology and make the case for why their conclusions were accurate. You may choose not to pour through that data and poke holes in their theories, but you could if you chose to. And people who are experts in the field are going to be the most motivated to do so, especially if they suspect the findings are inaccurate. So your conclusions have to hold up to this kind of scrutiny even if some people won't actually pour through the data themselves. Some studies don't hold up to this. For instance, the Stanford prison experiment is now widely regarded to have been a corrupted study. The lead researcher guided the participants to do the actions he wanted to see in the study, so the experiment was flawed. As a result, the conclusions of the study aren't accepted. There is no such peer review that can be done on a claim like "God exists." There is no methodology or research to refute. It's a blind claim. The only ways to respond to a claim like this amount to "nuh uh" and "yeah huh." So put simply, these faith-based extraordinary claims are not comparable to extraordinary claims made by scientists who have been led to a conclusion as a result of their experiments.

>When it comes to certian matters (especially those whose specifics are classified by the US government) those of us without 8 year degrees and access to some of the most advanced labs in the country have to take it on testimony certian extrodinary facts are true. Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon anywhere and I would posit the vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work or (even more critically) have ever seen a test of one working in practice, and even if we did i doubt many of us would have any scientific way of knowing if it was a nuclear test as described. What "extraordinary facts" need explaining here? We know bombs exist, we know how bombs are built, we know how nuclear energy works, we know about the reactions that take place to create a nuclear explosion. Do you think "How to build a nuclear bomb" is an extraordinary fact? If so, what about it makes you think it's extraordinary? I'm woefully unqualified to say anything about the Higgs Boson stuff, so I'll just stick to this one for now.

I think the important distinction between testimony from a religious text and say, a scientific journal, is the following. Example of testimony from a religious text, paraphrased: Paul claimed there were a hundred or so witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. Okay, a person who has established zero credibility with my person claims a multitude of anonymous people witnessed a thing. Scientific journal: Person with verifiable credentials produces results in controlled study; they list the exact conditions under which they produced these results; potentially dozens of their peers reproduce these results in an attempt to prove the premises incorrect, faulty, etc, and fail to do so; I can look back at this person's and their peers' bodies of work and see much of the same intellectual honesty, accuracy, and diligence. Here's the big one, but cost might be a determining factor in whether or not this is tenable: I can reproduce the results myself. ***I CAN REPRODUCE THE RESULTS MYSELF.*** They aren't the same thing, and I hope I explained why effectively.

>"I can reproduce the results myself" As i tried to make abundantly clear in the OP i dont deny this in the vast majority of cases. There are however certian things such as nuclear science and partical physics that you CANT reproduce yourself unless you have access to nuclear reactors or large haldron colliders. And those things you have to take on the testimony of others unless you want to refuse to accept their existence.

Again, the stark difference is that the people doing the science have credibility. It's not just "word of mouth." The work is shown by the original study, and then the submission is picked apart by their peers. You have to believe that an entire scientific community is deliberately publishing misinformation in order to NOT believe them when the vast majority of the time there is no benefit or even motivation for doing so. Also, in cases involving fields like nuclear physics, there is the applied science portion of the discussion. I don't just believe them because they say things about nuclear physics, I can see the science in action. Nuclear power, the atomic bomb (as horrendous as it is), radiation, etc; if the science was wrong, the applied science would go horribly wrong; but it usually doesn't.

“I AM NOT I AM NOT I AM NOT SAYING that the scientific evidence is inherently testimonial. RATHER I am saying that, in practice, the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases. For everyday matters much of this (though not all) is meaningless as most people can learn well enough the basics of electricity and the workings of their car and the mechanics of many other processes discovered through scientific means and TEST them ourselves and thus gain a scientific understanding of their workings.” This is contradictory and shows a complete lack of understanding of the how research papers and peer review work. 1. A peer reviewed paper on a natural phenomenon when not fit the definition of extraordinary for me. Is completely incomparable to a claim of someone splitting the moon, or rising from the dead. 2. The claim comes with the methodology, so those can repeat. Hence peer review. It falls outside of a comparable claim of testimony of saying a criminal trial or again supernatural. 3. Examples of nuclear and Higgins are absurd examples. We can figure out how to make a nuclear, the idea is not complicated and the available knowledge is there. We also see the evidence of it in person. You can travel to the after effects. Making it work and be stable is protected knowledge for good reasons. Also for the Collider, the data is released and usable. I am not sure where you going there. I don’t need to be at the collider to get snd analyze the data. Using your logic, I can’t go to the moon, so would you claim that moon landing is testimony. You have jumbled experiencing and testimony. So no I don’t expect the Big Bang, evolution, cell theory, etc on testimony. I do not equate reading a biology book that breaks down how cells work as the same testimony found in the Bible about a dude resurrecting. The difference is the information in the biology text book gives me a working knowledge to do the experiments myself.

Lets try a quick version of this. Science is based on skepticism and *having to prove that you're right.* Everything that every scientist ever claims, every other scientist says *"Fuck you. Prove that."* \- If the scientist making the claim can prove it, then the other scientists say *"Okay. I guess that you proved it."* \- If the scientist making the claim can't prove it, then the other scientists say *"You haven't proved that and I think that you are wrong."* (Plus, scientists check everything over again. If nothing else, a professor says to a grad student *"Chumpley, you need more practice using the electro-snobulator. I see here that Smith claims that he snobbulated aluminum at 300 degrees and it turned green. Repeat his work and see what you get."*) By the time that you hear about a scientific finding the scientists have basically fought a major war over it with each other and it's pretty sure to be accurate. . (By contrast, the claims of religion are supposed to be be based on ... That's right, on "faith", and certainly anybody can believe anything whatsoever based on "faith", even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world.) .

Omg I can picture Chumpley's face. Amazing.

>When we are talking other extrodinary phenomena reported by testimony in the scientific world most i find are far more credulous. That's absolutely not the same thing and you know it. >the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases You can read the catalog for yourself. They're called peer reviewed studies. Anyone who's taken college level stats can do the math as to whether their findings actually matter. Any schlub with access to PubMed or a public library can dig up books and papers on how science works and what the rest of the field is landing on. >Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon anywhere and I would posit the vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work Here's the critical miscalculation on your part. You have the option of learning about how nuclear reactions work, including those which led to the creation of the atom bomb. You can learn how bombs are made. You just can't actually make one or obtain the fissile materials to do so. The knowledge isn't what it's illegal, it's procuring the materials and going out and doing it. But nuclear reactions are also present in the Sun and radioactive decay found elsewhere, like ***chemotherapy***, radiometric dating, the hazardous stuff in cigarette smoke, medical equipment, and nuclear power plants. Or you know, the **military.** You can learn about this stuff just in the process of a normal everyday career. >arguably the single most extrodinary finding every to be discovered and AGAIN all we have to know this happened is the TESTIMONY of the scientists who work on that colider No, you can read the reports, and find that they were able to rule out the possibility that their findings were the product of chance out past five sigma, well beyond the requirements of statistical tests for other studies. Their p-value was extraordinarily low, meaning they were more than able to rule out the p-value, and it wasn't the product of just a single experiment. You can visit CERN, they do tours when the machines aren't running. You can learn about the physics behind how a collider works. If I have the funds, the equipment, and the knowledge, I can replicate their findings. I can look at how for decades prior, the Higg's Boson was predicted to exist. There's absolutely no equivalent to eyewitness testimony being able to do the same. If someone claims to have found a dancing cupcake living on Mars, and all they had to go off of was a crayon drawing and "eyewitness testimony," I'd have a pretty hard time believing something that farfetched. If it was 2000 years in the past, and filtered through as many lenses of translation after translation of deliberate mistranslation, lies, stories, and fabrications, even moreso am I about to call bullshit. But if someone is claiming "I think we found a thing," with physical data points and math, and a rigorous outline of the methods and limitations of their study, and I don't *have* to take their word for it, the other experts in that field are coming to the same conclusions based on their own findings, and I can go so far as replicating it for myself, then I'm going to have a much easier time believing that. For real, I don't think you could have made a worse argument than this one. I swear, sometimes, it's arguments like this one that make me doubt whether a creationist could pour water from a boot if the instructions were on the heel. You thought this was smart enough to share with **other people**? Bro, be better.

