If someone I knew well, and had high regard for their opinions, I would still not believe it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Eye witnesses are the worst form of evidence.

It should be clear at this point that you've wedged yourself into the position that you have an excuse not to believe anything you don't want to. If there are many people who are making a claim, you can call it the product of group think. And if an individual makes a claim, even if that person is credible you wouldn't believe him.

I don't think this means what you think it means. It seems you're basically saying that you can deny any observational claim that you want to deny. In the context of eye witnesses to an event, having multiple people making independent observations of similar events, each with different backgrounds and including people with a negative predisposition towards the conclusion is prima facie extraordinary. (If it were ordinary, you would expect to find many similar situations with such claims, yet it's clear that this situation is rare.)

Edit: Instead of claiming that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, it would be more correct to frame your position as "I do not accept eyewitness accounts for things I do not already believe is possible."

You really don't think there are worse forms of evidence?

Its not an excuse to not believe anything I dont want to, it more to the point that if anyone comes to me saying they witnessed demons or angels or bigfoot or anything not supported by any other evidence besides eye witnesses, then it must be false.


If a person that I thought was credible comes saying they seen and talked to God that would change my opinion of them to not being credible anymore.


Nothing can be more damning then a believable eye witness at a trial. Many people have been wrongly convicted by bad eye witness accounts, only to be vindicated by dna evidence.

There's a huge gap between "must be false" and "not enough evidence to be believed."

Edit: The fact that you're using that phrasing sheds a lot of insight into the error you're making.

I'm pretty sure that you're giving yourself an excuse to not believe anything you don't want to. You are allowing yourself a post-hoc analysis of the credibility of the person based on a conflict with your prior beliefs. Why not just assent that you're saying what I said you're saying:

...

This is a pretty shallow line of reasoning. Nobody is claiming that eye witness accounts are flawless. But to deny eye witnesses ANY credibility is an extremely hard line to take.

Again, you can't think of a worse form of evidence than eye witness accounts? Really?

There is no gap when it comes to super natural claims. It comes down to not what I believe but what can be proved in a reasonable manner.

Are you a lawyer? You seem to be trying to win an argument that I am not arguing. No doubt your a bright fellow, but you seem hell bent in showing how smart you are by twisting my words. The only thing you are proving to me is that you are a first class dumb ass.

I never said eye witnesses have no credibility. Only that they have none when making unbelievable claims that cannot be proven otherwise.

Nah Johny that's not what you said.

While this may be true, and it seems as though he's phrased some things awkwardly, I don't think what he says amounts to "not believing things because he doesn't want to".

You're ignoring the content of the kind of claim he's referring to. That being that it's a claim to something he's never experienced and for which there is no evidence provided. Moreover, it's a claim which enters the supernatural.

There is nothing wrong with considering a person who has previously shown themselves to be trustworthy to be less so if they come to you with a claim that is bordering the totally absurd.

All it says it that there a simply some claims so extraordinary that no person could maintain credibility while making them in the absence of other evidence.

And I think you know this. If someone came to you, someone you trust more than most people, and said that they jumped out of their window and flew unaided last night, I don't think you would believe them if they couldn't substantiate the claim in any way. Even if you thought they genuinely believed it.

I tried to joke about it earlier, but I'll state it in playtext instead: There is quite the gap between "walked backwards up the wall" and "possessed by demons".

And this is even before we consider that "walked backwards up the wall" isn't really the full context of what the official reports state, so the newspaper article, when making claims about those reports, plays fairly loose and fast.

It may come down to it, but that's nowhere close to the types of claims you were making.

Nope. And it's not about "winning" an argument. It's getting you to realize that you're making pretty blatant logical errors. I'd say you're a bright fellow, but the evidence presented so far proves otherwise.

It's true you didn't say that. You said:

I challenged you on this, and you have not yet responded to whether you actually agree with yourself. Are there no worse forms of evidence than eye witnesses?

Then you said:

The implication here is that eye witness accounts are not to be trusted. By way of your example, you seem to be implying that they aren't even to be trusted for things not even falling in the category of "supernatural." (This aligns with my characterization of your claim. You are broadly rejecting the reliability of eye witness accounts.)

What it seems like you're arguing now is that you're simply not going to believe a "supernatural" claim, PERIOD. Is that accurate?

If so, then how does that not correspond to my claim:

Since you already do not believe that supernatural claims can be true, then you would not accept eyewitness accounts for them.

I've made no claim about his personal experiences. And I would disagree that "no evidence" has been provided. It seems quite plain to me that evidence has been provided in the form of testimony from multiple sources and including "antagonistic" sources (simply meaning that people came in with a negative predisposition for believing in such claims).

Furthermore, I've noted that the evidence at this point falls into the realm of extraordinary because we do not have many examples in which law enforcement officials are making claims to have witnessed such behaviors.

