On talk Heathen episode 03.32 air date 8-11-19 Caller: Austin from Illinois (pick up conversation at 41:00 listen until 42:05) thinks its okay to say, because Christianity has stood the test of time, that should be a factored in when considering the likelihood that the claim Christianity is true is actually credible.
Congratulations to Austin, as he just proved Islam is true! More accurately he must must agree with thousands of Muslim apologists who say that because Islam stands the test of time never having been disproved since it’s inception 1400 years ago, that adds to the credibility that Islam is true, or Hinduism which is 4000 years old, more than doubling the length of time that Christianity has been around is also true.
If your “evidence to be considered” works equally well for other religions it doesn’t work for any of them to indicate they are true. This is why we after considering the test of time argument, we discard it because it could equally provide a wrong conclusion as a correct one, and as such is an unreliable path to truth.
when taking the entirety of the conversation into account, I get the feeling Austin is trying to justify holding on to bad arguments, and doesn’t understand that when someone identifies a fallacy that underpins your argument, you have lost the argument. Holding onto the bad argument serves to deny that you have lost any logical support for your claim and ignore the fact you lost the argument.
Each time you employ a demonstrably unreliable path to truth as support for your argument, you both undermine your argument and at the same time you actually provide cover and support for those arguing against you as in the case of other religious apologists who use the same bad argument.
Last, the idea that a multitude of questionable evidence should be considered together to be more convincing, misunderstands what it is that qualifies as evidence. A fact that remains true after each of several possible outcomes, does not indicate one outcome over another. If there is no indication of one outcome over another as in the case with the test of time argument, then we can learn nothing from it. Each religious culture mentioned above is equally supported by this argument so employing this logic, has lead the vast majority of people from around the world to be wrong about their religious beliefs, and as such is demonstrated not to be evidence at all. For it to be considered together or separately from other evidence really doesn’t matter if standing the test of time is not evidence of anything in the first place.