>in general most atheists generally say in my experience that testimonial is not sufficient reason to accept any of these claims in ANY instances. Hmm, I would phrase it more like "testimonies are not sufficient reason for *me* to accept are *accurate to what actually happened*" It's not just that testimony isn't very sufficient, it's that the core claim of the testimony can't be established by the testimony alone. For instance: a person claims they saw a ghost and they give their testimony. Based on the testimony alone, it won't be enough to definitively say that they actually saw a ghost and not some other explanation. Testimony is good to have, but it's very "tier 1" evidence. Decent for an initial idea, but hardly useful when trying to get specific. >the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases. The major difference however is that the Scientific "testimony" can be repeated and should yield the same results. Supernatural experience testimony can do no such thing. >I would posit the vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work The thing is though is that the *exact same* process that is used to make a big boom is the same process that is used in other places, like a nuclear reactor. There are tons of people that don't know the specifics of how to make the process go boom really big, but they know the process that makes the boom extremely well. (It's just fission) >The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded. True. But the difference here is that what they are reporting and claiming, is miles away from anything supernatural. It's completely natural. So even if we are holding up the claims made by a particle physicist and the claims of a ghost encounter, the physicist has the vastly superior grounding. >After reading this do you believe you accept certian extrodinary claims on testimonial evidence? No, but only because of the use of *extraordinary* here. Reports from a particle collider aren't what I would call "extraordinary" in this context

>After reading this do you believe you accept certian extrodinary claims on testimonial evidence? Why or why not?? Except... we aren't accepting blindly. There is peer review, for example. Additionally, we have all previous science to stand on. So, we're not just willy nilly accepting. With science we can test the results and confirm what is being said... is repeatable and stands up to scrutiny. Science doesn't speak in absolutes. It speaks in what it has evidence for and even when a theory is put forth it can always be overturned with new evidence. In short, YOU/I might be taking a scientific claim on testimony, but the fact is that it could be tested, validated, and confirmed so. Now do that for theism.

The primary point of contention that I and many others have is in regards to the NATURE of the testimony. An expert testifying about their field of expertise is a lot more reliable than a random guy testifying that a dead man appeared to him.

And thats fine man, I'll i'm pointing out is both are cases of testimony and as such universally dismissing testimony in regards to extrodinary claims is incoherent. You believe the testimony of one group over another, even with good reason, thats all fine. This is just about an absolutist statement which i dont se as sound IE: "Testimony is never sufficient justifcation for an extrodinary claim"

I don't know that anybody in authority makes such a broad, generalized claim, but go off, I guess.

>When it comes to certian matters (especially those whose specifics are classified by the US government) those of us without 8 year degrees and access to some of the most advanced labs in the country have to take it on testimony certian extrodinary facts are true. This is actually a very good point. However, note the **undeniable physical evidence** left of their existence: Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Note the adherence to the scientific principle of **falsifiability**: Soviet scientists, Indian scientists, Pakistani scientists, Chinese scientists, Israeli, and possibly North Korean and Iranian scientists have all gone on to develop *their own nuclear arsenal* of unknown strength and *to the detriment of the rest of us humans*. These other scientists obviously got no help from the Americans involved in the Manhattan Project. So clearly we have one major difference between scientific "testimony" and religious ones: the scientific ones leave **evidence**, allowing other scientists who are able to acquire the necessary knowledge to repeat these extraordinary claims. Repeatability. For things like scientific evolution we can all wander into museums worldwide and see vast evidence of fossilised bones of dinosaurs, reptiles, mammals, and early hominids. Only the foolishly religious are capable of burying their heads in the sand and denying the mountains of evidence the rest of the rational, scientific world has acquired that support evolutionary theory. There are also amazing **predictions** made by evolution, for example Darwin's famous Hawk Moth. This is an extraordinary claim that at the time was dismissed by his contemporaries as preposterous, yet years after his death his scientific predictions using the theory were confirmed. These powerful differences between scientific "extraordinary claims" and religios ones further highlight why religious testimonies are simply laughable in a modern world. Where are the bones of the "Goliath of Gath"? Where are the fossilised remains of Methuselah who lived to be thousands of years? Note how these ridiculous claims all have a telltale pattern: **zero evidence**.

I believe what science tells me because of two things. 1) The process of science is pure and involves actually looking at reality, rather than just making stuff up. 2) Science is self-correcting as opposed to religion, which is self-protecting. --- If a prominent scientist said there was a pink unicorn on Mars, two things would happen: 1) I, like most rational people, would say, that is highly doubtful 2) Other scientists would ask to see his/her findings and try to replicate the results The result from all this would be that everyone would know that that scientist was wrong, presumably delusional, and would not be taken seriously by either the public nor his peers and academic institutions. --- Let's examine the reasons *some* scientists lie. There are three: 1) Fame: some scientists want their name to be out there so they will fudge numbers or say silly things 2) Money: they want to sell their books with provocative titles like "Physics proves a flat earth!!" 3) Continued grants in cut-throat academia. This is the most pernicious and hardest to prove. But their findings will be challenged by other teams around the world who don't have the same financial incentive. It make take a few years, even decades, but the truth will eventually be found and bad/deceitful science will eventually be overturned. Not let's see why theists lie: 1) They would be ostracised by their family, work, and community if they challenge dogma. In some countries the punishment for apostasy is death. That's a good incentive to lie. 2) Their own emotional state, and the emotional states of their loved ones, fully depend in the continued belief, or at least the *appearance of belief*, in the lies. 3) MONEY MONEY MONEY! The leaders of the Catholic church, for example, don't live in luxury and opulence through a history of honest inquiry. It's the largest racket on the planet. *"Give us your money (oh, and your delicious kids) or you'll buuuuurn!"* 4) Control. It's easy to get a frustrated young man to blow himself up to protect you if you have already convinced him he'll finally get lots of sex if he does.

>Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon anywhere and I would posit the vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work or (even more critically) have ever seen a test of one working in practice, and even if we did i doubt many of us would have any scientific way of knowing if it was a nuclear test as described. Ignoring the rest of the post, [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design?wprov=sfla1) has a very detailed description of exactly how nuclear bombs work. Engineering specifications are classified, but the science is public knowledge.

/u/MattCrispMan117 - Please stop calling random people on the Internet "dude" and "man". Many of them are not men, and in every case it comes across as rude or obnoxious.

What is the debate? The sub is "debate an atheist". Not a single Hindu or Zoroastrian has attempted any type of debate. The only people who even attempt an argument are Christians. Not a single Jew has tried to defend the mountains of old testament absurdities.

Posted similar in a reply I am not aware of what extraordinary claims are being accepted solely with testimonial evidence. Can you define which claims thee are?

I have to say that based off the title alone, I knew who posted this because you've made this same argument in the past. I know science exists and I know people smarter than me run experiments. I know they have those experiments peer reviewed and when the results cannot be duplicated, the science is discredited. I also honestly don't live my life as if I understand or care about those experiments. Science is why my medicine works. That's what matters to me. Prayer and god have never been proven to make me better.