The "supernatural" claim is that the girl is possessed. Other claims, like "walked backwards up a wall" are indeed extraordinary, but not necessarily "supernatural." Similarly, claims like

are not supernatural. So there's plenty going on here which cannot rightly be placed in that category, and hence cannot be rejected out of hand.

True, but the mechanism is exactly as I have described. There is a conflict between the claim that the person is trustworthy and the prior beliefs about the type of claim being made, and that he [Johny] has explicitly stated that he will take his prior claim over the individual claim. And he has also stated that he will take his prior claim over multiple claims from distinct individuals.

Therefore, it seems quite reasonable to conclude that he can use this line of reasoning to reject any sort of claim that he holds as a prior negative belief.

True. But I'm also not the one claiming that I wouldn't believe such a claim if multiple witnesses had claimed to have seen it, and those people included policemen and medical professionals. I certainly wouldn't come out and claim that their statements were necessarily "false" and take the more nuanced position (that has been put forth by myself and others ITT) which is that whatever event happened appeared to them as you flying out the window unaided, while NOT making a truth claim as to what really happened.

Edit: Let's recall the initial entry into this thread:

Eye-witness accounts do pose problems, and though Johny was too bombastic, and though "worst evidence" is a stretch... if we extend good faith then we can certainly see that eye witness accounts are problematic.

Firstly b8cxuse what ybu see can ofhen be a rexzut of whxt you ekp4ct to see.

Then because what you see isn't always what is there:



And lastly as I alluded to in the beginning of this post, memory is not an accurate representation of past events but can be changed by suggestion and misattribution.

It's true that he's too bombastic. But there's still the matter of giving him the opportunity to correct the record, and him not doing so.

This example is meh because there is an obvious intended communication, and you cannot say that the symbolic replacements you've provided are not planned. Such people are not expecting to have their prior beliefs disconfirmed.

As it pertains to the documented claims, this is why it's important for there to be an antagonistic perspective that is affirming the claims.

It's true that there's an element of filling in the details. But again, nobody has claimed that it's absolutely true that the child was possessed (the triangle). What we are looking to affirm is that the corners of the triangles are there, and that the events took place at least approximately how people have claimed in their sworn testimonies.

Sure. Nobody has claimed otherwise. However, it would be coincidental that this multiple people would commit the same error on independent observations and independent events. I'm not claiming coincidences don't happen, but the more that your explanation requires such coincidences in order to be true, the weaker the argument becomes.

I'll not go into great detail on the examples, suffice to say I stand by them.

To turn our attention to your point here, I actually did research the case as well as I could and read the source material. I don't get the impression the newspaper article is very straightforward. They're not lying about the sources, but the full context of the sources isn't given much (if any) ink.

Also, I'm not a clinical psychologist and nor do I have much to do with clinical psychologists. However, I do from other professional work know trauma psychiatrists, and have certainly learned there are a lot of people with bizarre perceptions of the world who do extremely strange things. I can't really say that these claimed observations stand out much in that regard.

Why is everyone so confused? The chances that this kid is possessed is at least a thousand times as great as the chances my kid is.

Thanks thats what I was trying to say. I was very tired when I answered that question. I didnt know I was gonna get interrogated by Spock.

If you come into a thread and start posting the way you did, you should be expected to be called out for making pretty blatant errors.

Incidentally, I don't even buy your "very tired" excuse because your first two posts were a solid 30 minutes apart, and you came back the next day to continue defending your nonsense.

Yea sure pal. Other people understand what I was saying just not you. You are just a pompous douche bag.


I gave you too much credit calling you Spock, your more like Spocks ******ed cousin Speck.

Which is why others challenged you on your claims (just not in as a direct and confrontational manner):

---

"Such deep, insightful reasoning put on display for all to see." -- Speck

would you believe it if you were the eye-witness in question? either alone or in a group, whichever.

I dont know to be honest. I know anyone can be fooled by their own minds.
Our brains are wired to believe our senses.

It would be very difficult to remain skeptical if I was part of group witnessing a super natural event.

good answer

Seeing isn't necessarily believing, there are many people who experience hallucinations, even when awake or not drowsy, who are well aware of this. Delusion and hallucination is not the same, however it can be very powerful when combined.

Again; We see with our brains, not our eyes.

seeing isn't necessarily disbelieving either. of that we can be certain.

and an explanation that involves both waking hallucination and delusion across such a range of people (if press reports are even remotely accurate) I find almost as hard to believe as a kid being infested with demons. but that's just me.

Believe what?

That the kid went up a wall backwards. Or believe demons from the universe Yahweh created possessed the kid.

The first yeah. Id leave room for flashbacks left over from my misspent youth or magic tricks.

The second probably not.

Yeah, it's like something out of a movie isn't it... oh.... wait....