Is eye witness testimony enough?

[Justin108]

The whole Bible basically relies either on claims of divine experience or eye witness claims. But are these enough?

If you willingly accept the claims made by these men, then on what grounds do you reject the claims made by people who believe they were abducted by aliens? On what grounds do you reject the claims of people who hear voices? On what grounds do you reject the claims of Bigfoot sightings?

How do you choose which eye witnesses to believe?

[SailingCyclops]

Well, you are wrong. There are indeed documented miracles, proveable even today.

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2009 ... acles.html

Now what?

The bible quote I referenced does not speak of spontaneous medical remissions, which happen all the time. It spoke of the things that Jesus is claimed to have performed. I have yet to see water turned into wine, thousands fed from a single loaf of bread, the dead raised back to life (not near-death experiences -- another favorite christian trope), folks walking on water. It said "greater things than these" will you folks do. Where's the beef? Such events would be all over cable news if they actually happened right?

Those supposed miracles were done for the most part in public, in front of the masses of the day, so don't give me the next lame excuse that they are now done in secret.

[GADARENE]

Well, you are wrong. There are indeed documented miracles, proveable even today.

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2009 ... acles.html

Now what?

The bible quote I referenced does not speak of spontaneous medical remissions, which happen all the time. It spoke of the things that Jesus is claimed to have performed. I have yet to see water turned into wine, thousands fed from a single loaf of bread, the dead raised back to life (not near-death experiences -- another favorite christian trope), folks walking on water. It said "greater things than these" will you folks do. Where's the beef? Such events would be all over cable news if they actually happened right?

Those supposed miracles were done for the most part in public, in front of the masses of the day, so don't give me the next lame excuse that they are now done in secret.

And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,

who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:

because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.

And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.

But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him,

and cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.

For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.

... And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand,) and were choked in the sea.

.... And they went out to see what it was that was done.

And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind; and they were afraid.

And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him.

Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.

OPEN YOUR EYES BRO

[SailingCyclops]

That is simply not true. The earliest gospels occur within 20 years of Jesus's death.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

This is in line with the date of publication of many modern day memoirs. So why is this a problem 2,000 years ago? Again, the evidential consideration begins with the Pauline Epistles (which also make up the Bible), who did not see Jesus, but MOST CERTAINLY DID SEE THE OTHER APOSTLES.

How is this not the very definition of hearsay evidence? Even taking your 20 year claim (most of what I have read claims 60 hears at best) , doesn't that qualify as delayed hearsay? We now know such evidence is not evidence at all; which is in line with the OP question; Can we rely on this "eyewitness evidence"? Obviously not.

[Justin108]

Since this is clearly an argument form absurdity and deals with nothing written about how historians and lawyers deal with eye-witness statement, I am simply going to ignore it.


.

"Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to absurdity") is a common form of argument which seeks to demonstrate that a statement is true by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result follows from its denial"

I did no such thing. All I did was present a scenario where your reasoning is put in place. My scenario demonstrates that assuming because part of a claim is demonstrated to be true that the whole claim isn't necessarily true. But if you truly wish to cower away from a perfectly decent argument then I can't force you otherwise.

Please answer your own question in light of four otherwise honest witnesses making a claim, as opposed to a criminal, whose integrity is already under question, and how we arrive at high confidence conclusions?

SailingCyclops did a good job there.

The whole Bible basically relies either on claims of divine experience or eye witness claims. But are these enough?

If you willingly accept the claims made by these men, then on what grounds do you reject the claims made by people who believe they were abducted by aliens? On what grounds do you reject the claims of people who hear voices? On what grounds do you reject the claims of Bigfoot sightings?

How do you choose which eye witnesses to believe?

Eye witness testimony is unreliable evidence. This has been demonstrated in many scientific studies, mainly with regard to the judicial system.

Courts are reconsidering the value of eyewitness testimony, which has put many innocent people in jail

Are eyewitnesses reliable?
They are mistaken far more often than people think. Every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify criminal suspects in the U.S., and studies suggest that as many as a third of them are wrong. Mistaken eyewitnesses helped convict three quarters of the 273 people who have been freed from U.S. prisons on DNA evidence presented by the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that challenges dubious prosecutions. After a comprehensive two-year study of eyewitness testimony, the New Jersey Supreme Court concluded that it often leads to false identifications, and recently ordered new rules on how such testimony is treated in the courtroom. Other states are moving in the same direction, and this week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that may result in the first federal clarification on the use of eyewitnesses in 34 years.