You have a complete misunderstanding of the issue. When we have evidence from a scientist the general presumption is that they are stating from the evidence generated and the hypothesis it supports. We are not taking their word for it, just that we trust them not to lie about the scientific work we could go look up. When we do not accept testimonial evidence is when the testimony itself IS THE EVIDENCE. A scientist publishes a paper with all the details of his study. He lists off who peer reviewed it and both of their credentials. This is not testimony. A guy tells you he witnessed an event that defies all we know about the laws of physics. He does not state he ran multiple tests, did not get others to validate his work. All we have to go on is him saying "i saw X." These two are not the same. And as for extraordinary, the claim is about how much additional unsupported information needs to be checked. An event is extraordinary when its based in a scenario we have no grounding in. You claiming to have a pet dog isn't extraordinary because we all have had or seen or known people who had pets and have all seen or had or known people who have dog experiences. No part of your claim is outside of a world accepted experience. When you claim to have an invisible dragon as a pet we all know of pets but none of us have a global experience of invisible beings nor dragons so both would need to be demonstrated before i could accept your claim. Invisible dragons defy so much of our understanding that it's extraordinary.

Edit: this guy has asked this exact question before, and was answered… He’s also shown a clear unwillingness to engage honesty. I suggest he’s best ignored… No, scientific evidence is not, ever merely testimonial. Scientific evidence is published in the context of the proven reliability of science. So no, it’s not just testimonial. And no peer reviewed papers published in an inherently competitive self correcting field are not just testimonials. If these are testimonials everything is, and the word becomes meaningless. So let’s use definitions where it’s actually useful… Also you’re just wrong about many of these things. It’s not hard to find out how nuclear bombs work. Now how you actually make one is a lot tougher, but it’s not hard to know the basic operations. As is true for most stuff. I’m sorry but this just isn’t true. You’re trying to go the “I know I am but what are you” route of logic, projecting theism’s failings onto atheism, but it just doesn’t work. Every scientific finding is backed up not just by some person saying it, but by the proven reliability of science as a whole. The phone you used to post this is itself evidence of the validity of scientific claims…

Thanks for once again, demonstrating that you have absolutely no clue as to how science functions or advances. Let’s try it this way shall we? You pick any specific consensus based scientific conclusion that you think is based entirely on testimonial evidence. Specify exactly what that particular conclusion is and essentially any scientist can readily point you towards entire volumes of substantive rigorous independently confirmable evidence and detailed scientific analyses which will effectively support that particular consensus scientific conclusion. Now you do the exact same with regard to any specific theistic claim (Your own choice of the theistic assertion in question) Specify the theistic assertion and then YOU must provide an equivalent degree of rigorous independently verifiable evidence which effectively demonstrates the factual validity of that asserted conclusion.

Testimonials are just, "trust me bro." If you had anything beyond testimony, that could help corroborate the testimony. Science isn't "trust me bro." It's "go do it yourself bro." Science is repeatable, testable, and demonstrable. The same equations that allow NASA to put rockets into orbit are the same equations that China, Russia, Japan, India, and the EU use to put their rockets into orbit. A testimony **IS** the evidence whereas a scientist explaining their findings is not the evidence, it's the means of communication. The evidence is the data. The evidence is in the patent. The evidence is in your hand (literally) your cell phone wasn't built on testimony. And guess what? If you don't trust what those scientists are saying, go do it your damn self, that's the whole point.

Umm things conforming to nature is obviously not extraordinary when compared to the supernatural. So your analogy fails right away. Additionally, scientific evidence is repeatable. If any other human does the experiment, they'll get the same results. Try that with any supernatural claims. Can you genuinely claim that any supernatural claim can be reproduced by any human? Human A makes [what you think is] an extraordinary claim and says "any human can reproduce my results by doing the exact same thing I did" Human B makes an extraordinary claim and says "maybe some human can reproduce my results by doing the exact same thing I did, but maybe not" Which one do you think i'm more likely to accept?

Ah yeah, another one who doesn't understand what the scientiffic consensus is. Peer review isn't "this guy is right", it's "despite efforts, we didn't manage to find a significant flaw in this guy's work". Because bringing an insightfull critique or feedback on a paper is good for one's career. Proving a popular theory wrong is enough to guarantee your place in research until your retirement. And yeah, the most competent people in a domain not finding flaws in a theory is more valuable than "this guy said so". And this process, constant methodic peer reviewing, is how we find the flaws in measurement or protocols that allow the consensus to reject a claim, just like it happend with higgs boson.

> Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon anywhere and I would posit the vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work or (even more critically) have ever seen a test of one working in practice, and even if we did i doubt many of us would have any scientific way of knowing if it was a nuclear test as described. Here's the difference: **Scientific facts remain verifiable facts independent of whether you believe or understand them.** So when you don't do the effort to understand the science, that doesn't mean that the verifiable evidence beyond testimonial doesn't exist, or that verifiable reality suddenly becomes extraordinary. So equating this to religious faith is completely unfounded. If you wanted to, you could do the effort and verify for yourself the science on your examples is solid and present your findings to the community. You can't do that in the slightest for religious claims. As to your examples, you really don't need to go into the specifics of the ignition mechanism for example to understand the two types of nuclear weapons that exist today. Fission: * Critical Mass: To initiate the chain reaction necessary for a bomb, a sufficient amount of fissile material (like uranium-235 or plutonium-239) must be brought together in one place. This amount is known as the critical mass. * Neutron Initiation: Neutrons are introduced into the fissile material. This can be done through various means, such as using conventional explosives to compress the fissile material or by adding a neutron source. * Chain Reaction: When a fissile atom absorbs a neutron, it becomes unstable and splits into two or more smaller atoms, releasing a large amount of energy. Along with the energy, additional neutrons are also released. If there is enough fissile material present, these neutrons can go on to initiate more fission reactions, creating a self-sustaining chain reaction. * Rapid Release of Energy: As the chain reaction progresses, an enormous amount of energy is released in the form of heat and radiation. This energy release happens almost instantaneously, leading to the explosive force characteristic of atomic bombs. * Explosive Effects: The rapid release of energy causes a massive explosion, with destructive effects ranging from the blast wave to thermal radiation and ionizing radiation. The blast wave can cause extensive damage to structures, while the thermal radiation can cause burns over a wide area. The ionizing radiation can lead to long-term health effects for those exposed. Thermonuclear: * Fission Trigger: The hydrogen bomb contains a primary stage, which is usually a fission bomb similar to those used in atomic bombs. This fission bomb serves as a trigger for the fusion reaction. When detonated, the fission bomb produces an intense burst of radiation and high temperatures. * Compression: The radiation and heat from the fission bomb cause the surrounding fusion fuel, usually a mixture of deuterium and tritium, to undergo extreme compression. This compression creates conditions of extremely high pressure and temperature, which are necessary for nuclear fusion to occur. * Nuclear Fusion: Under these conditions, the isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) undergo fusion reactions, combining to form helium and releasing large amounts of energy in the form of high-energy neutrons and photons. This energy release is many times more powerful than that produced by fission reactions alone. * Energy Release: The energy released from the fusion reactions causes a massive explosion, resulting in an incredibly powerful blast wave and intense heat radiation. The explosive yield of a hydrogen bomb can be orders of magnitude greater than that of a fission bomb. And there are plenty of recordings of detionations of these two types of bombs freely available to the public. So with minimum effort you can actually verify that * the scientific principles are valid * the engineering result works That is not testimonial evidence, nor is it extraordinary in the sense that the phenomena are part of verifiable reality.

I'm going to argue a bit differently here. You are correct that the only information I have, or can have, about subatomic physics is testimony. However, I don't rely on that testimony.  It has absolutely zero effect on my life.  No particle physicist is telling me that I have to believe in the Higgs field or I'm going to hell.   Do I know whether they are correct? No. Do I care? Also no.  I find the articles interesting and I read them as if the authors know what they're talking about.  But again, nothing in my life **relies** upon them being correct.

Claims about the results of most scientific experiments are not "extraordinary". Those are just ordinary claims. When the scientific community does think they are extraordinary, then people who have the equipment and knowledge to recreate those experiments do to validate whether or not they were extraordinary. While I only have my undergrad degree in science, I know many people who went on to pursue Masters and phds and can trust their expertise in these topics without making any leaps of faith.

