On Human Testimony
Human testimony is NOT an evidence. No scientist would take something as the truth because he knows someone said it. Why? Because science acknowledges the frailty of human mind. Science acknowledges the possibility of error in our sensing and information processing capabilities. And also there's a possibility that the person could be lying, especially when they have motivation to do so. So we need to reside to something more objective, something that doesn't depend on our perception. We need good evidence.So what constitutes as good evidence? Objective truth requires objective evidence, something that doesn't depend on us. A good evidence is something outside of us that we can all agree, no matter what each of us want to believe. That last part is important, we have to acknowledge our desire to be right, we all came in with an untested hypothesis that we wish to be the correct answer, we are all biased in this way. But that desire holds no value in the face of evidence. You can believe whatever you want but if the evidence doesn't support it, it's false. This just proves how wrong we can be, you only need to look back in the records history to see that point (we used to believe the earth was flat and it being the center of the universe, duh!).
Let's review the most common case of extraordinary claim, the ghost story. I'm sure you get this a lot or maybe you're one of the story teller. For simplicity, I'm gonna use one story I heard from a friend but you can use the same logic for other ghost stories you know. So he was on vacation with his family to Puncak -- a hillside family resort near Jakarta. He was staying in this old rented villa. Later at night when everybody's asleep, he was awaken by a loud sound. He checked downstairs and found that the big shelve has fell flat on the floor. He said the the shelve was too heavy to fall by itself...so it must be a ghost!
Remember what Carl Sagan taught us, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". If you want to make a case that there is a supernatural being that can interact with our natural world, you can't prove it just by saying the shelve is too heavy to just fall, the claim's too mighty and the evidence too simple. There are hundreds of more likely explanations: maybe the shelve wasn't balanced to begin with, maybe his cousin knocked it down and then pretend to sleep because she's afraid to get scold, hell, maybe there was minor earthquake. All those hypothesis are unproven, but are more likely to be true than the existence of supernatural forces, yet people jumped to the least likely and most extraordinary hypothesis -- hypothesis, mind you, and claim it to be the truth. Even if it is true, there are so many questions left unanswered, what was the motivation behind the knocking of the shelve? Why this family in particular? If the ghost has some point to prove, why do it when everyone's asleep? If he has some message for us, can he just pick up a pen and write it on a paper? He seems to be strong enough to knock down a shelve. It just doesn't make sense!
So, friends, if you experience one of those ghost stories, ask yourself those questions before jumping to conclusion. We are all capable of fooling ourselves, resort to available evidence for conclusion making. And if you are one of the listener of the said stories, don't take their word for it. Human testimony is not a good evidence, not even one to begin with. Remember, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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