Why are so many eyewitnesses mistaken?
Human memory is fragile and malleable. More than 2,000 studies on eyewitnesses in recent decades have determined that recollections are prone to decay, distortion, and suggestion. Honest, well-meaning people often simply misremember or misreport what they have seen. In one 1974 experiment, for example, more than two thousand people were shown a 13-second video clip of a mugging, followed by a six-man lineup. Just 14 percent of viewers correctly identified the perpetrator — a success rate lower than that of random guessing. In a 1999 study, 150 college students watched videos of a shooting and then of a five-man lineup. Every one of them identified a suspect, even though the culprit was not pictured. Factors such as fear, poor lighting, the presence of a weapon during a crime, and the passage of time have all been shown to cause mistakes in identifications — even when the witness is the victim of the crime. Witnesses are particularly inaccurate, studies show, when asked to remember the facial features of someone of a different race.

Eyewitness Testimony Doesn't Make It True
[...]
The DNA revolution that began in the late 1980s has dramatically demonstrated how utterly unreliable eyewitness identifications are. About 200 people convicted of violent crimes have been exonerated by DNA evidence in the past two decades. About 80 percent have been the victims of eyewitness misidentification. Some of them served even more time in prison than Tillman.

Even more disturbing are the results of the FBI's DNA analysis of biological specimens in 10,000 cases from 1989 to 1996.

These were all cases in which eyewitnesses had identified a suspect who had been arrested for the crime (usually sexual assault) and biological material from the perpetrator was available for comparison with the suspect's. In 20 percent of the cases, no conclusive results could be obtained. In the remaining 8,000 cases, however, the suspect was cleared in 2,000, or 25 percent. Assuming that without DNA evidence half of these defendants would have been convicted, then as many as 12 percent of those convicted in disputed eyewitness cases may be innocent.
[...]

The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony
[...]
Several studies have been conducted on human memory and on subjects’ propensity to remember erroneously events and details that did not occur. Elizabeth Loftus performed experiments in the mid-seventies demonstrating the effect of a third party’s introducing false facts into memory.4 Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. Similarly, experimenters falsely substituted the term "yield sign" in questions directed to participants who had actually seen the stop sign slide. The results indicated that subjects remembered seeing the false image. In the initial part of the experiment, subjects also viewed a slide showing a car accident. Some subjects were later asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "hit" each other, others were asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "smashed" into each other. Those subjects questioned using the word "smashed" were more likely to report having seen broken glass in the original slide. The introduction of false cues altered participants’ memories.
[...]

See also:

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide

As well as many peer-reviewed scholarly articles all dealing with the unreliability of eye-eittness testimony.

When "eye witness evidence" is second, third, and fourth hand. When it is recorded long after the event, one can almost guarantee it is not factual, and filled with major errors. So, the answer to your debate question is ABSOLUTELY NO!

And these aren't even supernatural claims and still they are unreliable.

[SailingCyclops]

And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit ....

SNIP

Why are you quoting scripture at me in response to a valid point? Does that mean you have nothing to say for yourself? Does that mean you are so devoid of original thought you must simple quote bible verses which have no relevance to the debate?

[stubbornone]

That is simply not true. The earliest gospels occur within 20 years of Jesus's death.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

This is in line with the date of publication of many modern day memoirs. So why is this a problem 2,000 years ago? Again, the evidential consideration begins with the Pauline Epistles (which also make up the Bible), who did not see Jesus, but MOST CERTAINLY DID SEE THE OTHER APOSTLES.

How is this not the very definition of hearsay evidence? Even taking your 20 year claim (most of what I have read claims 60 hears at best) , doesn't that qualify as delayed hearsay? We now know such evidence is not evidence at all; which is in line with the OP question; Can we rely on this "eyewitness evidence"? Obviously not.

Because he is verifying the eye witness accounts, as in, "Yes, these guys existed, and they told me many of the same things."

Its a step toward, but not the sole step in what I have already explained. When someone gives an eye witness statement, NO ONE, not historians or the police, takes it as gospel do they?