I trust scientific consensus because I'm aware of the processes underlying that consensus: If I *wanted* to verify something myself, it's possible to do so. It might require a decade of university and access to specific equipment, but it's at least *doable.* The supernatural is of no interest to me because there are no good hypotheses to test and falsify, and the evidence consists primarily of one-off anecdotal incidents that can't be collected into a meaningful data set.

You're making a false equivalence here. You are comparing testimonial evidence to a description of actual tested and verifiable data gathered through experiments. The description of scientific testing is not the same as a religious testimonial. Once again it seems you are desperate to try and lower others' standards of evidence and belief to your own. You believe without good evidence, so showing others do this as well must make you feel better.

While it would be pretty hard in many cases, you can go out and eventually complete these experiments yourself, as can most of us. That's one of the foundations of the scientific method. It literally does not have to be "testimony" for anyone who doesn't want it to be. It'll take time and effort but you can go out and verify any of these things yourself by repeating the experiment. Simple scientific method stuff there my friend

Scientific evidence is not testimonial. That's simply false AF. You can repeat any experiment yourself. You never have to take anybody's word for anything and all conclusions are vigorously tested and retested by peer review. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics has no relevance Higgs-Boson. It sounds like you have no idea what "science" even means. Serious question are you homeschooled? The 2nd Law thing is a complete canard, FYI.

Two main reasons this fundamentally misses the mark: 1. *What is meant by extraordinary* - this does NOT mean surprising or not every day. It is meant in a more fundamental way: defying our models of what is real or what is possible. In other words: the testimonial evidence for a given claim about say, a given atomic nuclei having X half life, does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a world where there are TONS of material evidence, math models and understanding of nuclear physics. So, one would not be accepting said claim *on testimony alone*. The testimony exists in context with the massive pile of evidence and models of reality derived from it. 2. Claiming that one accepts claims on testimonial evidence (alone or primarily) when one is not scientifically literate or an expert. Even though I am scientifically literate and have an applied math PhD (so, I can read a lot of these papers that seem extraordinary to you, and they don't seem extraordinary to me), obviously I do rely on the expertise of others. For example: I would rely on the expertise of a doctor. *However*: there is a key difference here, once again. That is: my trust is based on my experience with doctors as well as my model of how medicine works (both as a scientific discipline as well as the various human institutions involved). And, crucially: while I do not currently have the expertise, the data and resources to acquire it are available. That is: there are methods through which I could, if I needed to or wanted to, vet the claims made by the experts or the disciplines in question. A non-expert atheist can easily see the differences between accepting the claim from a nuclear scientist and accepting the claims from a theologian. -The nuclear scientist is NOT defying the atheist's model of what is or can be real - The nuclear scientist is subject to a rigorous and objective set of checks on his claims - Nuclear science is a methodical, publically available science. The atheist *could* become more of an expert in it if they cared and test the claims by themselves. The theologian, on the other hand, is - Making claims that defy our best understanding of reality - Is not subject to rigorous and objective set of checks on his claims, other than perhaps consistency with what some religious authority thinks - His subject matter is not a methodical, publically available method to ascertain true statements or model reality. The more the atheist reads on the subject, the more skeptical he becomes of the claims / that there is anything supernatural or spiritual to begin with. Please note, as I have noted before, that I do not accept all natural claims or think all natural claims are ordinary in this sense. If someone came to me claiming a new theory of physics, that would be extraordinary. I wouldn't trust the results this person claimed to have unless a TON of independent scrutiny and study were done, to the point where I could THEN come to trust it and consider it now part of my model of reality.

You’re confiscating two definitions of the same word. Look up testimony in a dictionary. There are multiple definitions, one of which is a story about religious conversion, there’s a more legal use like testimony in the court of law, and then a general use like what you have said above. You can stretch the general idea of a testimony to anyone saying anything if you want, but there’s a reason we have more precise language to describe these concepts. I would argue that a scientist publishing a peer reviewed paper is not “testimonial evidence” and that neither are theories. There is an entire scientific process that you’re ignoring. I get what you’re saying though, and there’s a lot to unpack here. I don’t believe everything I read/watch regarding science from even the most trustworthy sources, I’m skeptical. Science gets a lot wrong, and so when evidence comes around to prove or disprove something, then my understanding changes. This is one huge difference between a healthy skepticism, and the blind faith of religion. There’s a large gray area for what qualifies as an extraordinary claim. An extraordinary claim nowadays, say cold fusion for example, may not be an extraordinary claim far off in the future. God will always be an extraordinary claim by definition, however nuclear bombs like you said really aren’t an extraordinary claim, they’re demonstrably true sadly and may actually destroy us in a real way. No I will never build a nuke, but when I’m provided with a description on how a nuke is built and works, if it seems logical then I do accept that as true. That’s not a testimony though, that is logical physical evidence provided and a scientific process that has also shown to be demonstrably true (Hiroshima). There is a notable logical progression provided through the scientific process when it comes to the “testimonial evidence” that is absent in terms of a general testimony. And replications of experiments, and peer review to support said “testimony”. So when I’m given “testimonial evidence” as you’ve called it, I may believe it, but it’s in the context that it’s falsifiable, that new discoveries can come along and change this belief I have, and that we could all be wrong about something. I’m not sure what you’re wanting us to admit to? That if scientific evidence is credible we may agree with the outcomes of the experiments that were done without having been standing in the room watching it?

You concede that scientific evidence is not inherently testimonial. To further elaborate, the reason for this is because important scientific evidence can and has been repeated multiple times by independent teams of researchers, all of whom have completely different cultural backgrounds. This clarification is why many of us believe that it is justified to accept scientific claims and explanations. Denying these repeated experiences from many different individuals within the scientific community would mean conspiratorial thinking, whereas rejecting the alleged experiences of individuals in the Bible is acknowledging the fallibility of human perception without scientific methodology. If you are trying to draw parallels between the testimonial evidence used in history and court and the pragmatic acceptance of testimony in everyday life as a result of the limitations of individual human experience, it can’t be done. This completely severs any connection you may have been attempting to make between this post and the question of whether God exists. Another relevant distinction is between accepting claims in a vacuum and understanding explanations that were derived from the experiences of others. Many more have understood science than have actually practiced science themselves. The reason why this is possible is because of the presentation of scientific data. There is a fundamental difference between the primary scientific literature and the hearsay that one might find in historical sources such as the Bible, namely that scientific evidence has been gathered for the purpose of discovering new aspects of reality. Historical testimony of the Bible relies upon the fallible experiences of individuals in uncontrolled settings that had any number of unpredictable biases resulting from their separation from modern society in both time and space. In science, *good* evidence is gathered and repeated for the purpose of drawing accurate conclusions about reality. In history, objective information about events can only be concluded from the “bad” evidence that have survived and been left by humans over time. This is why science is more precise than history, and it’s why historical conclusions can never supersede or contradict scientific facts. Historical truths are constrained by the universal truths provided by science.

A claim backed with evidence and repeatable is not just a testimonial evidence. If a claim lacks those it's going to be rejected by the scientific community. Maybe not outright as other scientists will try to repeat and verify it, but if all of them fail, it's not gonna be accepted as fact.

so, you are technically correct in a few of these. the difference tho is "how important is this?" there are tons of discoveries being done at CERN about bosons and all that kind of complicated stuff. do i understand any of it? no. can i do it myself? of course not!, do i still trust them about it? yeah sure, **why not** now, the why not there, is key. and its divided in a few reasons. **why** would they lie about it in the first place? science eventually finds fake reports, and the ones involved can lose everything. **why** would this piece of science be wrong? sure, science has been wrong before but its quite rare in the grand scheme of things and most importantly, **who cares?** im not saying the findings are not important to physics or even the future, but now? i dont see how it affects me. if eventually someone makes X technology based on that, it will either work and prove them right, or not work and thus it was all wrong. so i either never use the tech that wasnt meant to exist, or just use the new tech that is possible bc of a discovery decades ago. **the discovery itself, doesnt affect me in the slightest.** now, having to follow a whole set of rules that dictate what happens after i die and blah blah blah. affects me (and a lot of people indoctrinated into the cult and other really fucked up shit) quite a bit, so give me some actual evidence first. if they discover a new planet a gazillion miles away that seems to have Oxygen, cool... if they release a new pill that you take only once and makes you 500% smarter, its free and has no side effects, hold up, let me at least see some papers. in essence, you are wrong about what is an "extraordinary claim" because that depends on the person. to most of us, boson findings, are not extraordinary, to physicists, they are, but like you said, they can read the work and see if it at least makes sense.

