You're right, on its own, it is useless. However, there are countless studies showing eyewitness accounts to be highly flawed recollections. We know from neuroscience that there are a
lot of ways that our brain and eyes mess with our perception and recollection of events (just ask everyone who could've sworn that slow-moving truck they rear-ended came out of nowhere while they were texting and driving). Not only that, but eyewitness testimony is necessarily a second hand recounting - I cannot necessarily account for the other person's lucidity, accuracy, or honesty. As a result, I must necessarily consider whether it is more likely that the eyewitnesses are some combination of inaccurate, insane, dishonest, or none of the above.
If someone tells me that someone rose from the dead, I think it'd be considerably more likely that they got something wrong than that they actually were relating the event to me accurately and honestly. I'd need corroborating evidence.
And I really don't care. I'm sorry, you can talk all you want about how
important these eyewitnesses were at the time - given that there were no cameras, no fingerprinting, no DNA evidence, and generally speaking virtually none of the forensic tools we have today, obviously eyewitnesses were
important. But does this somehow magically elevate their reliability? Is there anything about eyewitnesses being the
only form of evidence back then that made them inherently more accurate, lucid, and honest? Given that they were a prescientific people with a strong tinge of mysticism, I think there's good reason to believe that they'd be
less accurate than most modern witnesses.
See, when you say I'm discussing eyewitnesses in the court system, you're missing my point. I'm not. I'm discussing eyewitness testimony and its reliability
in general. Not in court, not in a historical context, in
all contexts. The fact that it was
important back then does nothing to mitigate the fact that it is still really lousy evidence. Is it a unreasonable to expect that evidence from the past be evaluated by modern standards? No, not at all - our "modern" standards are demonstrably better at separating truth from fiction! The fact that their standards in the past were primitive at best does nothing to change that.
Which is nice, but ultimately takes nothing away from the key question: how many agreeing eyewitnesses would you need before you believed something which, to you, seems impossible? Say, a man jumping off the empire state building, splattering on the ground below, having his bones and flesh knit themselves automatically back together like some horror protagonist who can't die, and then walking off - how many eyewitnesses would it take for you to believe this actually happened? Again, we have to reference the likelihood of this actually happening against the likelihood of the people claiming it being insane, lying to us, or simply misremembering (maybe they saw the man kill himself, and conflated that somehow with a street chiropractor that was doing a show right in front of him)...
It's not called a bias when it's entirely justified. I consider eyewitness testimony to be weak evidence, and I have very good reasons for believing that.
And that is a knock against it. You'd think that a perfect god would understand the folly of relying on eyewitness testimony, which is oh so easily corrupted.
Come on, man, this is just childish. I've explained twice already why this is not a red herring, and I'm not the only one. Now would you please answer the question in any given formulation?
Because it isn't one.
Was wondering when someone would post that.
Credentials on the internet are
shown, not told. How do I know that
@sfs is an expert in evolutionary biology? Because he shows it every time he posts on the subject. How do I know that
@RickG is an expert in geology? Because he demonstrates the value of his credentials every time he opens his mouth. In your case, you've claimed expertise in psychology and history, and you
still think that eyewitness testimony is sufficient to demonstrate supernatural claims? I'm sorry, but that alone blows any claim you have to expertise out of the water!
Tell you what: you show me something beyond that box, and maybe we can talk. See, the problem with this analogy is that all we have access to is the box! It's not like you're sitting outside the box scoffing, you're right in there with me, pretending that there's a huge world beyond the walls when neither of us have any reason to believe that that is the case!