They look for things to verify the events. 2,000 years after the fact, we begin with what we know is accurate, and these are the letters of Paul. So when Paul says, Mark is real ... and we have a record from Mark ... OK, that is a starting point.

That is it. Its the beginning of the process, not the end.

It is also the problem with much of the non-professional atheistic analysis of antiquity, particularly with Jesus. Its a lack of understanding in the process. Then again, I am a historian, albeit one with a broadly different time frame. I am nevertheless familiar enough with the process to know that the near unanimous position of period scholars should be taken as accurate ... over the opinion of a professor of English whose work has been scorned by those same period experts.

Again, what are you adding to the solution set that two millenia of professional historians is failing to add?

Ergo, and as it happens to be the debate, how do we use the eye witness accounts of the Bible?

So we assume that they are lying, and if so why?

Is there some particular reason why you are avoiding that question?

[Justin108]

So the emotional state of atheists should be given ... academic respect? Silliness.

Why use a book? Short answer, because there are no ipads?

There are two ways to record events in ancient times, oral tradition (which is bound to error over time), and writing them down.

An atheists finds the decision to use the later form off putting, for some odd reason, and, worse, fails to understand the evolution of grammar over time.

Well, that is a certain brand of atheism, just find something to nitpick about. Problem solving? Who needs that? Not, apparently, atheists.

Just curious J, and please answer honestly, have you EVER actually read the Bible?

What does my emotional state have to do with anything...?

You haven't really addressed the part where I propose god communicates directly to all of us as would be more effective in establishing credibility and certainty.

Lastly I have to ask, how old are you? Because you keep bitching about atheism. Are you not capable of having an intellectual discussion without throwing in ad hominim after ad hominim?

And yes. I have read the Bible. And I cannot for the life of me figure out why God doesn't just communicate with us all like he did with Moses and Abraham.

[stubbornone]

And these aren't even supernatural claims and still they are unreliable.

It interesting that you make a claim, one that is called an appeal to authority (expertise) and is fallacious.

You are once again, demanding something that you cannot get on the internet, you want to be magically transported to the people involved and see the records for yourself. That is impossible .... which is what atheists who worship the absurd demand.

MIraculously healed cancer is not supernatural, eh? Because YOU say so? The medically documented events are unreliable because YOU say so?

No, the evidence conflicts with your precious faith, and you simple lack the strength to follow the evidence.

And remember, you came here to a Christian forum and demanded evidence for reason. Your failure to follow it? Well, that is on you.

[SailingCyclops]

And these aren't even supernatural claims and still they are unreliable.

Good point. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Second hand hearsay recorded decades after the fact isn't!

[stubbornone]

So the emotional state of atheists should be given ... academic respect? Silliness.

Why use a book? Short answer, because there are no ipads?

There are two ways to record events in ancient times, oral tradition (which is bound to error over time), and writing them down.

An atheists finds the decision to use the later form off putting, for some odd reason, and, worse, fails to understand the evolution of grammar over time.

Well, that is a certain brand of atheism, just find something to nitpick about. Problem solving? Who needs that? Not, apparently, atheists.

Just curious J, and please answer honestly, have you EVER actually read the Bible?

What does my emotional state have to do with anything...?

.

When your emotional state precludes you from anything other than rejection based on a set of ever changing standards of elevation whose sole goal is ...




The its worth stopping and asking about the emotional state, as its clear that continuing to write well thought out and evidenced based analysis for a person who isn't interested is a waste of everyone's time ... including yours.

I am at that point J, why give you what you ask for when you clearly don;t even take the time to analyze it, and all I get is a random google result that half the time doesn't even address the points I am actually making?

Yes, we know you are atheist. Miraculous google skills are not terribly impressive.

An actual case in support of your thesis might be ... but there are none in evidence, and, IMO, there is not likely to ever be one from you.

Ergo, I believe I am simply wasting my time with deliberate obtuseness.

Not only that, but I have a 22 year old kid questioning my age, because even with it spelled out you missed it?

Yep, that is indeed that evidential record of atheism. Your illogic is the result of my bigotry and immaturity?

No, your hurt feeling are the result of having your illogic questioned, which you demanded, and lacking the strength to shore up your own case.