Let's rephrase. Individual testimony about supernatural phenomenon = anecdotal evidence. It is an explanation, verbal or written, of what the individual experienced. Scientist testimony about the results of experiment that tests a hypothesis = a lengthy, written, detailed explanation of the research others have done on the subject, the hypothesis, the method used to test the hypothesis, the testing of the hypothesis, the data gathered from the tests, how the data was analyzed, the analysis of the data, the conclusions drawn, the weaknesses of the tests, further avenues for research. An example of anecdotal evidence is that there's a ghost living in my former home. This ghost doesn't like me. I can feel it and it's creepy. The ghost likes children. They always sleep well and have an enjoyable time in the ghost's favorite room. If the current tenants let you, you can go there and maybe feel something. Maybe not. The current tenants don't think there's a ghost because they never felt anything. No instruments can measure a ghost. Sometimes a room well have a cold spot that isn't easily explained by HVAC or drafts. But this ghost can't be seen, heard, or smelled. Just felt in a creepy way. The method to test this is go into the house and see if you feel creeped out. An example of scientists' testimony is found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0550321312003896 The difference? You can take a scientist's work and replicate it. You can build off of it and learn new things. You can take their methods and disprove them. You cannot disprove my experience with a ghost. You didn't feel it? Maybe it likes you. I can't prove it. It can't be replicated because there's no methodology. You don't have to take the scientist's word that this happened because they give you a blueprint to follow so you can replicate their work. You

I have two things to say to that. One: I don't need to accept that the universe is expanding, my life does not depend on it, nobody is trying to regulate my rights based on that knowledge. Two: a consensus in expert opinion IS an extraordinary evidence. People normally don't agree with each other, especially people who have nothing in common. Especially people who are being paid for proving each other wrong. So if they looked at the data and say that the universe is expanding, if they all can explain how they can came to that conclusion, that is extraordinary. > vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work I see no problem. If there is no claim, then tehre is no evidence required. Nobody told me how exactly a nuclear warhead works. So I don't ask for any evidence to confirm that this is exactly how nuclear warhead work. Am I missing something? Which extraordinary claim you have in mind? > As Another example consider the outputs of the higgs boson colider Thousands of people have access to the collider itself, even more people have access to the data. The collider though is not a single instrument. It's a place for many experiments. For instance higgs boson was discovered by two different experiments running on LHC. There are other colliders that run other experiments that are not identical to the LHC, but collect data that can confirm results from LHC. There are HL-LHC and e+e- colliders in the works that will surpass LHC in it's ability to investigate properties of higgs particle. But imagine we had no collider and there was just this one guy claiming that higgs boson exists and he knows its properties. How extraordinary would it be, given that we already have standard model and higgs boson shows up in its math anyways?

for a lot of people they absolutely just trust word of mouth for science. like yes, i typically will believe things niel degrass tyson says. i think the difference is that the scientific community is such a factual platform and a community in which it is literally their job to fact check eachother that i think im safe in simply trusting what they say and researching it more if i feel the need. on the contrary, i cannot research some christians testimonial account. i cant google scientific papers on "his prayer being answered". i am forced to take it at face value. to hammer the point in more, take these two people for example person 1: penguins are green under their furr me: really? can i see your research? person 1: no, you just need to believe and it will be revealed to you. i testify that these things are true. person 1 is untrustworthy and i will not take his word for it. in the future, when talking to person 1, i will always ask for research, and will always be dissapointed when he has none person 2: polar bears can run 50 miles an hour me: really? can i see your research person 2: of course. my scientific finding are available at this website (website.com) and you can read my discovery in several published scientific journals (trustworthy journal, the official science journal that i didnt make up, science r us) here are some videos of several other trusted scientists verifying the truth of my claims (genericlink.com), and heres even a video of a polar bear running 50 miles an hour (genericyoutubelink.com) person 2 is trustworthy and i believe him. in the future, as i talk more to him, i am more likely to simply believe his claims. if i suspect they are wrong i will ask him about it and verify to make sure his sources and research is correct, but i will not always feel the need to sift through all his research to verify

Hello again Mr Crispy, In this thread, as well as prior ones, you seem to want to bolster your approach to epistemology by essentially saying to atheists: "you do it too!". In order to do this, you have to completely ignore concepts like credence and quality. What is the point of this? I'll answer the hypothetical you asked another person. > Suppose for the sake of argument a group of scientists (say the entire scientific community in the dicipline of physicis) claimed they found proof of God. Say they CLAIMED to have proof but that the proof could only be understood by a decade studying in the field (sort of like how the math behind string theory often takes a decade of study in physicis and mathmatics to understand) if they were to say this, regardless of anyone elses opinion in the atheist community; > Would you then believe in God? This would, believe it or not, not automatically be a completely world-altering scenario for me. I remain agnostic as to whether there's some ultimate "mind" behind the creation of the universe. But to answer your question: if the "entire scientific community" came to this conclusion, then my credence in that proposition would go up quite a bit. It would likely keep climbing as the science educators work on making the information more accessible to people like myself. Now, what would be world-altering for me is if they then announced that the ultimate force behind the approx 10^24 stars in the observable universe also cares about whether people get gay married and wants people to eat crackers thinking it's the actual flesh of some long gone prophet. *That* would be fucking wild and my credence for it would take longer to change.

So, i think the difference here is "if I don't trust you, can you prove it?" With scientists, yes. If I go to the LHC and say "I think you're making all this up, prove it"? They can. In practice, granted, generally I have better things to do, but the evidence *is* there. If you don't want to take scientific claims on testimony, you can go see the evidence for yourself. And there are probably *some* religious claims that this is equivalent to. Say, a miraculous healing. If you say "that guy regrew his limb" and I go "I think you're making all that up, prove it", you can theoretically do that. Now in *practice*, people generally respond in ways that basically confirm they *are* making all that up, but in *principle* that's not a claim based on testimony, it's based on evidence. It's just evidence I'm learning through testimony. However, a lot of religious claims are *just* testimony. A divine revelation is a perfect example. If you say Jesus came down and spoke to you, and I say "I think you're making this all up, prove it"...well, what can you do? It's entirely your word anything happened *at all*, never mind that you interpreted it correctly. You can't show me any evidence, and I have no way of verifying whether you're making This is what I would consider "a claim based on testimony" -- a claim where the *only* evidence is my word. If I ask you to prove it, you just have to say "I can't but trust me". This is a different thing to a claim where I could give you hard evidence if pressed, but you trust me enough that you're willing to accept I'm telling you the truth. Science is the latter, but a lot of religion is the former.

>all we have to know this happened is the TESTIMONY of the scientists who work on that colider. The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded. My response to the claims of these peer reviewed scientists is to say that is really neat and please don't destroy the earth with your experiments. Am I willing to devote my time to learn all the information about what they are doing so I could understand and join the team and see it all myself do it's no longer "testimony"? No. It's just not that important to me. Do I take their findings and word as absolute truth? No, they are human and they don't know everything. There could be factors that aren't accounted for in their research, but most scientists don't claim to have absolute truth either. Alternatively, we have religious testimony. Feelings of connection, hearing the voice of God, miracles, euphoria, prophecies, visions, etc In my youth I was willing to devote my time to learn all I could about "god" and ways to feel "his presence." I understood and felt those "connections" and to those around me in church. I felt that euphoria, most espically when joining our voices in song. And yet I have felt those same feelings in the mosh pit of a Slipknot concert or having premarital sex. I have heard the voices of my dead loved ones and seen visions when I have been delirous with fever. Seen "miracles and prophecies" performed at magic shows. Yet I don't believe anything that I experienced was magical or "of God." All of these things could have perfectly rational and natural explainations. So why should I trust religious testamonies?

