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→Atheist Science
: Yes, memories can be wrong, but notice also in that article that the detectives want to get to the witnesses before the media. Why? Because the witnesses are going to give them important information. Also note that it talks about convictions based on eyewitnesses. Why? Because they are generally recognised as being reliable enough to convict on. I'd suggest that the BBC article and the concerns raised in it are highlighting extreme cases and the exceptions to the rule rather than giving a true picture of the reliability of witnesses.
: Yes, memories can be wrong, but notice also in that article that the detectives want to get to the witnesses before the media. Why? Because the witnesses are going to give them important information. Also note that it talks about convictions based on eyewitnesses. Why? Because they are generally recognised as being reliable enough to convict on. I'd suggest that the BBC article and the concerns raised in it are highlighting extreme cases and the exceptions to the rule rather than giving a true picture of the reliability of witnesses.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 03:46, 17 December 2007 (EST)
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 03:46, 17 December 2007 (EST)
The BBC article highlight that if you are not very careful about your eyewitness, their accounts can become easily tainted. I am not sure if the eyewitnesses that you believe to have existed never talked to one another, or to a third person, before they put the alleged eyewitness account into writing. Do you have evidence that they were so diligent.
Where do I not know falsifiability? The article states that the theories about the past can be wrong, which mean that these theories are falsifiable. It then goes on to tell us that they are sometimes wrong. No, surprise, because they were falsifiable. To conclude from this that the only really reliable evidence are eyewitness accounts, is quite a step, ignoring what we know about the reliability of eyewitnesses. Even the article says this because they expressively state that eyewitness accounts have to be corroborated to be useful. And quite often they cannot be supported by evidence. See the BBC article.
If you think that the past is not falsifiable, why do you want to convince anybody here about things in the past. This position is close to solipsism. If we accept that as an argument, you do not know anything certain either. If that would be true, I could freely claim that the first books of moses were written by two marsupials and a ham sandwich. You wouldn't be able to falsify that. Or that the world got created last Thursday. If you need such a strong assumption to support your position, you position cannot be too strong. [[User:Order|Order]] 03:18, 18 December 2007 (EST)
===Legitimate views===
===Legitimate views===