No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.
David Hume

Archive for December, 2007

9/11 and Testable Hypotheses

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

How do we determine the truth of something? How do we know what really happened? During the course of any investigation into whether something is true or not, any claim that is made needs to be testable/disprovable, otherwise it has no value. For example, let’s say that I claim that there is an invisible dragon on my shoulder that tells me what to do. There’s no reason for you to believe me unless I can provide some evidence. If you try to grab at it, I can say it was on the other shoulder. If you grab again, I can say it hopped away outside of your reach. If I provide no further way to test this claim then you have absolutely no reason to believe me, especially if the claim presupposed things which are contrary to established knowledge (namely that dragons do not exist, nor are any creatures invisible).

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