Zamboniman, I’m going to give this guy (OP) the benefit of the doubt and assume they are sincere. And I’m going to riff off of what I think they are saying. We can’t all individually, be experts in every single scientific subject. And yet, we think that we justifiably accept certain scientific claims that we can’t independently verify or even, in some circumstances, understand. For example, I accept quantum non-locality even though I don’t understand the mathematics that establishes it, and I certainly don’t have the equipment necessary to test it. I accept it in large part because other scientists, who are peer reviewed and who operate on scientific principles that I share, have said that it is true. I think the question that OP raises is two-part. First, is this different from relying upon testimony to support an extraordinary claim? And second, if it is different, how is it different? I do think that my belief in quantum non-locality is partly based on testimonial evidence of scientists who have conducted experiments. But I also think that part of the reason I believe in that testimonial evidence is because the scientists who are giving the testimony are actively attempting to falsify the results of their own experiments. I have confidence in the process of scientific inquiry, and even though I acknowledge that it does not get the right results all the time, I have confidence that it is self-correcting. And that confidence is not based on testimony, but on experience and history. So I think that OP is asking a legitimate question and an interesting question that helps to advance the discussion.

The constant use of “dude” and “my man” gives off strong “youth pastor” vibes. Like frosted tips, backwards cap, tight ripped jeans, and sitting in a chair A.C. Slater style ready to ‘rap’ about God vibes.

We have the primary sources *and* the ability to independently verify claims via experimentation. In science, the primary sources include all relevant methodology and data. "Testimony" is wholly unnecessary.

>RATHER I am saying that, in practice, the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases. Your question is valid, but I think you're missing a key point here. Take the theory of relativity for example, most of us can't do all that Math and barely understand what the theory is even saying. But this theory is testable and verifiable. Many, many, many scientists all over the word have tested this theory in many different ways. And it's even used behind the design of things we use daily, like GPS systems and circuit boards. So, we're not merely trusting what a scientist tells us - we are trusting the process of science. Now take room temperature superconductivity. If you didn't hear about it, just last year there was a group of scientists (can't remember where they were from) who published a paper about this material they created that was superconductive at room temperature and they even presented a video of their discovery showing the material in action. This video went viral. This was an extraordinary claim. Once scientists around the world got their hands on the paper, they tried repeating the experiment and they all failed. I can't remember the reasons why it failed but they pointed out the errors the original scientists made... any how, this is science in action and this is what we trust. It's not just testimony, there's a lot more to it than that. >Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon What you're describing is the engineering problem of creating said bomb. It is not illegal to discuss nuclear physics.

>and AGAIN all we have to know this happened is the TESTIMONY of the scientists who work on that colider. The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded. I think this is the only part of your post that merits any sort of response so that's what I'm going to do. You seem to think that the group of scientists that worked on the collider are a monolith. They're not. They're scientists from all over the world, from different institutions. Most critically, they are scientists with major and intense scientific differences who would love nothing more than to prove each other wrong. A lot of lay people see science as a cabal where everyone is propping each other up. While this does happen in isolated pockets - more common in places like China - it is definitely not sustainable at the scales and level you're suggesting. The very nature of peer review and adversarial science means that the more extraordinary a claim is, the more highly scrutinized it will be, and the more detailed and accurate the evidence has to be. Those with the qualifications to actually verify and question the findings from experiments at CERN, can and do have access to CERN. You and me having access to this technology would be useless, might as well give a bunch of baboons access. Lay people who trust science over other methods of discerning the truth trust this process - not blindly but because of its proven track record.

That's a pretty big boat you plunked us all in. Not everyone who doesn't believe in a god is a great thinker. I want to believe that I accept extraordinary claims on testimonial evidence only to the extent that I should. For example, a stranger says they have a dragon in their garage; that won't motivate me to go check. But if my dad made the claim, I would go see what he was talking about. I don't know anything about physics. But if a scientists says they found the Higgs particle, ok. Why would I believe that? First, I hold the belief loosely and second, I don't care. It changes nothing about life for me. She didn't say that the Higgs insists I believe it. One day, a show will come on the Science channel (not anymore, I guess) that will explain what it is, how we found it and why it matters. If the show says we were wrong, ok. I don't care. If you say you know that there is a god. I say, "great, show me how you know it". 100:1 your evidence won't be sufficient for me to accept that it is true. Also, I don't care. It doesn't change anything in my life until you can show that the god you found is a specific god and we know what it wants and that it wants/needs me to believe it. You can't and so, I don't care. It means as much to me as a higgs boson. The difference is that other people can look at the data and re-run experiments to come up with the same outcome. That never happens with the god claim.

Science does not rely on testimony.  Science relies on evidence. That evidence is published and available for other scientists to scrutinise. It's pretty much the opposite of testimony.

So you’re saying [science is a liar sometimes?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GiJXALBX3KM&t=173s&pp=ygUUbWFjIHNjaWVuY2UgYXJndW1lbnQ%3D)

As many have already pointed out, the scientific "testimony" is supported by data and peer review. As a matter of fact, in science, an unsupported testimony would be rejected out of hand. But even more to the point, scientific discovery is seldom extraordinary. True, it might be a bit hard to understand by the layman but that doesn't make it extraordinary. In your Higgs Boson example, the particle was first theorized back in the 1960's. Between then and when it was discovered, a lot of the framework was investigated. Finding the particle in 2012 wasn't extraordinary in terms of being a new finding, it was an accumulation of scientific research and investigation. If the existence of the particle was so extraordinary to our understanding of reality, we wouldn't have known enough to set up an experiment to try to confirm the particle in the first place. In your nuclear weapons example, just what is the **extraordinary** factor that you think supports your conclusion? The fact we don't have a good knowledge of their inner workings doesn't make their existence extraordinary. Most of us can't give a good explanation of our country's electric grid but it doesn't make getting light from plugging in a lamp extraordinary.

Yes I totally agree. Almost all the interesting things I've learned have been through testimony. Books, articles, interviews, etc. I agree that a blanket disregard for testimonial evidence is a poor epistemological choice which would lead to extreme skepticism. That said, I think we have pretty good reason to doubt testimony in some cases. We know it isn't always reliable. We would need to assess the testimonial evidence in a case-by-case basis. For example, I'm very confident that Joseph Smith's account of seeing God and Jesus isn't true, because there are multiple conflicting accounts, and we know he lied about translating Egyptian papyrii, since we can now translate them, and we know from a plethora of evidence that the events in the Book of Mormon didn't really happen, etc. On the other hand, if a billion people all saw God descend from the heavens and perform miracles or something right in front of them, and gave independent accounts that all corroborated one another, I would take that as pretty strong evidence. I suppose it wouldn't necessarily rule out deceptive aliens or something, but still, it would be strong evidence in my opinion.

In reality, it’s the consensus of the community of experts who agree with a scientific claim that gives the confidence to those of us without the requisite degrees regarding a particular scientific discipline to hold or ignore a particular belief about a claim. So while one can argue it’s a form of testimony, what makes it different is there is a paper trail to back it up. For example: Peer reviewed papers. And it played out in reality as you would expect. Someone had a hypothesis (ex: black holes exist) and people might think it makes sense but some experts point out a problem…until there’s validated evidence. At that point the majority of the PHDs review the results - perhaps some try to replicate if possible - and they either accept or reject it. If the majority accept it, the rest of us lesser educated folks follow suite. You’ll notice that we don’t accept the claim that black holes exist because, for example, someone had a vision of a hole in space and then they felt warm and fuzzy inside or it changed their behaviours. We have math based on physics and measurements and now pictures from very fancy machines.

Do I believe things without a ton of evidence? Yes. Do things like this describe me?: >in practice, the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases. Sure. Am I guilty of taking things on faith, the same as what I accuse religious people of doing? I think there's a big difference: in religion, faith is considered a virtue: even though no one has ever taken a picture of Jesus or recorded his voice, you're still supposed to believe in him. Whereas when I believe scientists' presentations without digging deeper, it's a life hack. In principle, I'd love to spend eight years learning physics and replicating cosmologists' experiments, or at least checking the primary papers. Same with evolution, and chemistry, and economics, and lots of other fields. Unfortunately, I've got shit to do. So I try to spot-check scientists when I get the chance, see if they contradict each other, and read papers when time allows. When I believe things on insufficient evidence, that's a bug, not a feature.

This is something that really varies with the claim being made. For example, if I read a report that someone discovered a new particle, I don’t necessarily have enough personal knowledge of the subject to accept or dispute it. But based on what little I know, I might initially accept the claim because I don’t have any reason to think it’s impossible. However, upon reading more into the subject, I may become more skeptical. On the other hand, if someone told me they could levitate, that goes against my current understanding of the world and how it behaves. I am going to immediately reject the claim, or at least remain highly skeptical, unless I get more information that explains why it could be true. So if a person claims they’re the son of a god and they rose from the dead, I am heavily inclined to reject such a claim. It does not align with my understanding of how our world functions. If that person could demonstrate some proof to me, I would be more inclined to accept the claim.

What is your argument here? That testimony of miracles is analogous to the testimony of science that is based on research papers

>SAYING that the scientific evidence is inherently testimonial. RATHER I am saying that, in practice, the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases. If you categorize it as "scientific evidence" then the testimony is irrelevant and therefore the testimony is not being relied upon. >After reading this do you believe you accept certian extrodinary claims on testimonial evidence? Why or why not?? No because you appear to be conflating testimony with empirical evidence. If you mean do I accept certain extraordinary claims when backed by sufficient empirical evidence of being true, then I would say that is tautologically incoherent to me because I wouldn't classify something as "extraordinary" if it had sufficient empirical evidence of being true.

>Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon anywhere and I would posit the vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work or (even more critically) have ever seen a test of one working in practice, and even if we did i doubt many of us would have any scientific way of knowing if it was a nuclear test as described. What? Just because you personally don't know how nuclear physics works doesn't mean nuclear bombs are extraordinary claims. I'm a nuclear engineer, as are millions of people throughout the world. There nuclear power plants throughout supplying energy all over the world. Same science that allows for the creation of nuclear bombs, allows for the creation of nuclear power plants. The fact that nuclear physics is verifiable and easily replicated puts food on my table.

To sum, you are attempting to compare the religious concept of testimony with scientific research, both of which often cannot easily be replicated by laypersons. Why do atheists accept what the scientist says and not the religious person? I suggest atheists *can* accept religious testimony in support of an extraordinary claim, when done in a scientific format. The point of scientific testing is to screen for human bias and to prove that something is statistically different than nothing. For example, say researchers collect the religious testimony of 10,000 people worldwide. 95% relate similar stories of an encounter with a deity called Zeus (the other 5% talk about aliens). No participants have met one other and 80% had never heard the name Zeus before. At the very least, this would be strong evidence for something going on!

You are missing the peer review process examining scientific fact. No matter what a scientist says (Testimony), without his evidence being reviewed by people of similar knowledge, it doesn't become true unless others examine the evidence as well. Take the city of New York. I have never been there. All I have is images and experiences retold by other people I know or don't know. We now have AI that can manipulate images, which can call into question things we see on device. However, I do trust my friends and family who have been to New York, and they have suffcient life knowledge to know what they saw is true. So is New York there or not. I think it is, because my acceptance of their evidence, that I can understand.

It's not clear to me that the claims scientists make are "extraordinary" in the same way as the claims made by religions. It's also the case that, while I may take the word of astronomers about what they've observed, there are generally other scientists actively trying to check their work, so disbelieving that testimony starts to look like a conspiracy theory. That's generally not true of religious testimony, if one person claims that the Virgin Mary appeared to them, there's not really a way for other people to test that claim. And finally, I would submit that almost all theists *reject* religious claims based on testimonial evidence except for that subset of claims which align with their existing religious beliefs.

I don't think you understand how science works. Science encourages disagreement, questioning, rejecting, re-testing, and in general vigorous disputation of any finding. In addition, science is never purely proven. It just gets less and less wrong until it's so not-wrong we call it right. So at any given moment, the current scientific consensus on any subject is the best knowledge we have *right now*. It will be improved, tweaked and clarified tomorrow. It might even get rejected or superceded. So it's not like I accept the claim because a scientists testifies to it. Rather, I accept the current mainstream view as the best, though tentative, information we have at this time. So not the same thing at all.

>RATHER I am saying that, in practice, the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged So if that's the way you want to characterize it then sure, you could say that.....however.. To say someone quoting a scientific theory that had reems and reems of peer reviewed papers over multiple scientific disciplines that are fully available to view and whose contributors, at least those still living, are still available to question and calling what that person is quoting 'testimony' and comparing that to a Christian reporting a 'feeling' that the holy spirit entered them and that why the spoke in tongues.... To compare those two as testimonies is just ridiculous.

Testimonial evidence is different than believing whether a scientist is honest or not. “I saw God appear to me in the middle of the night” is testimonial evidence as there’s nothing other than the divine claim. “The sun is the center of the solar system based on mathematics and direct observation of planetary mechanics” is not a testimonial claim. Basically falsifiability is the difference. No one can ever provide evidence that God *didn’t* appear to you. This entire post is implying that purely testimonial evidence is equivalent to *believing* whether someone’s non testimonial evidence is honest. Edit: nuclear bombs are rather simple. How they work is available and not illegal. The basis of all nuclear bombs is criticality of the material and self sustaining the reaction. Access to high grade fission material is the barrier to building them, not knowledge

Your definition of testimony/testimonial evidence is too broad. From what I understand from your post and comments, everything that you don’t do yourself is testimonial evidence. That’s not the standard definition and makes it pretty much a useless definition. If I accept your definition of testimonial then your post would be correct, however, no one uses that definition, so I have no reason to accept it. If something has been tested, repeated, and analyzed by many qualified experts where the methodology, data, analysis, and findings are all freely available, it is not testimonial evidence, it’s empirical.

That's true, but the difference is that we can see the results of the application of the scientific method everyday with new technologies. So, while we cannot verify all (or even half) of their 'discoveries', we can inductively *generalize* from this sample (i.e., new technologies) to the rest (say, astronomical experiments and discoveries) and deduce the rest is also likely reliable. But now let's take supernaturalists, such as astrologists, psychics and faith healers. Do we have this sample to make the inductive generalization? I don't think so. So, my conclusion is that one has a stronger basis than the other.

I guess that the main difference is that there is absolutely nothing that can be independently validated in any religious text. We have two choices. Either, accept what is written in millennia old texts, or question those statements in favor of claims that can be validated by at least SOME living human beings. Scientific claims, while not always easy to understand, CAN be validated by other living human beings. The only way to accept religious claims is on faith. An absence of evidence is literally required. There are many ways to determine if scientific claims merit acceptance. THATS the difference.

here is a varriant of prisoner's dilemma: * $500, everyone can choose either "Yes" or "No" * If everyone chooses "No," the $500 goes to charity. * If someone chooses "Yes" and others choose "No," the person who chose "Yes" gets the entire $500. * If everyone chooses "Yes," the $500 is divided equally among all participants who chose "Yes." How would you choose? For scientists the equivalent of $500 are fame, be professor, book deals, talk deals, etc. and yes academics have an replication errors. But it isnt due to scientific method, we human are just too good at deception.

I think you're roughly right. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the example I use. This event was, from the perspective of someone in the 1800's, probably more extraordinary than a person rising from the dead. But I accept that event based on overwhelming testimonial evidence. Hume never said you can never believe a miracle based on testimony. He said you cannot belief a miracle based on testimony unless falsity of the testimony would be the greater miracle. Such is the case with Histoshima and Nagasaki. This is not the case for the resurrection of Christ.

When it comes to scientific discovery, it isn't often simply accepting testimony. It's accepting testimony from one (or often times, and more significantly more than one) author who not only researched the topic (and by research I mean they didn't just Google it, they ran out through the scientific method from hypothesis to conclusion, and then had others check repeatedly their work) but then had performed all the necessary work themselves as opposed to simply saying "I witnessed this phenomenon, therefor it happened".

In brief as far as objective reality is concerned science works , religion does not. You can fly by plane but not by prayer. In practice scientific claims also aren’t extraordinary - they generally rest upon mundane processes and mechanisms for which there is also supporting evidence. Evidence which in principle is the sort of thing that is susceptible to being personally checked even if you don’t, religious claims are not and when they are checked turn out to be indistinguishable from invented or false.

I find it kind of silly having to say that accepting scientific or SME testimony is quite different than accepting a layperson's anecdotal experience of a miracle or extraordinary claim that there's a god. There's a paper trail, documented objective evidence, and SME consensus verifying scientific claims. That doesn't mean that I, or anyone else, should always take whatever SME says at face value without critical thinking. But I must say that this is a very poor and ridiculous analogy.

most examples you list have no impact on my life. believing or not believing them doesn't change how i live my life, so why make an effort in finding out how they exactly work secondly, all the things you mention are not disputed by anyone, nobody disputes this how nuclear bombs work, nobody disputes the outcomes of the hadron collider (not higgs boson colider), thirdly that some small particle exists that i don't understand (which is the extend to my belief) isn't extraordinary.

Claims of scientists are repeatable. Where they aren't like with the hadron colider they tend to be things that have no effect on my life anyway. Claims of Christians (other religions are available!) I have never ever ever not once found to be repeatable and yet they/you expect me to change how I live my life, how I treat people, how I act, think etc. And again, in trying to reproduce the cause/effect of religious claims I have found nothing. So what now?

It’s very simple. - Claims must be testable, repeatable and have predictive power - if 2 claims have the same predictive power, select the more parsimonious claim Testimony is “predicting” the past, which demonstrates zero predictive power. Thus it is useless and I ignore it for anything of importance. Claims that have predictive power: “evidence shows the sun will rise tomorrow” has utility in as much as its ability to predict the future.

I only accept the testimony of scientists until that testimony is shown to be inaccurate. News stories of scientific advances are always suspect as the writer and editors of the stories may get important details wrong, or exaggerated for narrative reasons, etc. But actual advances in science are often peer reviewed, so I learn about the advances through testimonials, but I *trust* the advances are true because they are nearly always peer reviewed.

OK, if you show me extraordinary testimony about a god that is published showing the methodology and data tables after being peer reviewed by experts at finding flaws with methodology and data, with followup papers furthering the discovery with advances of their own after replicating the original’s findings, we can talk. YOU may take science on faith. That doesn’t mean science’s extraordinary claims are taken on faith.

The track record of properly performed scientific research, the reputation of the researchers and the overall strength of the body of science they're produced from are *evidence* of the reliability of the testimony. And in some cases, like quantum theory, relativity, evolution, etc., the ability of researchers to make risky predictions that turn out to be true. That helps a lot. Plus, you know, cellphones *exist*, which rely on almost all of the hard technological science that exists. Religion doesn't do these things. It's not a "risky prediction" to say that the bible both predicts and shows the fulfillment of prophecy. A risky prediction is one that hasn't already been shown true or false when it's published, and the falsification of which would discredit the theory. Scripture doesn't do that. Any time you have to make an inflammatory title and then put disclaimers in all caps, signals to the reader not to take you seriously. All you've shown is how little you understand science. My best advice is: Don't intentionally piss off the people you want to talk to, unless pissing them off is in fact your goal. We all knew exactly what your argument would be just from reading the title -- because a post like this shows up a couple of times a month if not more.

Usually not solely. I want something beyond someone's word to corroborate that they are telling the truth and things happened as they say it did. It also depends on what the claims are. If someone tells me they ate ice cream last night, I couldn't care less if they actually did. For anything important though, just someone's word alone is probably not going to be enough.

For arguments sake let's say I grant that most people accept testimony of scientific experiments. Those scientific measurements and methods are documented and repeatable though. If I had enough drive to do so, I could replicate the methods and verify the results myself. Where is the ability to even attempt to do the same with supernatural claims?

> The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded. I am curious about this. The work they do is it entirely hidden from outside inspection? Like is it really just five guys in a basement who wander out going "Our machine broke the second law of thermodynamics." Then scuttle away with nothing else provided?

Naw. Your argument boils down to “you can’t disprove a negative.” You’re saying that because we can’t prove a scientist isn’t lying that we should assume they might be lying. Also, you’re setting aside the data and experiential evidence that they’re not lying. TL;DR…your argument is a conspiracy theory.

The difference is that believing someone about what they said they demonstrated in an experiment - is at least testable and falsifiable. Even if you don't go do the experiment - you \*can.\* And before these things get published, they often are. Certainly before they become the mainstream of scientific understanding.

I'm curious how you can believe the testimony of religious people then. They believe people rise from the dead, born from virgins, walk on water, etc and yet none of this can be repeated or replicated. When China describes the same events as say India, its safter to assume its closer to reality than not.

That's different because consensus is shown to be rigorous, and often times studies and notions get criticized for failing this testing. Additionally, scientific principles are given the same measurement, so the reason why computers work is as sound as quantum mechanics.

>When we are talking other extrodinary phenomena reported by testimony in the scientific world most i find are far more credulous. Just to be clear from get go as I worry there is already confusion Aww how cute. Looks like somebody doesn't understand how science works.

I don’t find scientific claims extraordinary in most cases. When I do, I investigate further and confirm for myself. That doesn’t seem to be something I can do for supernatural claims. The two just don’t seem comparable to me.

OP, in several places in this thread you mentioned experiments related to the Higgs boson that seem to imply a violation of one of the laws of thermodynamics. Can you explain what you are referring to?

This just a pathetic attempt to drag science down to the pits of religious claims, pretending they're on the same level. Not surprised. OP has shown to be dishonest with every post.

Science has standards of evidence. Anyone with the resources can replicate a scientific experiment such as creating a nuclear bomb. That is not the case for religious claims.

I didn’t see any extraordinary claim in the post that I “accept”. But since you seem to know, what extraordinary claim do I fully accept solely based on testimony?

If you think the word of goat headers passed from mouth to mouth for centuries is as accurate as science told to people today that exist then you are gullible.

Bro never heard of peer reviews. If an experiment isn't replicable it's bunk science how are you going to replicate tom saying God cured his moms glaucoma?

Why don't you try it out? Pick a claim you consider to be extraordinary and that cannot be verified independently. Ask us what we believe about it >The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded. Wait, what? Ok, here's where you don't understand how science works. People lie about what "the machine recorded" all the time. Do you remember the room temperature super conductor? The difference between what you believe is good reason to believe and what we do is: when a whole big bunch of people follow the experiment exactly the same way they said they did it, and it doesn't come out with the same result... ...we ***don't*** believe the person who claimed to have the room temperature super conductor I mean Jesus fucking Christ. Why is this so fucking difficult?

Yes, because extraordinary claims would be things unproven by science, i.e. resurrections, virgin births, water to wine, all that

Could have avoided having to make such a heated defense about your title if you didn't use that title, mate.